Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

The Colorado Plateau As A Virtual Laboratory For Mobile Games For Geoscience Education And Relations Between Rock Strength And River Metrics, Natalie Bursztyn

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This dissertation encompasses two studies: one developing virtual field trips for mobile devices for an innovative approach to lower-division geoscience education, and the other examining the role of rock strength in river erosion and landscape evolution.

The education study involves the development of three virtual field trip modules (Geologic Time, Geologic Structures, and Hydrologic Processes, all free on iTunes and Google Play) that lead students down a virtual Colorado River through Grand Canyon by physically moving around their campus quad, football field or other location, using their GPS-equipped smart phone or tablet. As students reach each location in the scaled …

Improving The Scalability And Usability Of The Public Information Officer Monitoring Application, Rohan D. Shah

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This thesis work addresses the limitations of a web application called the Public Information Officer Monitoring Application (PMA). This application helps Public Information Officers (PIOs) to gather, monitor, sort, store, and report social media data during a crisis event. Before this work, PMA was unable to handle large data sets and as a result, it had not been adequately tested with potential users of the application.

This thesis describes changes made to PMA to improve its ability to handle large data sets. After these changes were made, the application was then tested with target users. All test participants found the …

Face Recognition Under Varying Illuminations, Mohammadreza Faraji

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Face recognition under illumination is really challenging. This dissertation proposes four effective methods to produce illumination-invariant features for images with various levels of illuminations. The proposed methods are called logarithmic fractal dimension (LFD), eight local directional patterns (ELDP), adaptive homomorphic eight local directional pat- terns (AH-ELDP), and complete eight local directional patterns (CELDP), respectively.

LFD, employing the log function and the fractal analysis (FA), produces a logarithmic fractal dimension (LFD) image that is illumination-invariant. The proposed FA feature-based method is an effective edge enhancer technique to extract and enhance facial features such as eyes, eyebrows, nose, and mouth.

The proposed …

Image Blur Detection With Two-Dimensional Haar Wavelet Transform, Sarat Kiran Andhavarapu

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Efficient detection of image blur and its extent is an open research problem in computer vision. Image blur has a negative impact on image quality. Blur is introduced into images due to various factors including limited contrast, improper exposure time or unstable device handling. Toward this end, an algorithm is presented for image blur detection with the use of Two-Dimensional Haar Wavelet transform (2D HWT). The algorithm is experimentally compared with two other image blur detection algorithms frequently cited in the literature. When evaluated over a sample of images, the algorithm performed on par or better than the two other …

Detecting Experts On Quora: By Their Activity, Quality Of Answers, Linguistic Characteristics And Temporal Behaviors, Sumanth Kumar Reddy Nagarur Patil

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Question and answering sites are useful in sharing the knowledge by answering questions. It is a medium of sharing knowledge. Quora is the fastest emerging effective Q&A site, which is the best source of knowledge. Here you can ask a question, and get help in getting answers from people with firsthand experience, and blog about what you know. In this paper, we are investigating and identifying potential experts who are providing the best solutions to the questioner needs. We have considered several techniques in identifying user as an expert or non-expert. We have targeted the most followed topics in Quora …

Long-Term Study Of Crowdfunding Platform: Predicting Project Success And Fundraising Amount, Jinwook Chung

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Crowdfunding that is the combination word of crowdsourcing and funding makes people can start a business easily. Legislating JOBS act in US played a major role in removing restricted barriers of crowdfunding on public offerings of fence and private funds for small business. The growth speed of crowdfunding takes some beating. Through Kickstarter that is a popular crowdfunding platform and being considered the typical case of crowdfunding, 480 million dollars and more than half a billion dollars were invested in about 19 thousand and 22 projects for 2013 and 2014 respectively. But in spite of the rapid growth, the successful …

Managing The Spread Of Alfalfa Stem Nematodes Ditylenchus Dipsaci: The Relationship Between Crop Rotation And Pest Re-Emergence, Scott Jordan

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Alfalfa is a critical cash/rotation crop in the western region of the United States, where it is common to find crops affected by the alfalfa stem nematode (Ditylenchus dipsaci). Understanding the spread dynamics associated with this pest would allow end-users to design better management programs and farming practices. This is of particular importance given that there are no nematicides available against alfalfa stem nematode and control strategies largely rely on crop rotation to non-host crops or by planting resistant varieties. I present a basic host-parasite model that describes the spread of the alfalfa stem nematode on alfalfa crops. With this …

Comparing Linear Mixed Models To Meta-Regression Analysis In The Greenville Air Quality Study, Lynsie M. Daley

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

The effect of air quality on public health is an important issue in need of better understanding. There are many stakeholders, especially in Utah and Cache Valley, where the poor air quality as measured by PM 2.5 levels and consequent inversions can sometimes be the very worst in the nation. This project focuses on comparing two statistical methods used to analyze an important air quality data set from the Greenville Air Quality Study, focusing on a lung function response variable. A linear mixed model, with a random factor for subject, gives slope estimates and their significance for predictor variables of …

Survival Analysis For Truncated Data And Competing Risks, Michael Steelman

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

The purpose of this project is to consider the problems of left truncation and competing risks in analyzing censored survival data, and to compare and contrast various approaches for handling these problems. The motivation for this work comes from an analysis of data from the Cache County Memory Study. Study investigators were interested in the association between early-life psychologically stressful events (e.g., parental or sibling death, or parental divorce, among others) and late-life risk of Alzheimer's disease (AD). While conventional methods for censored survival data can be applied, the presence of left truncation and competing risks (i.e., other adverse events …

Explicit Construction Of First Integrals For The Toda Flow On A Classical Simple Lie Algebra, Patrick Seegmiller

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The Toda flow is a generalization of a dynamical system describing the interaction of particles in a one-dimensional crystal. The concepts and energy and conservation are prominent in the study of dynamical systems, and quantities which remain the same over the evolution of a system provide valuable insights into the system’s behavior. In the realm of mathematics these quantities are called first integrals, or integrals of motion. This paper provides a background for study of the Toda flow, a verification of its integrability, and programming code for finding these quantities which remain unchanged over the evolution of the system.

Advancement Of Computing On Large Datasets Via Parallel Computing And Cyberinfrastructure, Ahmet Artu Yildirim

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Large datasets require high processing power to compute, high-speed network connections to transmit, or high storage capacity to archive. With the advent of the internet, many in the science community and the public at large are faced with a need to manage, store, transmit and process large datasets in an efficient fashion to create value for all concerned. By example, large environmental researchers analyze large map data to extract hydrologic information from topography. However, processing these data and other tasks is hard – sometimes impossible – in minimal resource environments such as desktop systems.

This dissertation demonstrates novel approaches and …

Computational Prediction And Rational Design Of Novel Clusters, Nanoparticles, And Solid State Materials, Alexander S. Ivanov

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The prediction of structure at the atomic level is one of the most fundamental challenges in materials science. Indeed, the structure is arguably the most important piece of information about a material, as it determines pretty much all properties of a material. Knowing the structure, one can analyze a large number of properties of a material, even before it is synthesized – the crucial importance of structure prediction for computational molecular design. This dissertation describes the technique of reliable theoretical predictions and presents the results on the successfully predicted unusual clusters, nanoparticles and solid state materials. The major part of …

Sequence Stratigraphy, Depositional Environments And Geochemistry Of The Middle Cambrian Bloomington Formation In Northern Utah, Christopher Ryan Jensen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The Bloomington Formation (~425 m thick) is a latest Middle Cambrian (~506.5-505 Ma.), mixed warm water, carbonate and shale unit on the Cordilleran passive margin in northern Utah and southern Idaho. The Hodges Shale and Calls Fort Shale Members are shale dominated and the Middle Limestone Member is a thick carbonate. Fossil diversity and abundance is surprisingly low for a Middle Cambrian carbonate/shale formation. Present, however, are 10-50 cm thrombolite mud mounds, associated with Girvanella oncoliths. These mud mounds represent shallow water carbonates that experienced a small flooding event that gives the mud mounds time and proper conditions to build …

Optical Characterization Of Carbon Nanotube Forests, Brian D. Wood

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Carbon nanotube forests are vertically grown tubular formations of graphene. Due to their inherent microstructure and geometry, they are ideal light absorbers over a broad spectrum, making this material an excellent absorber in applications such as radiometry, optical calibration, and stray light suppression. Samples were made with several growth conditions and substrates to provide forests of different morphologies. Optical data of these samples were gathered by taking spectroscopic reflectance and transmittance measurements in the mid-infrared spectral range. Results were correlated to the various forest morphologies. From this, the conditions necessary to maximize the absorption of the forests were found and …

Geochemical Characterization Of The Mountain Home Geothermal System, Trevor Alex Atkinson

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The Mountain Home (MH) geothermal system of the western Snake River Plain (SRP) magmatic province was discovered in 2012 by the Snake River Geothermal Drilling Project. Artesian flowing water with a temperature of 150°C was encountered at a depth of 1745 m below ground surface (mbgs) and extensive mineralized fracture networks of pectolite-prehnite, calcite, and laumontite were discovered in the recovered core. The objectives of this study are to: 1) describe the thermal and compositional history of past geothermal fluids, and 2) compare these fluids to modern fluids in order to characterize the evolution of the MH geothermal system and …

Factors Related To Successful Completion Of Developmental Mathematics Courses, Jason Bagley

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The goal of this research was to identify factors that contribute to students’ achievement in developmental math courses. This research collected information on several factors which have been suggested to have an effect on student achievement, particularly in developmental math courses at Utah State University, and analyzed their effects on student achievement. The literature review identified several factors that appeared related to student achievement, but many of these studies only analyzed a few factors. Very few studies have tried to analyze multiple variables together to try and identify which factors contribute most to student achievement and which observations can be …

The Role Of Thermospheric Neutral Winds In The Mid-Latitude Ionospheric Evening Anomalies, Levan Lomidze

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The Earth's ionosphere, which is the ionized part of the upper atmosphere, plays a very important role in ground- and satellite-based radio communication and navigation. During the last half century, a considerable experimental, theoretical, and modeling effort has been directed towards understanding the physical processes that affect the variation of the ionization in the ionosphere at various spatial and temporal scales. Even though tremendous progress has been made in many directions of ionospheric research, many questions remain to be answered.

One of the intriguing features in the ionosphere is an anomalous evening enhancement that occurs over certain mid-latitude locations, where …

Cultural Entropy: A Grounded Theory Study Of Early Childhood Experiences In Nature In The Arroyo Grande Creek Watershed, Nathaniel Miles Millard

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Through support from a Quinney Fellowship and the Institute of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism in the Department of Environment and Society at Utah State University, the theory of cultural entropy emerged as an explanation for changing behavior across generations of people living in the Arroyo Grande Creek watershed. Through a trounded theory methodology data collection around early childhood experiences with nature leading towards positive civic engagement with the community, the theory of cultural entropy emerged along with a policy recommendation for reconnecting the community to the local watershed.

Lifelong residents participating in the research were found to have high levels …

Classification Of Five-Dimensional Lie Algebras With One-Dimensional Subalgebras Acting As Subalgebras Of The Lorentz Algebra, Jordan Rozum

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Motivated by A. Z. Petrov's classification of four-dimensional Lorentzian metrics, we provide an algebraic classification of the isometry-isotropy pairs of four-dimensional pseudo-Riemannian metrics admitting local slices with five-dimensional isometries contained in the Lorentz algebra. A purely Lie algebraic approach is applied with emphasis on the use of Lie theoretic invariants to distinguish invariant algebra-subalgebra pairs. This method yields an algorithm for identifying isometry-isotropy pairs subject to the aforementioned constraints.

Modeling Seed Dispersal And Population Migration Given A Distribution Of Seed Handling Times And Variable Dispersal Motility: Case Study For Pinyon And Juniper In Utah, Ram C. Neupane

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The spread of fruiting tree species is strongly determined by the behavior and range of fruit-eating animals, particularly birds. Birds either consume and digest seeds or carry and cache them at some distance from the source tree. These carried and settled seeds provide some form of distribution which generates tree spread to the new location. Firstly, we modal seed dispersal by birds and introduce it in a dispersal model to estimate seed distribution. Using this distribution, we create a population model to estimate the speed at which juniper and pinyon forest boundaries move.

Secondly, we introduce a fact that bird …

Statistical Dependence In Imputed High-Dimensional Data For A Colorectal Cancer Study, Anvar Suyundikov

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The research objective of this dissertation was to provide novel statistical methods to fill potential gaps in the analyses of micro-ribonucleic acid (miRNA) data, and consequently to identify the miRNAs that contribute to cancer development. Mainly, this dissertation addressed the statistical issues raised by the statistical dependence of imputed (i.e., the missing data were replaced with substituted values) miRNA data in the colorectal cancer study. This dissertation presented a modified imputation method, the weighted KNN imputation accounting for dependence, that predicted the expression levels of missing normal samples with greater imputation accuracy than other imputation methods, and had moderate power …

Great Salt Lake Past And Present: Elevation And Salinity Changes To Utah's Great Salt Lake From Railroad Causeway Alterations, James S. White

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Utah's Great Salt Lake contributes and estimated $1.3 billion to the local and regional economy and is a vital food-source for migratory and resident birds. In 1959, the lake was fundamentally changed with construction of an earth-filled, semi-permeable railroad causeway which splits the lake into two "arms". The only flow interaction between these two arms is through the semi-permeable causeway material, and three openings in the causeway. In 2013, two of these causeway openings were closed, and a bridge was proposed to improve flow between arms. Four bridge designs were proposed. I modeled Great Salt Lake water and salt distribution …

Improving Reuse Of Distributed Transaction Software With Transaction-Aware Aspects, Anas Ahmad Alsobeh

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Implementing crosscutting concerns for transactions is difficult, even using Aspect-Oriented Programming Languages (AOPLs) such as AspectJ. Many of these challenges arise because the context of a transaction-related crosscutting concern consists of loosely-coupled abstractions like dynamically-generated identifiers, timestamps, and tentative value sets of distributed resources. Current AOPLs do not provide joinpoints and pointcuts for weaving advice into high-level abstractions or contexts, like transaction contexts. Other challenges stem from the essential complexity in the nature of the data, operations on the data, or the volume of data, and accidental complexity comes from the way that the problem is being solved, even using …

The Onion Name System: Tor-Powered Distributed Dns For Tor Hidden Services, Jesse Victors

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The Tor network is a third-generation onion router that aims to provide private and anonymous Internet access to its users. In recent years its userbase, network, and community have grown significantly in response to revelations of national and global electronic surveillance, and it remains one of the most popular anonymity networks in use today. Tor also provides access to anonymous servers known as hidden services – servers of unknown location and ownership that may provide websites, chat services, or an electronic dead drop. These hidden services can be accessed through any Tor-powered web browser but they suffer from usability challenges …

Computational Modeling To Study Disease Development: Applications To Breast Cancer And An In Vitro Model Of Macular Degeneration, Qanita Bani Baker

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

There have been several techniques developed in recent years to develop computer models of a variety of disease behaviors. Agent-based modeling is a discrete-based modeling approach used agents to represent individual cells that mechanically interact and secrete, consume or react to soluble products. It has become a powerful modeling approach, widely used by computational researchers. In this research, we utilized agent-based modeling to study and explore disease development, particularly in two applications, breast cancer and bioengineering experiments. We further proposed an error-minimization search approach and used it to estimate cellular parameters from multicellular in vitro data.

In this dissertation, in …

Tropical Arithmetics And Dot Product Representations Of Graphs, Nicole Turner

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In tropical algebras we substitute min or max for the typical addition and then substitute addition for multiplication. A dot product representation of a graph assigns each vertex of the graph a vector such that two edges are adjacent if and only if the dot product of their vectors is greater than some chosen threshold. The resultS of creating dot product representations of graphs using tropical algebras are examined. In particular we examine the tropical dot product dimensions of graphs and establish connections to threshold graphs and the threshold dimension of a graph.

Relative Toxicity Of Select Dehydropyrrolizidine Alkaloids And Evaluation Of A Heterozygous P53 Knockout Mouse Model For Dehydropyrrolizidine Alkaloid Induced Carcinogenesis, Ammon W. Brown

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Dehydropyrrolizidine alkaloids (DHPAs) are toxins produced by approximately 3% of the world’s flowering plants that can be present naturally or as contaminants in animal feed and the human food supply. Many of these compounds have been determined to cause cancer in animals and probably also cause cancer in humans. Due to the difficulty in obtaining sufficient amounts of pure DHPAs most toxicity research has been done via injection of a small amount into the abdomen of a rodent, although natural exposure is exclusively oral. For the same reason, cancer research is limited to a handful of the hundreds of known …

Digital Soil Mapping Using Landscape Stratification For Arid Rangelands In The Eastern Great Basin, Central Utah, Brook B. Fonnesbeck

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In some parts of the western US there is limited publicly available soil information that can be used to make land management decisions on both public and private land. A goal of the USDI Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in Utah was to map an area in central Utah where such soil maps and value-added information was not available for management and restoration decisions following a wildfire. In 2007, the Milford Flat Fire had burned more than 363,000 acres, removing vegetation that was holding erosion-sensitive soils in place. Following inconsistent results from stabilization and restoration efforts, this study was funded …

Altitudinal Variability Of Quiet-Time Plasma Drifts In The Equatorial Ionosphere, Debrup Hui

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In the modern world, we increasingly depend on space-based systems for our communication, positioning, and navigation systems. These systems depend on electromagnetic waves propagating through the ionosphere. The ionosphere is the medium in the upper atmosphere where, due to presence of the charged atomic and molecular particles and electrons collectively known as plasma, it influences the traveling electromagnetic waves following laws of electrodynamics. Improved models for predicting space weather conditions require improved knowledge of the drifts of these plasmas in the ionosphere. This study is focused on climatology of the altitudinal variations of these plasma drifts in the equatorial latitudes. …

Algorithmic Information Theory Applications In Bright Field Microscopy And Epithelial Pattern Formation, Hamid Mohamadlou

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The incredible patterns of multicellular organisms emerge as a result of the operation of Gene Regulatory Networks (GRN) that work during development. Understanding how GRNs produce these complex multicellular patterns is a significant challenge in biology. The primary goal of this dissertation is to employ Algorithmic Information Theory (AIT), also known as Kolmogorov complexity, to unravel the information complexity of GRNs and the resultant multicellular patterns. To obtain a better understanding of Kolmogorov complexity performance, first we study an application in cell image segmentation.

There are an estimated 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes in the human genome. The sheer size of the …