Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Improving Farmers’ Perception And Use Of Climate Predictions In Farming Decisions: A Transition Model, Lisa M. Pytlikzillig, Qi Hu, Kenneth G. Hubbard, Gary D. Lynne, Roger H. Bruning

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Despite tremendous efforts to improve weather and climate predictions and to inform farmers about the use of such weather products, farmers’ attitudes toward forecast use remain poor and farmer use of forecasts has not increased. This paper describes features of a new conceptual model for facilitating farmers’ use of weather products and offers preliminary evidence for its effectiveness based on a test-of-concept prototype. The prototype system provides farmers with contextualized information, the opportunity to use that information in relevant farming contexts, and collaborative interaction with other users. In addition, scaffolding and feedback are incorporated in the model to enhance learning …

Improving Predicted Protein Loop Structure Ranking Using A Pareto-Optimality Consensus Method, Yaohang Li, Ionel Rata, See-Wing Chiu, Erik Jakobsson

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Background

Accurate protein loop structure models are important to understand functions of many proteins. Identifying the native or near-native models by distinguishing them from the misfolded ones is a critical step in protein loop structure prediction.

Results

We have developed a Pareto Optimal Consensus (POC) method, which is a consensus model ranking approach to integrate multiple knowledge- or physics-based scoring functions. The procedure of identifying the models of best quality in a model set includes: 1) identifying the models at the Pareto optimal front with respect to a set of scoring functions, and 2) ranking them based on the fuzzy …

Remote Access Forensics For Vnc And Rdp On Windows Platform, Paresh Kerai

Theses : Honours

There has been a greater implementation of remote access technologies in recent years. Many organisations are adapting remote technologies such as Virtual Network Computing (VNC) and remote desktop (RDP) applications as customer support application. They use these applications to remotely configure computers and solve computer and network issues of the client on spot. Therefore, the system administrator or the desktop technician does not have to sit on the client computer physically to solve a computer issue. This increase in adaptation of remote applications is of interest to forensic investigators; this is because illegal activities can be performed over the connection. …

Comparison And Application Of Three Decorrelation Methods Pca, Maf And Acdc, Jacqueline Ferreira

Theses : Honours

Geostatistics is a branch of applied mathematics that deals with spatially correlated data. Analysing and modelling spatially correlated data can be difficult and time consuming, especially for a multivariate data set. One of the techniques used to make analysis and modelling easier involves decorrelation, whereby a linear transformation on the sample variables is used to associate the spatially correlated variables with a set of decorrelated factors which are statistically and spatially independent. PCA was one of the first multivariate techniques and is mostly used as a data reduction technique. A popular alternative decorrelation technique often used in the mining industry …

Impact Of Higher Education Workplace Relations Requirements On Nteu Membership Density, Tulsi Laxman Panchani

Theses : Honours

The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) is the only union working entirely in tertiary education around Australia. The union has over twenty four thousand members comprising of academic and general staff. NTEU maintains membership records at three levels, national, state and branch. The information collected includes gender, age group, employment type and work classification. In late April 2005, Higher Education Workplace Relations Requirements (HEWRRs) legislation was introduced by the Australian government. This legislation imposed restrictions on the interaction between the universities and the union and also curtailed an automatic involvement of the union in the resolution of workplace issues. The …

Where New Meanings Spring: The Relationship Between Indigenous Cultural Meanings For Freshwater Springs And Management Practices: Analysis Of Stories From Kalbarri, Western Australia, Tamara Lee Murdock

Theses : Honours

While Indigenous peoples' practices have been acknowledged to change and evolve, whether Indigenous cultural meanings invested in a specific place also change and/or evolve over time, and the affect these changes may have on land and water practices has generally been ignored. This study explores the relationship between Indigenous cultural meanings and land and water stewardship practices, and whether these change over time. A qualitative research design was employed in this study to emphasise the complex and dynamic nature of language and the relationship between people, culture and nature. This study utilised interviews collected from traditional Indigenous people concerning stories …

Motivated Learning As An Extension Of Reinforcement Learning, Janusz Starzyk, Pawel Raif, Ah-Hwee Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We have developed a unified framework to conduct computational experiments with both learning systems: Motivated learning based on Goal Creation System, and reinforcedment learning using RL Q-Learning Algorithm. Future work includes combining motivated learning to set abstract motivations and manage goals with reinforcement learning to learn proper actions. This will allow testing of motivated learning on typical reinforcement learning benchmarks with large dimensionality of the state/action spaces.

A Boosting Framework For Visuality-Preserving Distance Metric Learning And Its Application To Medical Image Retrieval, Yang Liu, Rong Jin, Lily Mummert, Rahul Sukthankar, Adam Goode, Bin Zheng, Steven C. H. Hoi, Mahadev Satyanarayanan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Similarity measurement is a critical component in content-based image retrieval systems, and learning a good distance metric can significantly improve retrieval performance. However, despite extensive study, there are several major shortcomings with the existing approaches for distance metric learning that can significantly affect their application to medical image retrieval. In particular, "similarity" can mean very different things in image retrieval: resemblance in visual appearance (e.g., two images that look like one another) or similarity in semantic annotation (e.g., two images of tumors that look quite different yet are both malignant). Current approaches for distance metric learning typically address only one …

Far-Field Optical Nanoscopy Based On Continuous Wave Laser Stimulated Emission Depletion, C. Kuang, Wei Zhao, Guiren Wang

Faculty Publications

Stimulated emission depletion (STED) microscopy is one of the breakthrough technologies that belong to far-field optical microscopy and can achieve nanoscale spatial resolution. We demonstrate a far-field optical nanoscopy based on continuous wave lasers with different wavelengths, i.e., violet and green lasers for excitation and STED, respectively. Fluorescent dyes Coumarin 102 and Atto 390 are used for validating the depletion efficiency. Fluorescent nanoparticles are selected for characterizing the spatial resolution of the STED system. Linear scanning of the laser beams of the STED system along one line of a microscope slide, which is coated with the nanoparticles, indicates that a …

Analysis Of Atmospheric Boundary Layer Characteristics And The Synoptic-Scale Weather Pattern At The Potosi, Wi Slams Monitor, Sean K. Newlin

Honors Program Theses

Boundary layer parameters were analyzed for high impact fine-particulate pollution days for the years 2006 through 2009 in Potosi, Wisconsin. Potosi has seen recent 24-hour PM2.s design values at or near the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) of 35 micrograms per cubic meter. Every sampling date in the years 2006 through 2009 with a 24- hour PM2.5 particulate concentration above the year's trend line was studied as were the cleanest 10 days of each year. In particular, composite upper air profiles were constructed using observations from the nearby radiosonde stations, surface and S00mb weather maps were retrieved, the virtual …

Deriving An X-Ray Luminosity Function Of Dwarf Novae Based On Parallax Measurements, K. Byckling, K. Mukai, J. R. Thorstensen, J. P. Osborne

Dartmouth Scholarship

We have derived an X-ray luminosity function using parallax-based distance measurements of a set of 12 dwarf novae, consisting of Suzaku, XMM-Newton and ASCA observations. The shape of the X-ray luminosity function obtained is the most accurate to date, and the luminosities of our sample are concentrated between ~10^{30}-10^{31} erg s^{-1}, lower than previous measurements of X-ray luminosity functions of dwarf novae. Based on the integrated X-ray luminosity function, the sample becomes more incomplete below ~3 x 10^{30} erg s^{-1} than it is above this luminosity limit, and the sample is dominated by X-ray bright dwarf novae. The total integrated …

Candoluminescence Of Cave Gypsum, John R. Sweet, John W. Hess, William B. White

International Journal of Speleology

A selection of gypsum specimens from a variety of caves as well as CaSO₄ synthesized in the laboratory emit both a green and yellow candoluminescence when excited by a hydrogen diffusion flame. The green emission is attributed to dehydration of gypsum to bassanite and the yellow emission appears upon further dehydration to anhydrite. The source of the luminescence is ascribed to minor concentrations of Mn²⁺ in the gypsum.

Iowa Academy Of Science 122nd Annual Meeting [2010]: Advance Program, Iowa Academy Of Science

Iowa Academy of Science Documents

Contains information about the schedule and presentations for the 2010 annual meeting of the Iowa Academy of Science.

Proceedings Of The 122nd Annual Meeting Of The Iowa Academy Of Science [Program, 2010], Iowa Academy Of Science

Iowa Academy of Science Documents

Contents:

Program Summary --- 2-3
Acknowledgements --- 4
Welcome from our Campus Host --- 5
IAS 2009-2010 Volunteers --- 6
Iowa Junior Academy of Science --- 7
General Session I --- 8
IJAS Award Luncheon --- 9
IAS Annual Business Meeting --- 9
Symposia Presentations --- 10-12
Great Moments in Iowa Science --- 13
Senior Poster Program --- 14-15
President's Banquet --- 16
General Session 11 --- 17
General Session III --- 18
ESTA Award Luncheon --- 19
Saturday Field Trips --- 20
Section Meeting Programs and Oral Presentations (Alphabetical by Section) --- 21-29
Abstracts (by Section) --- 30-59
Author …

Urban Speleology Applied To Groundwater And Geo-Engineering Studies: Underground Topographic Surveying Of The Ancient Arca D’Água Galleries Catchworks (Porto, Nw Portugal), H. I. Chaminé, M. J. Afonso, P. M. Robalo, P. Rodrigues, C. Cortez, F. A. Monteiro Santos, J. P. Plancha, P. E. Fonseca, A. Gomes, N. F. Devy-Vareta, J. M. Marques, M. E. Lopes, G. Fontes, A. Pires, F. Rocha

International Journal of Speleology

The Porto settlement (Northwest Portugal, Iberian Peninsula) was originally built in the twelfth century and has been developed on granitic hill slopes of the Douro riverside, being one of the oldest cities in Europe. In the urban area of Porto, the second most important city of the Portuguese mainland, there is a population of about 216,000 inhabitants. This study highlights the importance of urban speleological mapping applied to groundwater and geo-engineering studies. All the water that flows from the so-called Paranhos or Arca D’Água springs is captured by catchwork galleries and their utilization date back around 1120 AD. Paranhos spring …

Palaeomagnetic Research On Karst Sediments In Slovenia, Nadja Zupan Hajna, Andrej Mihevc, Petr Pruner, Pavel Bosàk

International Journal of Speleology

We have conducted palaeomagnetic and magnetostratigraphic research on karst sediments in Slovenia since 1997. More than 2,000 samples were taken and analysed in 36 different profiles at 21 locations in caves and on the surface. Standard palaeomagnetic analyses were used (thermal and alternating field demagnetisation, magnetic susceptibility measurements, etc.). There is no evidence of younger marine deposition than Eocene in the SW part of Slovenia. Younger sediments occur only in caves and very rarely on the karst surface (different soils and a few remains of terrigeneous sediments). Marine and terrestrial Tertiary to Plio–Quaternary deposition occurs in the SE and E …

A Re-Appraisal Of The Stratigraphy, Palaeontology And Dating Of Cow Cave, Chudleigh, Devon, England, Jim W. Simons

International Journal of Speleology

Cow Cave is an important Quaternary paleontological site in Chudleigh Gorge, Devon, UK., now known to have a sequence of cave-earths and stalagmite floors that range in age from Upper Middle Pleistocene (~MIS 7 interglacial) through to the Holocene (Flandrian) and the present day. Excavations in 1927-1934, and again in 1962-3, have provided a rich fauna, with some artefacts. Here, the stratigraphy of the deposits is now more fully described and the faunal remains are considered in their stratigraphical contexts. Data supporting the existence of former cave entrances are presented along with an analysis of the processes of sedimentation and …

Geology Of Central Eleuthera, Bahamas: A Field Trip Guide, Pascal Kindler, John E. Mylroie, H. Allen Curran, James L. Carew, Douglas W. Gamble, Thomas A. Rothfus

Geosciences: Faculty Publications

See other Smith authored Field Trip Guides of Gerace Research Centre.

Enigmatic Structures On Upper Pleistocene Laminar Caliche Surfaces Of The Bahamas: Animal, Vegetable, Or Mineral?, H. Allen Curran

Geosciences: Faculty Publications

Trace fossils are a common and important component of most Quaternary carbonate rock units of the Bahamas and other, similar tropical carbonate regions. In the Bahamas, the Pleistocene-Holocene boundary is typically marked by a calichified paleosol horizon that formed on the exposed limestone surfaces of the islands during the time of lowered sea level of the Last Glacial. On the north coast of San Salvador Island, an extensive horizontal surface of laminar caliche is exposed at Singer Bar Point and to the west. This surface formed on carbonate eolianite of Late Pleistocene (Eemian) age and is overlain by Holocene eolianite. …

Positive Solutions Of The (N-1, 1) Conjugate Boundary Value Problem, Bo Yang

Faculty Articles

We consider the (n - 1, 1) conjugate boundary value problem. Some upper estimates to positive solutions for the problem are obtained. We also establish some explicit sufficient conditions for the existence and nonexistence of positive solutions of the problem.

An Attempt To Find Neighbors, Yong Shi, Ryan Rosenblum

Faculty Articles

In this paper, we present our continuous research on similarity search problems. Previously we proposed PanKNN[18]which is a novel technique that explores the meaning of K nearest neighbors from a new perspective, redefines the distances between data points and a given query point Q, and efficiently and effectively selects data points which are closest to Q. It can be applied in various data mining fields. In this paper, we present our approach to solving the similarity search problem in the presence of obstacles. We apply the concept of obstacle points and process the similarity search problems in a different way. …

Biomedical Relationship Extraction From Literature Based On Bio-Semantic Token Subsequences, Ying Xie, Jayasimha R. Katukuri, Vijay V. Raghavan

Faculty Articles

Relationship Extraction (RE) from biomedical literature is an important and challenging problem in both text mining and bioinformatics. Although various approaches have been proposed to extract protein?protein interaction types, their accuracy rates leave a large room for further exploring. In this paper, two supervised learning algorithms based on newly defined "bio-semantic token subsequence" are proposed for multi-class biomedical relationship classification. The first approach calculates a "bio-semantic token subsequence kernel", whereas the second one explicitly extracts weighted features from bio-semantic token subsequences. The two proposed approaches outperform several alternatives reported in literature on multi-class protein?protein interaction classification.

Do New Access And Benefit Sharing Procedures Under The Convention On Biological Diversity Threaten The Future Of Biological Control?, Matthew J.W. Cock, Joop C. Van Lenteren, Jacques Brodeur, Barbara I.P. Barratt, Franz Bigler, Karel Bolckmans, Fernando L. Cônsoli, Fabian Haas, Peter G. Mason, José Roberto P. Parra

All Peer-Reviewed Publications

Under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) countries have sovereign rights over their genetic resources. Agreements governing the access to these resources and the sharing of the benefits arising from their use need to be established between involved parties [i. e. Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS)]. This also applies to species collected for potential use in biological control. Recent applications of CBD principles have already made it difficult or impossible to collect and export natural enemies for biological control research in several countries. If such an approach is widely applied it would impede this very successful and environmentally safe pest …

A Real Time Optical Biosensor Assay For Amoxicillin And Other Β-Lactams In Water Samples, Israel M. Scott, Lewis J. Kraft, Jonathan D. Parker, Kathryn Daniel, Sarah Kustick, Diana Kennen, Jonathan L. Mcmurry

Faculty Articles

Antibiotic contamination of drinking water and sewage is a matter of environmental and public health concern. Traditionally, ELISA or HPLC methods have been used to detect and measure antibiotic contamination. By applying an optical biosensing method, biolayer inteferometry (BLI), we have developed a kinetic competition binding assay capable of quantitating less than lppm (~33 μM) amoxicillin. Similar to surface plasmon resonance, BLI senses changes that occur upon binding of one molecule to another near a surface to measure association and dissociation. Immobilized amoxicillin was used to screen for binding against an analyte solution of anti-amoxicillin equilibrated with amoxicillin-containing water samples, …

Support Varieties And Representation Type Of Small Quantum Groups, Jorg Feldvoss, Sarah Witherspoon

University Faculty and Staff Publications

In this paper, we provide a wildness criterion for any finite dimensional Hopf algebra with finitely generated cohomology. This generalizes a result of Farnsteiner to not necessarily cocommutative Hopf algebras over ground fields of arbitrary characteristic. Our proof uses the theory of support varieties for modules, one of the crucial ingredients being a tensor product property for some special modules. As an application, we prove a conjecture of Cibils stating that small quantum groups of rank at least two are wild.

Statistical Analysis Of Wastewater Remediation And Bio-Fuels Production Of Algae, Jay D. Jones

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

The Logan city wastewater treatment system consists of a series of seven large aerated ponds (460 acres) that biologically treats 15 million gallons per day of wastewater from Logan city and six other communities. Tighter regulations of allowed phosphorus levels in the effluent have recently been implemented due to environmental concerns of a downstream reservoir. The Biological Engineering program at Utah State University, the Bio-fuels Center, the Utah Water Research Laboratory (UWRL) and the city of Logan are working together to remediate the wastewater treatment system using microalgae. Algal growth requires the uptake of phosphorus. Thus, phosphorus in the effluent …

Assessing North American Influenza Dynamics With Hierarchical Spatio-Temporal Models, Jessica Anderson

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

We present a general statistical modeling framework to characterize continental-level influenza dynamics in the United States for the purposes of examining state-level epidemiological sources and sinks. The methods we describe depend directly on state-level influenza data that are updated weekly and available on the internet. Advances in search engine query analysis have provided powerful new tools for collecting epidemiological data and, when used in conjunction with sophisticated statistical models, allow for the identification and quantification of the flow of influenza across the continental United States. Our proposed methods, when conditioned on this comprehensive search query product, can provide unprecedented scientific …

A Comparison Of Prediction Methods Of Functional Autoregressive Time Series, Devin Didericksen

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

Functional data analysis (FDA) is a relatively new branch of statistics that has seen a lot of expansion recently. With the advent of computer processing power and more efficient software packages we have entered the beginning stages of applying FDA methodology and techniques to data. Part of this undertaking should include an empirical assessment of the effectiveness of some of the tools of FDA, which are sound on theoretical grounds. In a small way, this project helps advance this objective.

This work begins by introducing FDA, scalar prediction techniques, and the functional autoregressive model of order one - FAR(1). Two …

Assessing The Precision And Accuracy In A Small Sample Of Actical Devices, Peter Sherick

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

Actigraphy is an increasingly popular approach in medicine to assess patient activity levels in a variety of scenarios. The devices are essentially accelerometers encased in a write-watch type assembly. This project sought to determine the device precision and accuracy for the Actical model. In a sample of four Acticals, it was found that intra-device variability was minimal. However, one device was found to be statistically biased in comparison to the other three. This bias could have adverse effects on aggregated or magnitude dependent data analysis. Also, inter-device comparisons may be problematic.

Applying Hessian Curves In Parallel To Improve Elliptic Curve Scalar Multiplication Hardware, F. B. Muhaya, Q. A. Al-Haijá, Lo'ai A. Tawalbeh

Computer Science Faculty Publications (Archived)

As a public key cryptography, Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) is well known to be the most secure algorithms that can be used to protect information during the transmission. ECC in its arithmetic computations suffers from modular inversion operation. Modular Inversion is a main arithmetic and very long-time operation that performed by the ECC crypto-processor. The use of projective coordinates to define the Elliptic Curves (EC) instead of affine coordinates replaced the inversion operations by several multiplication operations. Many types of projective coordinates have been proposed for the elliptic curve E: y2 = x3 + ax + b which is defined …