Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Alfred Russel Wallace Notes 25. Wallace And The 'Physical Environment'., Charles H. Smith

Faculty/Staff Personal Papers

Alfred Russel Wallace’s natural selection essay of 1858 has been held to frame a greater role for the physical environment in forcing selection regimes than we find in Darwin’s writings, but here that verdict is challenged by a re-examination of both the essay itself, and period usage of the term ‘physical.’

Sexual Selection As A Tool To Improve Student Reasoning Of Evolution, Sarah K. Spier, Joseph Dauer

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

There is an emphasis on survival-based selection in biology education that can allow students to neglect other important evolutionary components, such as sexual selection, reproduction, and inheritance. Student understanding of the role of reproduction in evolution is as important as student understanding of the role of survival. Limiting instruction to survival- based scenarios (e.g., effect of food on Galapagos finch beak shape) may not provide students with enough context to guide them to complete evolutionary reasoning. Different selection forces can work in concert or oppose one another, and sexual selection can lead to the selection of trait variants that are …

Pillars Of Biology: 'The Genetical Evolution Of Social Behaviour, I And Ii'., Geoff Wild

Applied Mathematics Publications

None.

Spinosaurus Is Not An Aquatic Dinosaur, Paul C. Sereno, Nathan Myhrvold, Donald M. Henderson, Frank E. Fish, Stephanie L. Baumgart, Tyler M. Keillor, Kiersten K. Formoso, Lauren L. Conroy

Biology Faculty Publications

A predominantly fish-eating diet was envisioned for the sail-backed theropod dinosaur Spinosaurus aegyptiacus when its elongate jaws with subconical teeth were unearthed a century ago in Egypt. Recent discovery of the high-spined tail of that skeleton, however, led to a bolder conjecture that S. aegyptiacus was the first fully aquatic dinosaur. The "aquatic hypothesis' posits that S. aegyptiacus was a slow quadruped on land but a capable pursuit predator in coastal waters, powered by an expanded tail. We test these functional claims with skeletal and flesh models of S. aegyptiacus. We assembled a CT- based skeletal reconstruction based on the …

Monotonicity Properties Of Functionals Under Ricci Flow On Manifolds Without And With Boundary, Paul Bracken

School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this paper, the idea of the Ricci flow is introduced and its significance and importance to related problems in mathematics had been discussed. Several functionals are defined and their behavior is studied under Ricci flow. A unique minimizer is shown to exist for one of the functionals. This functional evaluated at the minimizer is strictly increasing. The results for the first functional considered are extended to manifold with boundary. Finally, two physically motivated examples are presented.

Reconstructing The Ecological Relationships Of Late Cretaceous Antarctic Dinosaurs And How Functional Tooth Morphology Influenced These Relationships, Ian D. Broxson

2022 Symposium

The Sandwich Bluff Formation of the James Ross Basin of Antarctica has recently yielded a group of five late Cretaceous dinosaurs that lived contemporaneously with each other, a first for Antarctica. These five dinosaurs include fragmentary remains of two differently sized elasmarian ornithopods, a possible megaraptor, a hadrosaur, and a nodosaur. In this study we will construct a model of the ecological relationships of late Cretaceous Antarctica. Additionally, we will look at what specific factors allowed this group of four herbivores and a carnivore to coexist in a restricted locality and what niches were filled by each species. Methods to …

Jillson, Willard Rouse, 1890-1975 (Mss 682), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 682. Writings and supporting materials of Willard Rouse Jillson, State Geologist of Kentucky, author and historian. Includes manuscripts, page proofs, photographic negatives, and promotional pamphlets for his books.

Telomere Roles In Fungal Genome Evolution And Adaptation, Mostafa Rahnama, Baohua Wang, Jane Dostart, Olga Novikova, Daniel Yackzan, Andrew T. Yackzan, Haley Bruss, Maray Baker, Haven Jacob, Xiaofei Zhang, April Lamb, Alex Stewart, Melanie Heist, Joey Hoover, Patrick Calie, Li Chen, Jinze Liu, Mark L. Farman

Plant Pathology Faculty Publications

Telomeres form the ends of linear chromosomes and usually comprise protein complexes that bind to simple repeated sequence motifs that are added to the 3′ ends of DNA by the telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT). One of the primary functions attributed to telomeres is to solve the “end-replication problem” which, if left unaddressed, would cause gradual, inexorable attrition of sequences from the chromosome ends and, eventually, loss of viability. Telomere-binding proteins also protect the chromosome from 5′ to 3′ exonuclease action, and disguise the chromosome ends from the double-strand break repair machinery whose illegitimate action potentially generates catastrophic chromosome aberrations. Telomeres …

Quantum Simulation Of Schrödinger's Equation, Mohamed Eltohfa

Capstone and Graduation Projects

Quantum computing is one of the promising active areas in physics research. This is because of the potential of quantum algorithms to outperform their classical counterparts. Grover’s search algorithm has a quadratic speed-up compared to the classical linear search. The quantum simulation of Schrödinger’s equation has an exponential memory save-up compared to the classical simulation. In this thesis, the ideas and tools of quantum computing are reviewed. Grover’s algorithm is studied and simulated as an example. Using the Qiskit quantum computing library, a code to simulate Schrödinger’s equation for a particle in one dimension is developed, simulated locally, and run …

How Do Users Answer Matlab Questions On Q&A Sites? A Case Study On Stack Overflow And Mathworks, Mahshid Naghashzadeh, Amir Hagshenas, Ashkan Sami, David Lo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

MATLAB is an engineering programming language with various toolboxes that has a dedicated Question and Answer (Q&A) platform on the MathWorks website, which is similar to Stack Overflow (SO). Moreover, some MATLAB users ask their questions on SO. This paper aims to compare these two Q&A platforms to see what kind of questions are asked and how developers answer these questions in each platform. The result of our analysis on 80,382 MATLAB questions on SO and 266,367 questions on MathWorks show that MATLAB questions on topics ranging from the MATLAB software installation to questions related to programming received high votes …

Volcaniclastic Sandstones Record The Influence Of Subducted Pacific Morb On Magmatism At The Early Izu-Bonin Arc, Anders Mccarthy, Gene M. Yogodzinski, Michael Bizimis, Ivan P. Savov, Rosemary Hickey-Vargas, Richard Arculus, Osamu Ishizuka

Faculty Publications

The remnant rear-arc segment of the early Izu-Bonin arc, known as the Kyushu-Palau Ridge (KPR), is a key location where magmatic outputs can be constrained during the lifetime of an island arc. We present new geochemical data for coarse-grained basaltic to andesitic volcaniclastic sandstones derived from the KPR and deposited in the Amami Sankaku Basin (IODP Site U1438, Unit III rocks) in the time period 40-30 Ma. Bulk disaggregated and cleaned volcaniclastic sandstones of Unit III at Site U1438 retain primary magmatic signatures and can be used to infer the evolution of magmatic sources of the juvenile Izu-Bonin island arc …

Evidence For The Role Of Cyp51a And Xenobiotic Detoxification In Differential Sensitivity To Azole Fungicides In Boxwood Blight Pathogens, Stefanos Stravoravdis, Robert E. Marra, Nicholas R. Leblanc, Joanne Crouch, Jonathan P. Hulvey

Microbiology Department Faculty Publication Series

Boxwood blight, a fungal disease of ornamental plants (Buxus spp.), is caused by two sister species, Calonectria pseudonaviculata (Cps) and C. henricotiae (Che). Compared to Cps, Che is documented to display reduced sensitivity to fungicides, including the azole class of antifungals, which block synthesis of a key fungal membrane component, ergosterol. A previous study reported an ergosterol biosynthesis gene in Cps, CYP51A, to be a pseudogene, and RNA-Seq data confirm that a functional CYP51A is expressed only in Che. The lack of additional ergosterol biosynthesis genes showing significant differential expression suggests that the functional CYP51A in Che could contribute to …

Population Genomic Transformations Induced By Isolation Of Wild Bird Avian Influenza Viruses (Orthomyxoviridae) In Embryonated Chicken Eggs, Matthew W. Hopken, Antoinette J. Piaggio, K. L. Pabilonia, James Pierce, Theodore Anderson, Courtney Pierce, Zaid Abdo

USDA Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Isolation and cultivation of wild-type viruses in model organism cells or tissues is standard practice in virology. Oftentimes, the virus host species is distantly related to the species from which the culture system was developed. Thus, virus culture in these tissues and cells basically constitutes a host jump, which can lead to genomic changes through genetic drift and/or adaptation to the culture system. We directly sequenced 70 avian influenza virus (Orthomyxoviridae) genomes from oropharyngeal/cloacal swabs collected from wild bird species and paired virus isolates propagated from the same samples following isolation in specific-pathogen-free embryonated chicken eggs. The data were analyzed …

Phylogenomics Reveals Ancient And Contemporary Gene Flow Contributing To The Evolutionary History Of Sea Ducks (Tribe Mergini), Philip Lavretsky, Robert E. Wilson, Sandra L. Talbot, Sarah A. Sonsthagen

Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit: Staff Publications

Insight into complex evolutionary histories continues to build through broad comparative phylogenomic and population genomic studies. In particular, there is a need to understand the extent and scale that gene flow contributes to standing genomic diversity and the role introgression has played in evolutionary processes such as hybrid speciation. Here, we investigate the evolutionary history of the Mergini tribe (sea ducks) by coupling multi-species comparisons with phylogenomic analyses of thousands of nuclear ddRAD-seq loci, including Z-sex chromosome and autosomal linked loci, and the mitogenome assayed across all extant sea duck species in North America. All sea duck species are strongly …

Leaf Reflectance Spectra Capture The Evolutionary History Of Seed Plants, Jose Eduardo Meireles, Jeannine Cavender-Bares, Philip A. Townsend, Susan Ustin, John A. Gamon, Anna K. Schweiger, Michael E. Schaepman, Gregory P. Asner, Roberta E. Martin, Aditya Singh, Franziska Schrodt, Adam Chlus, Brian C. O’Meara

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

• Leaf reflection spectra have been increasingly used to assess plant diversity. However, we do not yet understand how spectra vary across the tree of life or how the evolution of leaf traits affects the differentiation of spectra among species and lineages.
• Here we describe a framework that integrates spectra with phylogenies and apply it to aglobal dataset of over 16 000 leaf-level spectra (400–2400 nm) for 544 seed plant species. We test for phylogenetic signal in spectra, evaluate their ability to classify lineages, and characterize their evolutionary dynamics.
• We show that phylogenetic signal is present in leaf spectra but that …

Geographic Distribution Of Chronic Wasting Disease Resistant Alleles In Nebraska, With Comments On The Evolution Of Resistance, H. Vazquez-Miranda, R. M. Zink

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Distribution And Evolution Of Fukushima Dai-Ichi Derived 137cs, 90sr, And 129i In Surface Seawater Off The Coast Of Japan, Jennifer A. Kenyon, Ken O. Buesseler, Núria Casacuberta, Maxi Castrillejo, Shigeyoshi Otosaka, Pere Masqué, Jessica A. Drysdale, Steven M. Pike, Virginie Sanial

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

© 2020 American Chemical Society. The Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plants (FDNPPs) accident in 2011 led to an unprecedented release of radionuclides into the environment. Particularly important are 90Sr and 137Cs due to their known health detriments and long half-lives (T1/2 ≈ 30 y) relative to ecological systems. These radionuclides can be combined with the longer-lived 129I (T1/2 = 15.7 My) to trace hydrologic, atmospheric, oceanic, and geochemical processes. This study seeks to evaluate 137Cs, 90Sr, and 129I concentrations in seawater off the coast of Japan, reconcile the sources of contaminated waters, and assess the application of 137Cs/90Sr, 129I/137Cs, and …

Comparative Evaluation Of The Structural And Other Features Governing Photo-Electrochemical Oxygen Evolution By Ca/Mn Oxides, Ankita Gagrani, Mohammed Alsultan, Gerhard F. Swiegers, Takuya Tsuzuki

Australian Institute for Innovative Materials - Papers

Mn-Based oxides, particularly CaMn oxides, have recently attracted significant practical interest as a new class of catalyst due to their elemental and structural similarity to the natural oxygen evolving cluster (OEC) in photosynthetic plant cells. However, their performance as oxygen-generating anodes in photoelectrochemical cells has not been studied in detail. In this work, ultra-fine particles of amorphous MnO2, crystalline MnO2 nanorods, Ca2Mn3O8, CaMn2O4 and CaMnO3 were synthesised using a green and scalable mechanochemical method. The particles were comparatively studied as water oxidation photocatalysts in a photo-electrochemical cell at near-neutral pH. The oxides were immobilized on the anode surface using an …

Consciousness As A Factor In Evolution, Kenneth A. Augustyn

Michigan Tech Publications

What I call the mind began as a non-conscious robotic biochemical process control system in the very earliest forms of life. As life evolved, problems in control became more difficult and exceeded the computational capabilities of the organisms. Nature discovered a means of transcending computable physical processes resulting in non-computational subjective mental capabilities that, while still not conscious, had a degree of genuine autonomy from the physical world. These autonomous subjective wants and goals now affected the course of (but not the mechanism of) evolution. The integrated amalgam of robotic and transrobotic unconscious capabilities eventually gave rise to consciousness, which …

The Astrophysics Of Nanohertz Gravitational Waves, S. Burke-Spolaor, S. R. Taylor, M. Charisi, T. Dolch, J. S. Hazboun, A. M. Holgado, L. Z. Kelley, T. J. W. Lazio, D. R. Madison, N. Mcmann, C. M. F. Mingarelli, A. Rasskazov, X. Siemens, J. J. Simon, Tristan L. Smith

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Works

Pulsar timing array (PTA) collaborations in North America, Australia, and Europe, have been exploiting the exquisite timing precision of millisecond pulsars over decades of observations to search for correlated timing deviations induced by gravitational waves (GWs). PTAs are sensitive to the frequency band ranging just below 1 nanohertz to a few tens of microhertz. The discovery space of this band is potentially rich with populations of inspiraling supermassive black hole binaries, decaying cosmic string networks, relic post-inflation GWs, and even non-GW imprints of axionic dark matter. This article aims to provide an understanding of the exciting open science questions in …

Mitogenomic Phylogenetic Analyses Of Leptogorgia Virgulata And Leptogorgia Hebes (Anthozoa: Octocorallia) From The Gulf Of Mexico Provides Insight On Gorgoniidae Divergence Between Pacific And Atlantic Lineages, Samantha Silvestri, Diego F. Figueroa, David Hicks, Nicole J. Figueroa

School of Earth, Environmental, and Marine Sciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

The use of genetics in recent years has brought to light the need to reevaluate the classification of many gorgonian octocorals. This study focuses on two Leptogorgia species—Leptogorgia virgulata and Leptogorgia hebes—from the northwestern Gulf of Mexico (GOM). We target complete mitochondrial genomes and mtMutS sequences, and integrate this data with previous genetic research of gorgonian corals to resolve phylogenetic relationships and estimate divergence times. This study contributes the first complete mitochondrial genomes for L. ptogorgia virgulata and L. hebes. Our resulting phylogenies stress the need to redefine the taxonomy of the genus Leptogorgia in its entirety. The fossil-calibrated divergence …

Complete Matching For Quasidistribution Functions In Large Momentum Effective Theory, Wei Wang, Jian-Hui Zhang, Shuai Zhao, Ruilin Zhu

Physics Faculty Publications

We complete the procedure of extracting parton distribution functions (PDFs) using large momentum effective theory at leading power accuracy in the hadron momentum. We derive a general factorization formula for the quasi-PDFs in the presence of mixing and give the corresponding hard matching kernel at O(α_s), both for the unpolarized and for the polarized quark and gluon quasi-PDFs. Our calculation is performed in a regularization-independent momentum subtraction scheme. The results allow us to match the nonperturbatively renormalized quasi-PDFs to normal PDFs in the presence of mixing and therefore can be used to extract flavor-singlet quark PDFs as well …

Traffic Noise And Sexual Selection: Studies Of Anthropogenic Impact On Bird Songs And Undergraduate Student Reasoning Of Evolutionary Mechanisms, Sarah Spier

School of Natural Resources: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Humans have transformed much of the natural landscape and are continuing to do so at an accelerated rate, compromising natural areas that serve as important habitat for many species. Roads impact much of the environment as they fragment habitat and introduce traffic noise into the acoustic environment, deferentially affecting wildlife in roadside habitat. I explored how traffic noise affects the detection of birds based on whether their vocalizations were masked by traffic noise. Masked species detection was not affected by an increase in traffic noise amplitude, while there was a negative effect of traffic noise amplitude on unmasked species detection, …

Traffic Noise And Sexual Selection: Studies Of Anthropogenic Impact On Bird Songs And Undergraduate Student Reasoning Of Evolutionary Mechanisms, Sarah Spier

School of Natural Resources: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Humans have transformed much of the natural landscape and are continuing to do so at an accelerated rate, compromising natural areas that serve as important habitat for many species. Roads impact much of the environment as they fragment habitat and introduce traffic noise into the acoustic environment, deferentially affecting wildlife in roadside habitat. I explored how traffic noise affects the detection of birds based on whether their vocalizations were masked by traffic noise. Masked species detection was not affected by an increase in traffic noise amplitude, while there was a negative effect of traffic noise amplitude on unmasked species detection, …

Law Library Blog (August 2019): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Computational Analysis Of Large-Scale Trends And Dynamics In Eukaryotic Protein Family Evolution, Joseph Boehm Ahrens

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The myriad protein-coding genes found in present-day eukaryotes arose from a combination of speciation and gene duplication events, spanning more than one billion years of evolution. Notably, as these proteins evolved, the individual residues at each site in their amino acid sequences were replaced at markedly different rates. The relationship between protein structure, protein function, and site-specific rates of amino acid replacement is a topic of ongoing research. Additionally, there is much interest in the different evolutionary constraints imposed on sequences related by speciation (orthologs) versus sequences related by gene duplication (paralogs). A principal aim of this dissertation is to …

Draft Aphaenogaster Genomes Expand Our View Of Ant Genome Size Variation Across Climate Gradients, Matthew K. Lau, Aaron M. Ellison, Andrew Nguyen, Clint Penick, Bernice Demarco, Nicholas J. Gotelli, Nathan J. Sanders, Robert R. Dunn, Sara Helms Cahan

College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Publications

Given the abundance, broad distribution, and diversity of roles that ants play in many ecosystems, they are an ideal group to serve as ecosystem indicators of climatic change. At present, only a few whole-genome sequences of ants are available (19 of >16,000 species), mostly from tropical and sub-tropical species. To address this limited sampling, we sequenced genomes of temperate-latitude species from the genus Aphaenogaster, a genus with important seed dispersers. In total, we sampled seven colonies of six species: Aphaenogaster ashmeadi, Aphaenogaster floridana, Aphaenogaster fulva, Aphaenogaster miamiana, Aphaenogaster picea, and Aphaenogaster rudis. The geographic ranges of these species collectively span …

Does Helping-At-The-Nest Help? The Case Of The Acorn Woodpecker, Walter D. Koenig, Eric L. Walters, Sahas Barve

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Cooperative breeding groups often involve "helpers-at-the-nest"; indeed, such behavior typically defines this intriguing breeding system. In few cases, however, has it been demonstrated that feeding nestlings by helpers, rather than some other behavior associated with helpers' presence, leads to greater reproductive success. One prediction of the hypothesis that feeding behavior per se is responsible for the fitness benefits conferred by helpers is that there should be close congruence between the patterns of helping-at-the-nest and the fitness effects of helpers. Here we look for such a relationship in the cooperatively breeding acorn woodpecker (Melanerpes formicivorus) in order to begin …

Conformal Invariance Of Transverse-Momentum Dependent Parton Distributions Rapidity Evolution, Ian Balitsky, Giovanni A. Chirilli

Physics Faculty Publications

We discuss conformal properties of TMD operators and present the result of the conformal rapidity evolution of TMD operators in the Sudakov region.

Recent Trends In Stratospheric Chlorine From Very Short‐Lived Substances, Ryan Hossaini, Elliot Atlas, Sandip S. Dhomse, Martyn P. Chipperfield, Peter F. Bernath, Anton M. Fernando, Jens Mühle, Amber A. Leeson, Stephen A. Montzka, Wuhu Feng

Chemistry & Biochemistry Faculty Publications

Very short‐lived substances (VSLS), including dichloromethane (CH₂Cl₂), chloroform (CHCl₃), perchloroethylene (C₂Cl₄), and 1,2‐dichloroethane (C₂H₄Cl₂), are a stratospheric chlorine source and therefore contribute to ozone depletion. We quantify stratospheric chlorine trends from these VSLS (VSLCl_tot) using a chemical transport model and atmospheric measurements, including novel high‐altitude aircraft data from the NASA VIRGAS (2015) and POSIDON (2016) missions. We estimate VSLCl_tot increased from 69 (±14) parts per trillion (ppt) Cl in 2000 to 111 (±22) ppt Cl in 2017, with >80% delivered to …