Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

The Effect Of Consumerism And Regulation On Household Solid Waste Management In The United States And Germany: A Comparative Study, Amir Vafa

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

Private household recycling is a significant aspect of consumerism in economically developed countries and the inevitable question of household waste management has gained more importance among municipalities in recent years. The present study examined the effect of regulation on household solid waste management. Within a comparative, qualitative framework, the study explored and evaluated the pro-regulatory effects in Germany and the anti-regulatory policies in the United States by means of comparing two similar communities, Lincoln, Nebraska and Augsburg, Germany. By examining the present legislations, official documents, legal and operational procedures, and other relevant artifacts, laws, regulations and the degree of their …

Nest And Brood Survival And Habitat Selection Of Ring-Necked Pheasants And Greater Prairie-Chickens In Nebraska, Ty Matthews

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

Ring-Necked Pheasant (Phasianus colchicus) and Greater Prairie-chicken (Tympanuchus cupido pinnatus) populations have declined in the Midwest since the 1960’s. Research has suggested decreased nest and brood survival are the major causes of this decline due to the lack of suitable habitat. Habitat degradation has been attributed to the shift to larger crop fields, lower diversity of crops, and more intensive pesticide and herbicide use. A primary goal of the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) is to mitigate the loss of wildlife habitat. Early research found that CRP increased the amount of suitable nesting and brood rearing cover …

Development Of The Mask Scentometer, A Comparison Of Ambient Odor Assessment Methods, And Their Application In Ground Truthing Atmospheric Dispersion Models, Christopher G. Henry

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation is organized as four stand-alone papers. Paper No. 1 describes the development of the Mask Scentometer and reports dilution ratios measured during use by twelve different people. Dilution ratios at the Mask Scentometer’s five dilution-to-threshold (D/T) settings were found to be 0.35, 1, 2, 4.5 and 18. In Paper No.’s 2 and 4, ambient odor assessment methods were compared in both controlled laboratory conditions and in the field. Laboratory analysis of ambient air samples using dynamic triangular forced-choice olfactometry (DTFCO) did not correlate well with any of the ambient odor assessment methods. Average intensity-predicted D/T was roughly five …

Biological Sequence Simulation For Testing Complex Evolutionary Hypotheses: Indel-Seq-Gen Version 2.0, Cory L. Strope

Department of Computer Science and Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Reconstructing the evolutionary history of biological sequences will provide a better understanding of mechanisms of sequence divergence and functional evolution. Long-term sequence evolution includes not only substitutions of residues but also more dynamic changes such as insertion, deletion, and long-range rearrangements. Such dynamic changes make reconstructing sequence evolution history difficult and affect the accuracy of molecular evolutionary methods, such as multiple sequence alignments (MSAs) and phylogenetic methods. In order to test the accuracy of these methods, benchmark datasets are required. However, currently available benchmark datasets have limitations in their sizes and evolutionary histories of the included sequences are unknown. These …

Expression Artifact With Retroviral Vectors Based On Pbmn, Yoshitaka Fukunaga, Robert A. Svoboda, Ronald Cerny, Keith R. Johnson, Margaret J. Wheelock

Ronald Cerny Publications

While characterizing various splice forms of p120 catenin, we observed what appeared to be a novel posttranslational modification of p120, resulting in a higher molecular weight form that was dependent on the splicing pattern. Further investigation revealed the higher molecular weight form to be a fusion protein between sequences encoded by the retroviral vector and p120. We found that the publicly available sequence of the vector we used does not agree with the experimental sequence. We caution other investigators to be aware of this potential artifact.

Satellite-Based Estimation Of Chlorophyll-A Concentration In Turbid Productive Waters, Wesley Moses

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

Inland, coastal, and estuarine waters, which are often turbid and biologically productive, play a crucial role in maintaining global bio-diversity and are of immense value to aquatic life as well as human-beings. Concentration of chlorophyll-a (chl-a) is a key indicator of the trophic status of these waters, which should be regularly monitored to ensure that their ecological balance is not disturbed. Remote sensing is a powerful tool for this.

Due to the optical complexity of turbid productive waters, standard algorithms that use blue and green reflectances are unreliable for estimating chl-a concentration. Algorithms based on red and near-infrared (NIR) reflectances …

Observations Of Badgers Preying On Black-Tailed Prairie Dogs, Daniel S. Licht

The Prairie Naturalist

American badgers (Taxidea taxus) often visit black-tailed prairie dog (Cynomys ludovicianus) colonies, most likely in search of prey (Lomolino and Smith 2004, Shaughnessy and Cifelli 2004). Badgers are well suited to hunting fossorial prey such as prairie dogs by excavating burrows and capturing individuals belowground (Lindzey 2003). However, the ecological literature is sparse regarding details of how badgers hunt and capture prairie dogs underground. Eads and Biggins (2008) documented three occurrences of a badger excavating prairie dogs. That badger (apparently the same individual) had a den within the prairie dog town where captures occurred. This note …

Mortality Of Cranes (Gruidae) Associated With Powerlines Over A Major Roost On The Platte River, Nebraska, Gregory D. Wright, Timothy J. Smith, Robert K. Murphy, Jeffery T. Runge, Robert R. Harms

The Prairie Naturalist

Two 69-kilovolt powerlines spanning the Platte River in south central Nebraska are suspected to cause substantial mortality to sandhill cranes (Grus canadensis) and pose a threat to endangered whooping cranes (G. americana) that roost overnight on the river during spring and fall migrations. Most studies of crane collisions with powerlines in the region have focused on counts of carcasses away from night roosts on the river and none have accounted for potential biases in detecting carcasses. We found 61 carcasses of sandhill cranes below over-river segments of the two powerlines during 4 March to 7 April …

Long Distance Molt Migration By A Giant Canada Goose From Eastern South Dakota, Bobby J. Anderson, Charles D. Dieter

The Prairie Naturalist

To reduce crop damage by resident giant Canada geese (Schaible et al. 2005), the South Dakota Department of Game, Fish and Parks (SDGFP) initiated a program to reduce goose nesting success in eastern South Dakota. One management tool used by SDGFP personnel was the destruction of giant Canada goose nests. When a giant Canada goose has its nest destroyed, they are known to initiate a molt migration (Mykut 2002, Luukkonen et aI. 2008). We attached Platform Transmitting Terminals (PTT; model ST -19) to document and describe molt migrations of giant Canada geese following nest destruction. We captured 3 adult nesting …

Noteworthy Winter Prey Of Short-Eared Owls In Southern Texas: A Case Study, Damon Williford, Marc C. Woodin, Mary Kay Skoruppa

The Prairie Naturalist

The winter range of North American short-eared owls (Asio flammeus) encompasses much of the United States, including southern Texas, where it is a common winter resident (Oberholser 1974, Rappole and Blacklock 1985). Winter food habits of short-eared owls are relatively weJl documented, but the majority of investigations have been conducted in eastern Canada and northeastern U.S. (Clark 1975, Holt 1993); midwestern U.S. (Colvin and Spaulding 1983); and British Columbia and Pacific northwestern U.S. (Bogiatto et al. 2001). The short-eared owl has a narrow trophic niche, generally preying on small mammals, with voles (Microtus spp.) and deer mice …

Patterns Of Bison Hair Use In Nests Of Tallgrass Prairie Birds, Bryan R. Coppedge

The Prairie Naturalist

I examined patterns of bison (Bison bison L.) hair use by passerine birds nesting in the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, Osage County, Oklahoma, 2002-2004. I collected and dissected 103 nests of 15 species into their constituent components. Nests were predominately composed of herbaceous material such as grass stems and leaves. Woody material and mud were rarely used. Bison hair was the most prominent zoological material used in nests, with lesser amounts and occurrence of arthropod silk, snake skin, feathers, jack rabbit (Lepus californicus Oray) fur, and man-made materials such as cellophane and string. At least one nest of 13 …

Monitoring Meadows With A Modified Robel Pole In The Northern Black Hills, South Dakota, Daniel W, Uresk, Daryl E. Mergen, Ted A. Benzon

The Prairie Naturalist

We used a modified Robel pole to measure vegetation for a study conducted in the northern Black Hills, South Dakota. Objectives were to determine the relationship between visual obstruction readings and clipped standing herbage, and develop guidelines for monitoring standing herbage. The relationship between visual obstruction readings and standing herbage was linear and regression coefficients were significant (P≤ 0.001). Herbage ranged from 140 to 3313 kg· ha-1 with a mean of 1386 kg· ha^-1 (SE = 320 kg· ha^-1) for 123 transects. Visual obstruction readings (VOR) ranged from 0.6 to 30.4 (number of 1.27 cm bands …

Review Of The Evidence Used In The Description Of Currently Recognized Cetacean Subspecies, William F. Perrin, James G. Mead, Robert L. Brownell Jr.

United States Department of Commerce: Staff Publications

We reviewed the subspecies listed by Rice (1998) and those described since (a total of 49, in 19 species), assessing them against the criteria recommended by the recent Workshop on Shortcomings of Cetacean Taxonomy in Relation to Needs of Conservation and Management (Reeves et al., 2004). The workshop suggested that the subspecies concept can be construed to cover two types of entities: a) lineages diverging but not quite far along the continuum of divergence (still having significant gene flow with another lineage or lineages) to be judged as species, and b) lineages that may well be species but for which …

Modeling Of Metal-Ferroelectric-Insulator-Semiconductor Structures Based On Langmuir–Blodgett Copolymer Films, Timothy J. Reece, Stephen Ducharme

Stephen Ducharme Publications

Among the ferroelectric thin films used in field-effect transistor devices; the ferroelectric copolymer of polyvinylidene fluoride PVDF –CH2–CF2–, with trifluoroethylene TrFE –CHF–CF2–, has distinct advantages, including low dielectric constant, low processing temperature, low cost, and compatibility with organic semiconductors. The operation of a metal-ferroelectric insulatorsemiconductor structure with PVDF-TrFE as the ferroelectric layer was analyzed and optimized by numerical solution of the Miller and McWhorter model. A model device consisting of 20 nm PVDF/TrFE on a 10-nm-thick high-k dielectric buffer exhibits a memory window of 5 V with an operating voltage of 15 V. The operating voltage can be reduced to …

Bed Site Selection Of Fawn Pronghorn In Custer State Park, South Dakota, Chad P. Lehman, Jamin D. Hartland, Barbara J. Keller, Joshua J. Millspaugh, Gary C. Brundige

The Prairie Naturalist

We evaluated pronghorn (Antilocapra americana) fawn bedding site characteristics on a prairie and ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) landscape interface in Custer State Park, South Dakota. We radio-marked 16 adult female pronghorn and collected bed site information from their fawns during 2007~2008. We compared bed site selection with random sites (n = 74) during 2 periods; the early hiding phase when fawns were 1 ~28 days of age (n = 23 bed sites) and the later group phase when fawns were 29~60 days of age (n = 52 bed sites). During the hiding phase fawns selected dry …

A Partial Inventory Of Islands In North Dakota: Potential For Breeding Waterfowl Management, Michael L. Szymanski

The Prairie Naturalist

Islands can provide secure nesting habitat for ducks and other waterbirds, especially in agriculturally dominated landscapes. I inventoried natural and man-made islands in the portion of North Dakota covered by the Prairie Pothole Joint Venture (PPJV). I mapped 1,305 islands in this area; up to 46% of which could provide enhanced nest success with management (e.g., predator removal or establishment of brushy cover). Management of islands for breeding ducks may be an important method for achieving desired reproductive rates in the PP JV as substantial areas of perennial grass cover are lost from federal conservation programs, primarily the Conservation Reserve …

Perturbation Theory Analysis Of Attosecond Photoionization, Anthony F. Starace, Evgeny A. Pronin, M. V. Frolov, N. L. Manakov

Anthony F. Starace Publications

Ionization of an atom by a few-cycle attosecond xuv pulse is analyzed using perturbation theory (PT), keeping terms in the transition amplitude up to second order in the pulse electric field. Within the PT approach, we present an ab initio parametrization of the ionized electron angular distribution (AD) using rotational invariance and symmetry arguments. This parametrization gives analytically the dependence of the AD on the carrier envelope phase (CEP), the polarization of the pulse, and on the ionized electron momentum direction, p^ . For the general case of an elliptically polarized pulse, we show that interference of the first- and …

Relating Fires Affect On Forest Succession And Forest's Effect On Fire Severity In One Burned And Unburned Environment, Tyler Jay Seiboldt

Department of Environmental Studies: Undergraduate Student Theses

Wildfires are a natural part of many forest ecosystems and play a vital role in maintaining their health. Wildfires can have a critical influence on a landscapes plant community through their relative frequency, seasonality, and severity. One of the most heavily influenced regions by wildfire disturbance is the Klamath Mountain region of California. I looked at the affect a wildfires severity had on the Whiskey creek valley within the Whiskeytown National Recreation Area. 8 tree species and 4 flower species were examined on both the burned and unburned regions within this valley nearly a year after the wildfire (May 17-23 …

Fully Exponential Laplace Approximation Em Algorithm For Nonlinear Mixed Effects Models, Meijian Zhou

Department of Statistics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Work

Nonlinear mixed effects models provide a flexible and powerful platform for the analysis of clustered data that arise in numerous fields, such as pharmacology, biology, agriculture, forestry, and economics. This dissertation focuses on fitting parametric nonlinear mixed effects models with single- and multi-level random effects. A new, efficient, and accurate method that gives an error of order O(1/n²), fully exponential Laplace approximation EM algorithm (FELA-EM), for obtaining restricted maximum likelihood (REML) estimates in nonlinear mixed effects models is developed. Sample codes for implementing FELA-EM algorithm in R are given. Simulation studies have been conducted to evaluate …

Classification, Clustering And Data-Mining Of Biological Data, Thomas Triplet

Department of Computer Science and Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The proliferation of biological databases and the easy access enabled by the Internet is having a beneficial impact on biological sciences and transforming the way research is conducted. There are currently over 1100 molecular biology databases dispersed throughout the Internet. However, very few of them integrate data from multiple sources. To assist in the functional and evolutionary analysis of the abundant number of novel proteins, we introduce the PROFESS (PROtein Function, Evolution, Structure and Sequence) database that integrates data from various biological sources. PROFESS is freely available athttp://cse.unl.edu/~profess/. Our database is designed to be versatile and expandable and will not …

Water Current, Volume 41, No. 4, Fall 2009

Water Current Newsletter

Meet the Faculty, Sara Michaels and Ron Yoder
Water Tour to North and South Platte Basins
Dvorak Named Interim Director
Featured Partner: Nebraska Well Drillers Association
Irrigation and Water Photos From Nebraska’s Past
Emerging Contaminants in a Flat World
River City Roundup Features Nebraska Water Issues
Platte River BasinScience and Resource Management Symposium, Oct. 14-15, Kearney
New UNL Spreadsheet Helps Irrigators Evaluate Efficiency
Water Center Events
Our Water Supply, Down the Drain
WRAP Ranks Priorities, Spurs Proposal Development

Smooth Potential Energy Surface For Cavitation, Dispersion, And Repulsion Free Energies In Polarizable Continuum Model, Yali Wang, Hui Li

Hui Li Publications

The fixed points with variable areas [FIXPVA] tessellation scheme is used to obtain smooth potential energy surfaces for the cavitation G_cav, dispersion G_dis, and repulsion G_rep free energies in the polarizable continuum model (PCM). It is shown that FIXPVA can reproduce the standard GEPOL results to within 1 kcal/mol.

Coupled Collaborative In-Class Activities And Individual Follow-Up Homework Promote Interactive Engagement And Improve Student Learning Outcomes In A College-Level Environmental Geology Course, Leilani Arthurs, Alexis Templeton

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences: Faculty Publications

Interactive engagement pedagogies that emerge from a constructivist model of teaching and learning are often a challenge to implement in larger classes for a number of reasons including the physical layout of the classroom (e.g. fixed chairs in an amphitheater-style room), the logistics of organizing a large number of students into small peer-learning groups, the ability of a single instructor to personally interact with each of many small groups, and the design of small group activities that are engaging and facilitate student learning. For a large introductory-level Environmental Geology college course, 5 coupled collaborative class-long in-class activities and individual follow-up …

Population Coding Of Tone Stimuli In Auditory Cortex: Dynamic Rate Vector Analysis, Peter Bartho, Carina Curto, Artur Luczak, Stephan L. Marguet, Kenneth D. Harris

Department of Mathematics: Faculty Publications

Neural representations of even temporally unstructured stimuli can show complex temporal dynamics. In many systems, neuronal population codes show “progressive differentiation,” whereby population responses to different stimuli grow further apart during a stimulus presentation. Here we analyzed the response of auditory cortical populations in rats to extended tones. At onset (up to 300 ms), tone responses involved strong excitation of a large number of neurons; during sustained responses (after 500 ms) overall firing rate decreased, but most cells still showed a statistically significant difference in firing rate. Population vector trajectories evoked by different tone frequencies expanded rapidly along an initially …

The Upper Lithostratigraphic Unit Of Andrill And-2a Core (Southern Mcmurdo Sound, Antarctica): Local Pleistocene Volcanic Sources, Paleoenvironmental Implications And Subsidence In The Southern Victoria Land Basin, Paola Del Carlo, Kurt Panter, Kari Bassett, Laura Bracciali, Gianfranco Di Vincenzo, Sergio Rocchi

ANDRILL Research and Publications

We report results from the study of the uppermost 37 m of the Southern McMurdo Sound (SMS) AND-2A drill core, corresponding to the lithostratigraphic unit 1 (LSU 1), the most volcanogenic unit within the core. We present data on the age, composition, volcanological and depositional features of the volcanic sedimentary and tephra deposits of LSU 1 and discuss their source, mechanisms of emplacement and environment of deposition.

Sedimentary features and compositional data indicate shallow water sedimentation for the whole of LSU 1. Most of LSU 1 deposits are a mixture of near primary volcanic material with minor exotic clasts derived …

Provenance Signatures Of The Antarctic Ice Sheets In The Ross Embayment During The Late Miocene To Early Pliocene: The Andrill And-1b Core Record, Franco M. Talarico, Sonia Sandroni

ANDRILL Research and Publications

Significant down-core modal and compositional variations are described for granule- to cobble-sized clasts in the Early Pliocene to Middle/Late Miocene sedimentary cycles of the AND-1B drill core at the NW edge of the Ross Ice Shelf (McMurdo Sound).

Long-term shifts in compositional patterns outline an evolving provenance which is interpreted as reflecting the combined effects and complex interactions among variations in ice volume, ice flow patterns and paleogeographic changes linked to the local tectonic and volcanic activity. High-frequency variations and the petrological features of the basement clast fraction provide direct information about the potential source regions during both glacial maxima …

Dynamic Load Balancing For I/O-Intensive Applications On Clusters, Xiao Qin, Hong Jiang, Adam Manzanares, Xiaojun Ruan, Shu Yin

School of Computing: Faculty Publications

Load balancing for clusters has been investigated extensively, mainly focusing on the effective usage of global CPU and memory resources. However, previous CPU- or memory-centric load balancing schemes suffer significant performance drop under I/O-intensive workloads due to the imbalance of I/O load. To solve this problem, we propose two simple yet effective I/O-aware load-balancing schemes for two types of clusters: (1) homogeneous clusters where nodes are identical and (2) heterogeneous clusters, which are comprised of a variety of nodes with different performance characteristics in computing power, memory capacity, and disk speed. In addition to assigning I/O-intensive sequential and parallel jobs …

Refuge Update – November/December 2009, Volume 6, Number 6

RefugeUpdate (USFWS-NWRS)

Table of Contents:

Tufted Puffin Released A rehabilitated puffin gingerly tests freedom at Oregon Islands National Wildlife Refuge.

FOCUS: Stories of Hope From cemeteries to woodpeckers, to newspaper columns and support at the ballot box, refuges represent stories of hope as they pursue their mission.

Bats in the Barn Scientists and volunteers wrap a barn in plastic and count the bats inside.

Sense of Wonder Award Jim Burkhart shares the joy and mysteries of the natural world with visitors to Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, GA.

Smartstore: A New Metadata Organization Paradigm With Semantic-Awareness For Next-Generation File Systems, Yu Hua, Hong Jiang, Yifeng Zhu, Dan Feng, Lei Tian

CSE Conference and Workshop Papers

Existing storage systems using hierarchical directory tree do not meet scalability and functionality requirements for exponentially growing datasets and increasingly complex queries in Exabyte-level systems with billions of files. This paper proposes semantic-aware organization, called SmartStore, which exploits metadata semantics of files to judiciously aggregate correlated files into semantic-aware groups by using information retrieval tools. Decentralized design improves system scalability and reduces query latency for complex queries (range and top-k queries), which is conducive to constructing semantic-aware caching, and conventional filename-based query. SmartStore limits search scope of complex query to a single or a minimal number of semantically related groups …

Finite Temperature Effects In Magnetic Materials: Model And Ab Initio Studies, Aleksander L. Wysocki

Department of Physics and Astronomy: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The understanding of finite temperature behavior of magnetic materials is of vital importance for spintronic applications. In this dissertation different theoretical techniques for studying magnetic thermodynamics of various materials are discussed. Cr₂O₃ is an antiferromagnetic insulator that was proposed to be a key component of new spintronic devices. The magnetic properties of Cr₂O₃ were studied using the LDA+U method. Magnetism was found to be very well described by the Heisenberg model. Subsequently, magnetic thermodynamics was explored using quantum pair cluster approximation. Overall, very good agreement with experiment was found for the ground state and …