Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Building Community Resiliency Against Disasters, Zachary L. Doering

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Disasters impact people in many different places around the world. The impact to communities by disasters is shaped by their constructed vulnerability. The goal of this research project was to better understand how the vulnerability and resiliency of different communities was shaped at six different sites across the U.S. and to construct a collection of best practices to raise the resiliency of populations and locations in the face of many different forms of possible disasters in the future. These concepts and conclusions were drawn from internet research of the chosen sites. Phase 1 of the research determined noteworthy sites and …

Using Nasa's Tess Mission To Search For Extremely Low Mass White Dwarf Stars, Corinna Peña

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Extremely low-mass white dwarf stars (ELM) are white dwarf stars with a mass lower than 0.45 solar masses that could not have evolved through normal processes within the lifetime of our universe. Therefore, these objects can only be created through a common envelope phase or a stable Roche lobe overflow while in a binary. These objects have periods between a few minutes to a few hours, so they are very short lived which makes them very rare. My goal for this project was to find these ELM stars by using NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) data. I analyzed this …

A Limited Look At The Educational Experiences Of Black Stem Professionals From The Butler Community And Beyond, Victoria Ann Templin

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

This project looks at the STEM educational experiences of Black professionals from both the Butler community and outside of it. It focuses on the perspectives of five individuals (three Butler graduates and two non-Butler graduates) interviewed via Zoom and analyzes how their experiences compare to those of other Black STEM professionals across the nation. After completing the interviews and conducting thorough background research, all data was examined. It was found that what was discussed during the interviews paralleled what was discovered in the research, such as the importance of mentors and broadening the image of what a scientist looks like. …

An Examination Of The Statistics And Risk Management Concepts Behind The Patient Protection And Affordable Care Act (Ppaca) Of 2010, Scott Sinclair

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) is the overarching federal law that has impacted the intricacies of the health insurance market for more than a decade. Using the supervised learning method of multiple linear regression, the relationship between the medical loss ratio rebates and predictor variables such as the state, health insurance market, and the number of insurance companies owing rebates will be analyzed, along with the actuarial value of metal tiers and geographic rating area factors in terms of their relationship to the insurance premium for a standard family of four, defined as a forty-year-old couple with …

Investigation Of The Analytical Utility Of The Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer (Icp-Ms) For The Quantification Of Proteins Via Lanthanide Labeling, Caitlin Elizabeth Dunlap

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

The discovery and ability to provide an absolute concentration of biomarkers in the body can facilitate early diagnoses of diseases. This information can also be used for more accurate and unique treatments for those patients. While major advances in molecular mass spectrometry allows for a sensitive identification of these biomarkers, they are limited to only four orders of magnitude in their dynamic ranges. Due to this, detection and quantitation of low abundant proteins, which tend to make up these vital biomarkers, is very difficult. On the other hand, ICP-MS offers a wider dynamic range (up to 12 orders of magnitude) …

Analysis Of Indianapolis Waterways For Evidence Of Eutrophication And Contamination Induced By Urban Pollution, Kiley Grace Wardwell

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

The focus of my research will be largely focused on the water quality of the White River throughout Indianapolis. I will be testing water samples from five different points along the White River to analyze three of its contents, assessing the differing levels of pollution along different points progressing down the river and through the city. The locations I have chosen to test coincide with water gauge sites along the White River and are as follows: Logan Street in Noblesville, 82nd Street, Broad Ripple Dam, Michigan Road and Raymond Street. The surface water at these five locations will be tested …

Studying Extended Sets From Young Tableaux, Eric S. Nofziger

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Young tableaux are combinatorial objects related to the partitions of an integer that have various applications in representation theory. These tableaux are defined as a left-justified set of n boxes filled with the numbers 1 through n and organized in rows, with the length of each row corresponding to a summand in the partition. In recent work of Graham–Precup–Russell, an association has been made between a given row-strict tableau and three disjoint subsets I, J, and K, also called extended sets. In this project, we begin to classify which extended sets correlate to a valid row-strict or standard tableau. We …

Identifying How Home Advantage Manifests In Butler Basketball Using Sfa, Emily M. Shoemaker

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Butler University’s basketball team has been in the Big East Conference since 2013 and is known for having a distinct home court advantage named ‘Hinkle Magic’ by fans. It is of interest to identify how home court advantage affects a Big East team’s ability to play to its full potential for generating wins and what factors are most accurate in measuring this potential. This project will utilize the Stochastic Frontier Approach (SFA) model to identify a team’s efficiency when playing at home vs. away in order to identify when teams meet their potential and if game location has an effect …

Nucleic Acid Editing By Adenosine Deaminase Enzymes, Josey Rae Mckinley

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

RNA editing is crucial to the genetic diversity and structural complexity of organisms. ADAR (adenosine deaminase acting on RNA) is an RNA editing enzyme that creates a mutation of adenosine to inosine. The human ADAR2 (hADAR2) enzyme is known to edit RNA; however, it contains minor sequence homology with the cytidine deaminase enzymes, APOBEC and AID, which are known to edit both DNA and RNA (11 & 12). The ability of hADAR2 to edit DNA was tested through transformation into the Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast strain BY4741. DNA editing was tested by determining if the transformed yeast became resistant to the …

Biking In Indianapolis: An Ethnographic Analysis Of Obstacles And Solutions, Emory Lietz

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Indiana is known as the ""Crossroads of America"" for its historic investment in vehicle infrastructure. This focus on automobiles has shaped Indianapolis's urban landscape, to the dismay of many cyclists. Based on semi-structured interviews with a range of stakeholders in the Indianapolis cycling community, including urban planners, bike commuters, IndyGo employees, city government officials, and bike advocates, this project identifies and evaluates the current barriers that prevent Indianapolis residents from riding their bikes. These obstacles, which include infrastructural, safety, and social factors, make it more difficult than it ought to be to bike in Indy.

For my thesis project, I …

Measuring The Night Sky Brightness Of Butler University, Austin Thomas Jacks

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Light pollution has had a significant impact on ground-based telescope observations in recent years. As the night sky brightness continues to increase, astronomers are looking for new ways to combat this growing problem. According to the International Dark Sky Association (IDA), “An important part of solving the problem of light pollution is to have a thorough understanding of its magnitude, and a great way to do that is to measure the brightness of the night sky” [1]. The night sky brightness of surrounding Butler University is measured using the Holcomb Observatory 0.95-meter Cassegrain telescope. Different types of filters were used …

Toward A More Holistic Worldview: Environmental Values In Context, Erica Lynne Walters

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

This study extensively examines the formation of pro-environmental behaviors as mediated by the Value-Belief-Norm (VBN) Theory. Using this theoretical framework, qualitative, in-depth interviews were conducted with a small number of Butler University students (n=10). The findings of the data collection demonstrate the limitations of the VBN Theory when applied to pro-environmental behavior. Data analysis demonstrates the role that formative experiences, environmental education, and connectedness to nature can play as intervening influences in the linear translation posited by the VBN Theory. Moreover, the confluence of various values that emerged among research participants suggests the need for a more holistic value orientation …

Home Sweet Home: A Statistical Analysis Of Home Court Advantage In Division I College Basketball, Lauren Isabel Turnbull

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Home court advantage is a term that has been used throughout the basketball world by everyone from broadcasters and TV analysts to athletes and coaches to fans. It is a reference to the perceived benefit that the home team receives by playing in their own arena or stadium. Much of the prior research on home court advantage has centered around the reasons that it exists and how it impacts the play on the court through box score statistics. Building on this previous research, this study performs a statistical analysis of men's college basketball to determine if home court advantage is …

Kamila Clustering For A Mixed-Type Data Analysis Of Illinois Medicare Data, Heather Elizabeth Baldacci

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

The Centers for Medicare and Medicare Services (CMS) releases annual reports regarding the Market Saturation and Utilization of nationwide Medicare coverage. CMS data provide an opportunity for an in-depth analysis of Medicare usage patterns within the United States that may provide insight into socioeconomic conditions in certain regions. To discover any potential patterns, the KAMILA (KAy-means for MIxed LArge data sets) clustering algorithm has been utilized within the most recent CMS dataset from 2018. Due to the large size of the original data set, the focus of this research has been limited to Illinois Medicare data, grouped by the 102 …

The Knapsack Subproblem Of The Algorithm To Compute The Erdos-Selfridge Function, Brianna Sorenson

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

This thesis summarizes the methodology of a new algorithm to compute the Erdos-Selfridge function which uses a wheel sieve, shows that a knapsack algorithm can be used to minimize the work needed to compute these values by selecting a subset of rings for use in the wheel, and compares the results of several different knapsack algorithms in this particular scenario.

Model-Based Cluster Analysis Of Indiana Social Security Beneficiary Data, Gwendolyn Spencer

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Annual reports of the U.S. Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) program, published by the Social Security Administration, detail the aggregate information about the program for each U.S. Postal ZIP code. This information includes the types of beneficiaries and monthly benefits received. These reports present the opportunity for contemporary analysis of the aggregate information about the OASDI program. To better capture the significance of the most-recent report for 2018, this project will use model-based cluster analysis, the unsupervised machine-learning process of grouping similar data points, to compare the 2017 and 2018 data. Due to the large amount of data, the …

The Characterization And Reactivity Of Tris(4-Methylpyrazolyl)Methane And Its Tungsten And Molybdenum Metal Complexes, Julia M. Pomeroy

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

The scorpionate ligand tris(pyrazolyl)borate (Tp) has contributed to the understanding of coordination and organometallic chemistry and has proven to be useful in the synthesis of metalloprotein models. Studies focusing on the similar ligand, tris(pyrazolyl)methane (Tpm), have recently been made possible with improved synthetic techniques. Characterization of the Tpm ligand and its metal derivatives, [TpmW(CO)3L]+ and [TpmMo(CO)3L]+, unveiled unexpected activity in the 1H NMR chemical shift of the methane hydrogen after the coordination of a seventh ligand. The more electronegative the seventh ligand was, the more downfield the chemical shift appeared. Various analogs of Tpm have since been synthesized that substitute …

Investigating The Factors That Best Describe Student Experience And Performance In College, Abigale Wynn

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) surveys students at four-year institutions around the United States in order to offer Universities accessible ways to evaluate their students' experiences and performance. The NSSE data is collected in the form of a Likert-scale survey geared towards first year and senior year students. It asks questions about how they spend their time throughout the academic year and how they rate their experience. This thesis looks at the NSSE survey data from Butler University in 2016 and attempts to apply classification techniques and predictive models to draw conclusions about student performance. Methods such as …

Seven Coordinate Molybdenum And Tungsten Complexes Containing Tpm And Tpm Derivatives And The Impact Of Ligand Substitution On Nmr Chemical Shifts, Cole Seager

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

A series of known and new seven coordinate molybdenum and tungsten complexes of tris(pyrazolyl)methane (Tpm) and substituted Tpm, [TpmM(CO)3X]+, have been synthesized. Depending on the identity of X, (bromo, iodo, hydrido) and the substitution of the Tpm ligand, substantial chemical shift differences are observed for the hydrogen on the central carbon of the Tpm ligand. Factors impacting the chemical shift of the hydrogen on the central carbon of the Tpm ligand, such as the electron donating ability of the Tpm ligand and the electronegativity of the additional ligand on the metal, will be discussed.

Utilizing Multi-Level Classification Techniques To Predict Adverse Drug Effects And Reactions, Victoria Puhl

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Multi-class classification models are used to predict categorical response variables with more than two possible outcomes. A collection of multi-class classification techniques such as Multinomial Logistic Regression, Na\"{i}ve Bayes, and Support Vector Machine is used in predicting patients’ drug reactions and adverse drug effects based on patients’ demographic and drug administration. The newly released 2018 data on drug reactions and adverse drug effects from U.S. Food and Drug Administration are tested with the models. The applicability of model evaluation measures such as sensitivity, specificity and prediction accuracy in multi-class settings, are also discussed.

Sub-Cloning, Expression, And Purification Of The Wild Type And Mutated Sigma-1 Receptor, Christopher Koch

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

The Sigma-1 receptor (S1R) is an important pharmaceutical target that has been linked to several neurological diseases and drug addiction. It has been proposed that multimerization of S1R is important for attenuating its interactions with the dopamine transporter (DAT) and that S1R agonists promote dissociation to a monomeric form necessary for DAT interaction. This project aims to assess the role of the N-terminal transmembrane domain in oligomerization and binding activity of the mammalian Sigma-1 receptor (S1R). N-terminal truncations lacking the transmembrane domain and the E102Q variant, which displays altered activity and cellular localization, were expressed, purified in order to determine …

Case Studies Of Potential Reference Materials In Cultural Heritage Science, Heidi Kastenholz

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

The study of cultural heritage objects requires reference materials for comparison in order to determine the identity of chemical compounds in historically/culturally significant artifacts. The reference materials available today can be inaccurately labeled, can contain inauthentic compounds, or can simply be formed differently than what the labeled material should be. Utilizing the laboratory at the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, three case studies were conducted over three different potential reference materials in order to properly identify each of the three materials being focused on here. Based on the analysis, the labels for these materials often do not match the …

Limits Of Julia Sets For Sums Of Power Maps And Polynomials, Micah Brame

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Suppose f_{n,c} is a complex-valued mapping of one complex variable given by f_{n,c}(z) = z^n + p(z) + c, where p is a polynomial such that p(0) = 0 and c is a complex parameter such that |c| < 1. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions that the geometric limit, as n approaches infinity, of the set of points that remain bounded under iteration by f_{n,c} is the disk of radius 1 centered at the origin.

Using Ega-Gc To Analyze Nicotine N-Oxide In Order To Explain Low Nicotine Concentrations In E-Cigarette Liquids, Cory Wuerch

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Evolved-gas analysis coupled with gas chromatography (EGA-GC) was used to analyze e-cigarette liquids. Previous analyses of e-cigarette liquids have shown that the determined concentration of nicotine is lower than the advertised concentration. A possible explanation for this phenomenon is that the nicotine in the liquids is being oxidized to nicotine N-oxide by exposure to air and thus reducing the concentration of nicotine. This study focused on analyzing samples of thermally-rearranged nicotine N-oxide. Using EGA-GC, a calibration curve was generated for nicotine N-oxide concentration, which could potentially be used to explain reduced nicotine concentrations in e-cigarette liquids.

Producing Dihydrofurans Using Palladium (Ii) Catalyst And Optimized Base, Chandler Mitchell

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Dihydrofurans serve as building blocks for other compounds in organic synthesis. The main goal of this project was to discover an efficient and relatively inexpensive pathway for producing monosubstituted dihydrofurans in high yield from cyclic boronic half acids. Aldehydes were converted to homoallylic alcohols by the addition of allylmagnesium bromide. The alcohols were then transformed into cyclic boronic half acids using ringclosing metathesis with Grubbs 1st Generation Catalyst and alkenyl boronic esters. Finally, monosubstituted dihydrofurans were produced using a palladium (II) catalyst with a base. Palladium (II) catalysts that were tested include [1,1'- bis(diphenylphosphino)ferrocene]palladium (II) dichloride, palladium (II) acetate with …

Crossed Product Algebras Over Dihedral Field Extensions, Kaitlyn Lee

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Let F be the field of fractions of R, a ring of power series with coefficients in some field. Let K/F be a finite Galois extension, and assume the integral closure S of R in K is also a power series ring.

In this paper, we consider a construction from ring theory called a crossed product algebra and an associated function f: G × G →K called a cocycle that is used to define a multiplication operation for the crossed product algebra. Consider a crossed product algebra whose cocycle f takes values in S. We give a proof concerning which …

Complexities Of Bi-Colored Rubik's Cubes, Taylor Pieper

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Which of two bi-colored cubes is the simpler puzzle? The differences in the coloring of the cubes creates different symmetries that dramatically reduce the number of states each cube can reach. Which of the symmetries is most reductive? The answer to these questions can be achieved by discovering and comparing the “God’s Number” for these cubes.

Quantitative Analysis Of Acetic Acid In Hard Woods As A Way To Improve Museum Artifact Storage, Alexandria Flora

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Many materials used for storage of museum artifacts have been found to cause damage to the items either through emitting harmful volatile gases or through direct contact. Harmful storage techniques can cause corrosion, discoloration, or deterioration of priceless artifacts. Museum enclosures made of hardwoods have been shown to emit acetic acid vapors that cause damage to the items being stored. In the present study, a review of the effects of acetic acid damage on museum artifacts was performed, and an evolved gas analysis and titration method were used to quantify acetic acid in various hardwoods.

Spectroscopic Analysis Of The Traditional Cyanotype Process And Its Impact On Art, Jacob Applegarth

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Reflectance spectroscopy was used to study the cyanotype printing process. Originally this process was used to make photocopies of building designs, but today it is used for art. The cyanotype process is a photo catalyzed oxidation-reduction reaction. This study altered the concentrations and reagents involved in the printing process, and it included the use of ammonium ferricyanide and ammonium iron(III) oxalate along with the traditional potassium ferricyanide and ammonium iron(III) citrate. The impact of these changes on the rate of formation of Prussian blue was observed and quantified. Rate laws and general trends were determined for the reagents involved. Qualitative …

The Role Of Black Hole And Neutron Star Interaction On The Dynamical Evolution Of Dense Stellar Systems, Michael Pajkos

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

With the recent detection of gravitational waves from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO, a new realm of gravitational astrophysics has been opened. As the process of observing gravitational wave signals is still in its infancy, there is a need to provide gravitational astronomers with observable signatures in the electromagnetic spectrum. Hence, we explore the impact of solar mass black holes on the morphology of globular clusters. It has long been thought that due to high kick velocities from compact object gravitational interaction, Galactic age Globular Clusters are unable to retain black holes. Recent simulations, however, suggest that a …