Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Study On New Reactivity Of Vinyl Gold And Its Sequential Transformations, Teng Yuan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation mainly contains three parts: 1) the study of new reactivity of vinyl gold(I) and synergistic gold-iron catalyzed regioselective crossed aldol reaction. 2) synergistic gold-iron catalyzed amide crossed aldol reaction by using ynamides as ‘masked’ amides. 3) alkyne trifunctionalization via divergent gold catalysis: combining three modes of gold catalysis: π activation, nucleophilic addition of vinyl gold and gold redox catalysis. This novel method affords access to constructing C-N, C-O and C-C bond in one step at mild condition.

In the first part, a new reaction mode in gold catalysis will be introduced. Due to the protodeauration of vinyl gold …

A Statistical Method For Quantifying Animal Interaction; Combining Time Geography And Simulation, Zachary J. Smith

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Dynamic interaction (DI) describes the synchronous interaction of one or more individual animals over time. Current methods to quantify DI from tracking data are lacking. They typically require synchronized tracking data which limits their applicability to most studies. They also often do not have built-in tests of significance to evaluate interaction, and if so, rely on random walk models that lack biological realism. This research aimed to develop and evaluate a new way of measuring animal interaction that overcomes these limitations. The goal was to create a statistical method for quantifying and evaluating interaction that is relevant across computational, behavioural, …

Fiber-Based Electrical Energy Storage And Harvesting Devices For Wearable Electronics, Tareq Kareri

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Over the past few years, smart textiles and wearable technologies have received tremendous attention due to their functionalities and characteristics, which could be used in a variety of ways in healthcare, sports/leisure, fashion, military, personal protective, and energy applications. These technologies depend on self-power systems, which require energy sources (e.g., batteries, supercapacitors, and solar cells) to power their projected functionalities in the future. Therefore, fabricating energy harvesting cells (i.e., solar cells) and energy storage cells (i.e., batteries and supercapacitors) in the form of fibers are promising solutions for powering wearable electronics due to their unique features such as flexibility and …

Measuring And Improving Student Attitude In College-Level Chemistry: A Novel Survey Methodology And Social-Psychological Interventions, Ying Wang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Students’ attitude has been an important focus in the chemistry education community. However, there is a lack of research in evaluating interventions aiming to improve students’ attitude. Social-psychological interventions (SPIs), brief interventions that target students’ subjective experiences, were demonstrated to improve students’ attitude in instructional settings. In addition, accurately measuring students’ attitude helps researchers better understand the impact of the intervention. Therefore, the major goal of this work is to explore practices, particularly a novel survey methodology and a social-psychological intervention (SPI), to facilitate measuring and improving students’ attitude in college-level chemistry courses. This work also paid particular attention to …

A Physically Constrained Wavelet-Aided Statistical Model (Pcwasm) For Multidecadal Groundwater Dynamics Predictions And Climate Change Evaluation, Fatih Gordu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Long-term groundwater management relies on forecasts of decadal or longer groundwater levels driven by nested scales of variability in climate. Discerning the impacts of anthropogenic stressors on groundwater is also critical for establishing predevelopment benchmark groundwater conditions and developing climate change adaptation strategies to reduce risks and increase resiliency. This research demonstrates the development and successful applications of a new methodology to predict and assess multidecadal groundwater dynamics for understanding long-term effects of climate change and groundwater withdrawals.

A Physically Constrained Wavelet-Aided Statistical Model (PCWASM) is first introduced to analyze and predict monthly aquifer levels on multidecadal time scales. The …

Exploring Magneto-Excitons In Bulk And Mono-Layer Semiconductors Using Non-Linear Spectroscopy Techniques, Varun Mapara

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The research in two-dimensional (2D) materials has evolved from ``traditional" quantum wells based on group III-V and II-VI semiconductors to atomically thin sheets of van der Waals materials such as 2D semiconducting Transition Metal Dichalcogenides (TMDs). These 2D materials remain a stimulating field that continues to introduce new challenges. From both a fundamental physics and technological perspective, magneto-optical spectroscopy has been an essential tool in this research field. TMDs, for example, pose the challenge of characterizing their spin-valley-resolved physics and deriving implications in quantum computation and information research. With the discovery of valley Zeeman effects, the spin-valley physics of TMDs …

An Internet Of Medical Things (Iomt) Approach For Remote Assessment Of Head And Neck Cancer Patients, Ruchitha Chinthala

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Internet-of-Medical-Things (IoMT) allows for a smart healthcare system to remotely monitor and assess patient’s progress at home. Head and neck cancers (HNC) are treated with various treatment options which are associated with significant side effects, mainly shoulder dysfunction, and trismus (spasm of jaw muscles). However, measurement of patient’s progress, and side effects while undergoing treatment, is limited to evaluation received based on scheduled appointments. Development of strategies to enhance monitoring during follow-up period is needed for earlier identification of problems such as trismus and shoulder dysfunction. In this interdisciplinary research, for the first time, we develop an IoMT enabling application, …

Characterizing Explosive Volcanic Eruptions Using Tephra Fall Deposit Data, Robert Constantinescu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation addresses the estimation of the magnitudes and intensities of explosive volcanic eruptions using tephra fall deposits and numerical modeling. Tephra fall deposits retain information about eruption dynamics. Volcanologists sample tephra fall deposits and measure the thickness, extent and grain size distribution to estimate the erupted volume and plume height of explosive eruptions. These terms are known as eruption source parameters. These parameters are used to classify the intensity and magnitude of the eruption on a scale such as the Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI). Accurate estimation of the intensity and magnitude of explosive eruptions is a crucial factor in …

Analyzing Decision-Making In Robot Soccer For Attacking Behaviors, Justin Rodney

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In robotics soccer, decision-making is critical to the performance of a team’s SoftwareSystem. The University of South Florida’s (USF) RoboBulls team implements behavior for the robots by using traditional methods such as analytical geometry to path plan and determine whether an action should be taken. In recent works, Machine Learning (ML) and Reinforcement Learning (RL) techniques have been used to calculate the probability of success for a pass or goal, and even train models for performing low-level skills such as traveling towards a ball and shooting it towards the goal[1, 2]. Open-source frameworks have been created for training Reinforcement Learning …

Predicting The Number Of Objects In A Robotic Grasp, Utkarsh Tamrakar

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Picking up the desired number of objects at once from a pile is still very difficult to dofor a robot. The main challenge is predicting the number of objects in the grasp. This thesis describes several deep-learning-based prediction models that predict the number of objects in the grasp of a Barrett hand using the tactile sensors on its fingers and palm and its joint angles and torque (strain gauge) readings. The deep learning models include various architectures using autoencoders and vision transformers. We evaluated the models with a dataset of grasping 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4 spheres. Then, we …

Watershed Management For Nutrient Control In Taylor Creek And Nubbins Slough, Florida, Rachael Z. Cooper

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Despite efforts to improve water quality within the watershed since the 1970s, harmful algal blooms (HABs) still occur within Lake Okeechobee (LO). HABs are harmful to the people, the ecosystem, and the economy dependent on the lake. Taylor Creek Nubbins Slough (TCNS) is a subwatershed of the lake, contributing to a large percentage of the nutrient loading. Due to the size and complexity of LO’s watershed, two smaller basins within the TCNS subwatershed were selected to evaluate the following research questions: (1) How do water quality trends contrast between two basins? (2) How do nutrient load and treatment within the …

Using Fine-Scale Aquatic Habitat Data To Construct Dreissenid Sdms In The Laurentian Great Lakes, Grace C. Henderson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The invasion of the Laurentian Great Lakes by aquatic invasive species (AIS) has been the subject of investigation for decades, due to their dramatic alterations to the ecosystem and high economic costs. Two AIS with the largest impacts are dreissenid zebra and quagga mussels, and though these species have been studied extensively, questions remain about what factors control their distributions, and whether lake warming will alter these distributions. Species distribution models (SDMs) offer a powerful tool to examine the relationship between species presences and environmental variables, which are typically bioclimactic data. The creation of the Aquatic Habitat (AqHab) dataset containing …

Developing Efficient Transition Metal Catalyzed C-C & C-X Bond Construction, Chiyu Wei

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation mainly contains three parts: 1) The synergistic Pd/enamine catalysis for asymmetric hydrocarbon functionalization of unactivated alkenes with ketones; 2) Gold redox catalysis with a selenium cation as mild oxidant; 3) HFIP promoted disulfidation and diselenation of alkyne, alkene, and allene.

Palladium-catalyzed alkene activation has its intrinsic limitation: 1) the requirement of a pre-functionalized alkene to form a Pd π-allyl complex; 2) problematic reversible β-H elimination. It always leads to limited reaction scope and losing of the stereochemical control. Synergistic palladium and enamine catalysis was conducted to promote ketone addition to unactivated olefins. A secondary amine-based organocatalyst was identified …

Measurements Of Generalizability And Adjustment For Bias In Clinical Trials, Yuanyuan Lu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

While randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are widely used as a gold standard in clinical research and public health, they are criticized because of a potential lack of generalizability, as the trial patients may be unrepresentative of the target patient population. Few research addresses how to assess and evaluate the generalizability of RCTs. As we know, patients are rarely selected on a random basis from a well-defined patient population of interest into a clinical trial. Generalizing findings from the RCT samples to the patient population has begun to receive increasing attention. We simulate a patient population with treatment effect size of …

Effective Statistical And Machine Learning Methods To Analyze Children's Vocabulary Learning, Houston T. Sanders

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Poor methodological and statistical practices can lead to unreliable results. The collaboration between statisticians and researchers can remedy this. Early education intervention research rarely uses advanced statistical techniques. Within early education, vocabulary instruction has been well-studied, yet outcomes continue to be underwhelming. The specialized knowledge and expertise statisticians possess has the potential to enhance word learning research by applying sophisticated analyses not commonly used. Choosing vocabulary words for instruction can be a daunting task and is highly subjective. In an effort to aid in the selection process, researchers use a word selection framework that groups words into three tiers. Even …

Evaluation Of Hydrodynamic Effects Of Waterway Restoration On An Estuarine Ecosystem, Megan Kramer

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Estuaries are hydrodynamically complex for they are influenced by tidal forces, freshwater flows, salinity variations, and often intricate coastal land morphology. Furthermore, many estuaries are subject to constant anthropogenic stresses due to dense coastal populations, which are expected to be exacerbated by changing climate trends. The 1,800 home residential Manchester Waterway (MW) community located in Charlotte Harbor (along the Gulf of Mexico in Southwest Florida), is interested in improving boat access by restoring a previous connection between the local waterway and the harbor, separated by a barrier peninsula. The proposed connections aim to reduce boat traffic and travel time through …

Assessing Changes In Actual Air Quality And Public Perceptions Of Air Quality In Kathmandu Valley Nepal Pre And Post Covid-19 Lockdown, Robin Margherita Rives

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Air pollution is a global concern. Cities around the world fail to meet air quality standards set by the World Health Organization Air Quality Guidelines, which has a significant impact on public health. As the capital city and largest metropolitan region of Nepal, Kathmandu is a hotspot for urban pollution in South Asia. Nepal faces emissions from both internal and external sources. External sources include emissions from Nepal’s neighboring countries of India and China and emissions resulting from tourism. Internal sources of pollution in the country include brick and cement factories, consumption of energy from traditional sources such as biomass, …

Developing Reinforcement Learning Algorithms For Robots To Aim And Pour Solid Objects, Haoxuan Li

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Pouring is one of the most commonly executed tasks in a variety of environments. Thereis less attention paid to pouring solid objects and avoiding spillage. Learning the dynamics for pouring solid objects can be a challenge because the collisions and static frictions between objects make their trajectories less predictable than liquid. Nonetheless, pouring solid objects is an important task in real life. In this work, we propose a solution to help robots aim and pour solid objects. The agents will learn how to interact with the environment and identify the optimal pouring trajectories, then manipulate the arm to aim at …

Pad Beyond The Classroom: Integrating Pad In The Scrum Workplace, Jade S. Weiss

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Purpose: The “story” format used in Scrum ticket writing is confusing to developers and leadsto insufficient ticket content, which lends to miscommunication between team members and administrators, and disrupts workflow from the bottom up. A burgeoning methodology in Technical Writing, Purpose, Audience, Design (PAD) is an alternative ticket format that is easier to teach developers and improves the aforementioned conditions than the existing “story” format. The goal of this paper is to lay out why and how PAD can benefit developers on smaller Scrum teams who are tasked with writing their own tickets. This paper does not offer solutions for …

Quantitative Assessment Of The Trophic Ecology Of The Oceanic Ctenophore, Bolinopsis Infundibulum, In Monterey Bay, California, Victoria C. Scriven

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Bolinopsis infundibulum is a wide-ranging, ubiquitous ctenophore whose fragile nature makes the collection of specimens and quantification of key predator-prey activities in controlled laboratory experiments, challenging. Thus, in situ methods often represent the best means for data collection. However, while present in surface waters, these animals can also be abundant at depths well beyond those attainable by divers. As a result, very little empirical data exist over the depth range of their natural habitats which limits our ability to assess key predator-prey interactions needed to assess their ecological role in midwater food webs. Working in Monterey Bay, California, remotely operated …

Anthropocene Fiction: Empathy, Kinship, And The Troubled Waters At The End Of The World, Megan Mandell Stowe

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Anthropocene literature features characters and environments grappling with the devastation of climate change. Donna Haraway’s term Chthulucene narrows this category further by exposing the tentacular connections between overpopulation, dependence on material goods, species loss, and other facets of global warming—such as water as a resource. Three novels of the Chthulucene exhibit these connections, centering on the importance of water to both ecologies and personal identity. As seen in the novels, place attachment brings ecology and identity together by forging a stewardship between person and location, often resulting in efforts to defend and preserve a place. In Octavia Butler’s Parable of …

Symbolic Computation Of Lump Solutions To A Combined (2+1)-Dimensional Nonlinear Evolution Equation, Jingwei He

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis aims to consider a (2+1)-dimensional nonlinear evolution equation and its lump solutions. Byusing symbolic computation, two classes of lump solutions are presented. And for two specific chosen examples, we will show three-dimensional plots and density plots to exhibit dynamical features of the lump solution, which are made by Maple plot tools.

Chlorine Taste Threshold And Acceptability As A Water Disinfectant Among Indigenous Ngäbe And Non-Indigenous In Rural Panama, Ashley Osler

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

More than two billion people globally still lack access to safely managed drinking water (WHO & UNICEF, 2021). Although gains in access to water service over the past two decades have been large, universal access to safe and affordable drinking water (SDG 6, target 6.1) is not on track to be achieved. In Panama, safely managed drinking water access has not been measured. However, the data on basic water access illustrates the large disparities between rural and urban areas of Panama. While 98% of urban Panamanian households have basic access to water, only 86% of rural Panamanian households, and 54% …

Factors Controlling Longshore Variations Of Beach Changes Induced By Hurricane Hermine Along Pinellas County Beaches, West-Central Florida, Wenhan Zhai

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Hurricane Hermine, 2016, impacted the coast of west-central Florida and generated high waves superimposed on elevated wave levels which caused significant beach erosion. A total of 122 profiles, spaced about 300 m apart, were surveyed 2 weeks before and one week after the storm to examine the beach changes along three barrier islands along the coast of west-central Florida. including Sand Key, Treasure Island and Long Key. In order to investigates the longshore variations of beach/nearshore changes induced by storm, several parameters were defined and calculated including beach volume changes, berm height, beach width, foreshore slope, as well as sandbar …

Uncertainty Quantification In Deep And Statistical Learning With Applications In Bio-Medical Image Analysis, K. Ruwani M. Fernando

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Deep Learning (DL) has achieved the state-of-the-art performance across a broad spectrum oftasks. From a statistical standpoint, deep neural networks can be construed as universal function approximators. Although statistical modeling and deep learning methods are well-established as independent areas of research, hybridization of the two paradigms via probabilistic deep networks is an emerging trend. Through development of novel analytical methods under the statistical and deep-learning framework, we address some of the major challenges encountered in the design of intelligent systems which include class imbalance learning, probability calibration, uncertainty quantification and high dimensionality. When modeling rare events, existing methodologies require re-sampling …

Novel Approach To Integrate Can Based Vehicle Sensors With Gps Using Adaptive Filters To Improve Localization Precision In Connected Vehicles From A Systems Engineering Perspective, Abhijit Vasili

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Research and development in Connected Vehicles (CV) Technologies has increased exponentially, with the allocation of 75 MHz radio spectrum in the 5.9 GHz band by the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) dedicated to Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) in 1999 and 30 MHz in the 5.9 GHz by the European Telecommunication Standards Institution (ETSI). Many applications have been tested and deployed in pilot programs across many cities all over the world.

CV pilot programs have played a vital role in evaluating the effectiveness and impact of the technology and understanding the effects of the applications over the safety of road users. The …

Soil Accretion And Mass Accumulation In A Scrub And Fringe Mangrove Forest In Biscayne Bay, Florida, Jessica A. Jacobs

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study estimated soil accretion and mass (organic carbon (OC), total nitrogen (TN), and total soil) accumulation in a scrub and fringe mangrove forest in Biscayne Bay, FL, to assess how forests of different morphologies (scrub vs. fringe) have kept pace with recently accelerating rates of sea-level rise. Accretion rates (AR) were estimated using the Constant Initial Concentration (CIC) model of lead-210 deposition and it was determined that the scrub forest has accreted at 1.3 ± 0.2 mm yr-1 over 75 years and the fringe forest at 2.8 ± 0.4 mm yr-1 over 92 years. The fringe forest estimate met …

Managing Incomplete Data In The Patient Discharge Summary To Support Correct Hospital Reimbursements, Fadi Naser Eddin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The patient discharge summary is a document that conveys the patient's story to other healthcare practitioners, external users, and, most importantly from a financial perspective, health insurers. A defect or incompleteness in the patient's discharge summary will result in delays in the collection process through denial of the entire or partial reimbursement claim or, in the best-case scenario, delay until the discharge summary issue is resolved. The purpose of this project is to address the issue of the incompleteness of discharge summary from the perspective of healthcare providers, with the goal of understanding, diagnosing, and intervening in the research problem. …

Revisiting Darwin’S Little Pond As A Method To Liberate Phosphorus From Apatite Under Prebiotic Hadean Earth Conditions, Jennifer Lago

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Phosphorus is an essential element for life as we know it. Phosphorus, mainly in the form of phosphate, is key to biologic functions such as genetic material, energy production, and cellular framework. As phosphorus is key to so many important biological functions it is of no wonder the question of how phosphorus was incorporated into life initially is a fundamental question in how life began.

During this time a prebiotic phosphorus source would need to have originated in rock, as phosphorus has not volatile source on Earth. The most prevalent mineral source on a prebiotic Earth would likely have been …

Efficient Management Of Nitrogen And Phosphorus At Centralized Water Reclamation Facilities, Helene Kassouf

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A variety of process configurations are employed at municipal water reclamation facilities (WRFs), such as 5-stage Bardenpho, oxidation ditch, modified Ludzack-Ettinger (MLE) process, and sidestream recycle. However, all of these configurations face certain challenges in achieving optimum treatment of nitrogen and phosphorus. In this dissertation, the driving objectives were to: (1) quantitatively assess the fate of nitrogen and phosphorus (mass fluxes) at a treatment facility that employs biological nutrient removal, aerobic digestion, and sidestream recycle, (2) evaluate the performance of a microbial fuel cell (MFC) as a technology to remove nitrogen from sidestreams at a treatment plant that employs that …