Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

The Effects Of Bison On Cattle Winter Range In The Henry Mountains Of South Central Utah: Resolving A Conflict, Ian M. Ware

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The American Bison in the Henry Mountains are one of the last free-roaming, genetically pure herds of bison remaining in North America. Over the last decade, the herd has used a cattle winter range during the summer and early fall, creating a conflict between the wildlife officials who manage the bison population, and Bureau of Land Management officials and local ranchers who manage the rangeland. At the heart of this conflict is the question of whether bison are negatively impacting the rangeland resource, potentially reducing the abundance of preferable plant species. Negative impacts could include reduced forage availability in the …

In Situ Measurements Of Electron-Beam-Induced Surface Voltage Of Highly Resistive Materials, Joshua Hodges

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Surface charging and subsequent electrostatic discharge due to interactions with the space environment is one of the primary concerns of spacecraft charging studies. Laboratory measurements of the evolution of surface voltages and dissipation currents under simulated space conditions are the primary method used to determine the response of key spacecraft materials to diverse incident fluxes. Increasing the database of information for the electronic properties of insulating materials can assist spacecraft designers in mitigating the harsh effects of the space environment.

The Utah State Materials Physics Group, with the funding of the NASA James Webb Space Telescope project and personnel support …

Space Plug-And-Play Architecture Networking: A Self-Configuring Heterogeneous Network Architecture, Jacob Holt Christensen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In spacecraft engineering, the time and money involved in satellite construction is largely spent on design and integration of custom hardware and software. These efforts are duplicated for nearly every satellite with little to no reuse between spacecraft. There is a huge potential for cost savings in removing the duplication of work. However, there is a lack of standardization in the spaceflight community, causing soaring costs and delayed schedules as each component of a spacecraft is individually designed and custom built.

The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has developed the Space Plug-and-Play Architecture (SPA) to address this problem. SPA provides …

Function Approximation With Artmap Architectures, Lucian M. Sasu, Răzvan Andonie

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of the Sciences

We analyze function approximation (regression) capability of Fuzzy ARTMAP (FAM) architectures - well-known incremental learning neural networks. We focus especially on the universal approximation property. In our experiments, we compare the regression performance of FAM networks with other standard neural models. It is the first time that ARTMAP regression is overviewed, both from theoretical and practical points of view.

Chemical Contaminants As Stratigraphic Markers For The Anthropocene, Michael A. Kruge

Department of Earth and Environmental Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Thousands and even millions of years from now, widespread anthropogenic contaminants in sediments would likely persist, incorporated into the geological record. They would inadvertently preserve evidence of our present era (informally designated as the Anthropocene Epoch) characterized by large human populations engaged in intensive industrial and agricultural activities.

Hypothetical geologists in the distant future would likely find unusually high concentrations of a wide variety of contaminants at stratigraphic levels corresponding to our present time, analogous to the iridium anomaly marking the bolide impact event at the close of the Cretaceous Period. These would include both organic and inorganic substances, such …

The First Cosmic Ray Albedo Proton Map Of The Moon, Jody K. Wilson, Harlan E. Spence, Justin Kasper, Michael Golightly, J. B. Blake, J. E. Mazur, L. W. Townsend, A. W. Case, M. D. Looper, C. Zeitlin, Nathan A. Schwadron

Physics & Astronomy

[1] Neutrons emitted from the Moon are produced by the impact of galactic cosmic rays (GCRs) within the regolith. GCRs are high-energy particles capable of smashing atomic nuclei in the lunar regolith and producing a shower of energetic protons, neutrons and other subatomic particles. Secondary particles that are ejected out of the regolith become “albedo” particles. The neutron albedo has been used to study the hydrogen content of the lunar regolith, which motivates our study of albedo protons. In principle, the albedo protons should vary as a function of the input GCR source and possibly as a result of surface …

Graduate Scholar Profiles, The Mcnair Team

McNair Scholars Research Journal

No abstract provided.

Mcnair Scholars Program: Overview, The Mcnair Team

McNair Scholars Research Journal

No abstract provided.

Full Issue, The Mcnair Team

McNair Scholars Research Journal

No abstract provided.

Terrestrial And Semi-Aquatic Vertebrates In Diets Of Largemouth Bass In Central Nebraska, Seth A. Lundgren, Keith Geluso, Casey W. Schoenebeck

The Prairie Naturalist

Largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides) are opportunistic predators often feeding in littoral areas during crepuscular periods (Snow 1971). Adult largemouth bass primarily are piscivorous, whereas juveniles generally consume zooplankton, insects, and small fish (Zweiacker and Summerfelt 1974, Carlander 1977, Post 2003). Age-0 largemouth bass generally consume zooplankton and macroinvertebrates (Keast and Webb 1966, Keast 1985, Phillips et al. 1995, Post 2003) and shift to piscivory at 50-70 mm in length (Phillips et al. 1995, Olson 1996, Post 2003). Few studies have documented detailed accounts of other vertebrates besides fish in diets of largemouth bass, which include amphibians (Hodgson and …

The Crs Package: Nonparametric Regression Splines For Continuous And Categorical Predictors, Zhenghua Nie, Jeffery S. Racine

The R Journal

A new package crs is introduced for computing nonparametric regression (and quantile) splines in the presence of both continuous and categorical predictors. B-splines are employed in the regression model for the continuous predictors and kernel weighting is employed for the categorical predictors. We also de velop a simple R interface to NOMAD, which is a mixed integer optimization solver used to compute optimal regression spline solutions.

Graphical Markov Models With Mixed Graphs In R, Kayvan Sadeghi, Giovanni M. Marchetti

The R Journal

In this paper we provide a short tuto rial illustrating the new functions in the package ggm that deal with ancestral, summary and ribbonless graphs. These are mixed graphs (containing three types of edges) that are important because they capture the modified independence structure after marginalisation over, and conditioning on, nodes of directed acyclic graphs. We provide functions to verify whether a mixed graph implies that A is independent of B given C for any disjoint sets of nodes and to generate maximal graphs inducing the same independence structure of non-maximal graphs. Finally, we provide functions to decide on the …

What's In A Name?, Paul Murrell

The R Journal

Any shape that is drawn using the grid graphics package can have a name associated with it. If a name is provided, it is possible to access, query, and modify the shape after it has been drawn. These facilities allow for very detailed customisations of plots and also for very general transformations of plots that are drawn by packages based on grid.

Rfit: Rank-Based Estimation For Linear Models, John D. Kloke, Joseph W. Mckeen

The R Journal

In the nineteen seventies, Jureĉková and Jaeckel proposed rank estimation for linear models. Since that time, several authors have developed inference and diagnostic methods for these estimators. These rank-based estimators and their associated inference are highly efficient and are robust to outliers in response space. The methods include estimation of standard errors, tests of general linear hypotheses, confidence intervals, diagnostic procedures including studentized residuals, and measures of influential cases. We have developed an R package, Rfit, for computing of these robust procedures. In this paper we highlight the main features of the pack age. The package uses standard linear …

It's Not What You Draw, It's What You Don't Draw, Paul Murrell

The R Journal

The R graphics engine has new support for drawing complex paths via the functions polypath() and grid.path(). This article explains what is meant by a complex path and demonstrates the usefulness of complex paths in drawing non-trivial shapes, logos, customised data symbols, and maps.

The State Of Naming Conventions In R, Rasmus Bååth

The R Journal

Most programming language communities have naming conventions that are generally agreed upon, that is, a set of rules that governs how functions and variables are named. This is not the case with R, and a review of unofficial style guides and naming convention us age on CRAN shows that a number of different naming conventions are currently in use. Some naming conventions are, however, more popular than others and as a newcomer to the R community or as a developer of a new package this could be useful to consider when choosing what naming convention to adopt.

Force-Feedback High-Speed Atomic Force Microscope For Studying Large Biological Systems, Byung I. Kim, Ryan Boehm

Physics Faculty Publications and Presentations

We designed and developed a high-speed atomic force microscope (HSAFM) utilizing a force-feedback scheme for imaging large biological samples. The system collects three simultaneous images: a deflection image, a topographic image, and a force image. We demonstrated that this force-feedback HSAFM is capable of acquiring large topographic images of Escherichia coli biofilms at approximately one frame per second in air. We discuss how the self-actuating cantilever and the piezo tube follow those larger biological topographic features during the HSAFM imaging process.

G-Ruption: The Third International Meeting On G-Quadruplex And G-Assembly, Liliya A. Yatsunyk, T. M. Bryan, F. B. Johnson

Chemistry & Biochemistry Faculty Works

A three and a half day conference focusing on nucleic acid structures called G-quadruplexes (G4s) and other guanine-based assemblies was held in Sorrento. Italy (June 28-July 1, 2011) and featured 35 invited talks and over 89 posters. The G-quadruplex field continues to expand at an explosive rate with the emergence of new connections to biology, chemistry, physics, and nanotechnology. Following the trend established by the previous two international G4 meetings, the conference touched upon all these areas and facilitated productive exchanges of ideas between researchers from all over the world.

Economic Impacts Of The Kentucky Green Industry, Dewayne L. Ingram, Alan Hodges

Agriculture and Natural Resources Publications

The Green Industry has a significant impact on Kentucky’s economy. Green Industry enterprise owners, managers and employees should be aware of their economic impacts, and policy makers and other state leaders need to know the importance of this industry as potential laws, regulations and resource allocations are considered. This publication is intended to provide a brief summary of the 2007 economic impacts of the Green Industry in Kentucky.

Plant Community Composition And Structure Monitoring For Scotts Bluff National Monument, 2012 Annual Report, Isabel W. Ashton, Michael Prowatzke, Stephen K. Wilson

United States National Park Service: Publications

Executive Summary

the last remnants of native mixed-grass prairie in the region. The Northern Great Plains Inventory & Monitoring Network (NGPN) surveyed 8 long-term monitoring plots in Scotts Bluff National Monument in 2012 as part of an effort to better understand the condition of plant communities in the park. We measured plant diversity and cover, estimated tree and shrub density, looked for the presence of exotic species that are of concern to park management, and evaluated the amount of human and natural disturbance at all plots. This effort was the second year in a multiple-year venture to document the current …

Are Twitter Users Equal In Predicting Elections? A Study Of User Groups In Predicting 2012 U.S. Republican Primaries, Lu Chen, Wenbo Wang, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

Existing studies on predicting election results are under the assumption that all the users should be treated equally. However, recent work [14] shows that social media users from different groups (e.g., “silent majority” vs. “vocal minority”) have significant differences in the generated content and tweeting behavior. The effect of these differences on predicting election results has not been exploited yet. In this paper, we study the spectrum of Twitter users who participate in the on-line discussion of 2012 U.S. Republican Presidential Primaries, and examine the predictive power of different user groups (e.g., highly engaged users vs. lowly engaged users, right-leaning …

Saturation-Dependence Of Dispersion In Porous Media, B. Ghanbarian-Alavijeh, Thomas E. Skinner, Allen Hunt

Physics Faculty Publications

In this study, we develop a saturation-dependent treatment of dispersion in porous media using concepts from critical path analysis, cluster statistics of percolation, and fractal scaling of percolation clusters. We calculate spatial solute distributions as a function of time and calculate arrival time distributions as a function of system size. Our previous results correctly predict the range of observed dispersivity values over ten orders of magnitude in experimental length scale, but that theory contains no explicit dependence on porosity or relative saturation. This omission complicates comparisons with experimental results for dispersion, which are often conducted at saturation less than 1. …

Sustainable County Operations: Yamhill County, Oregon, Portland State University. Hatfield School Of Government. Center For Public Service, Ed Gallagher, Dave Rouse, Dennis Kurtz, Tanya Johnston

Center for Public Service Publications and Reports

Portland State University, Hatfield School of Government (PSU), and Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (NEEA), has formed a partnership to develop Sustainable Municipal Operations Plans that documents sustainability and energy management best practices. The goal of this partnership is to determine how a county/municipality can actively manage energy as a controllable expense by following a predetermined operation protocol. The PSU team developed a framework of best practices for sustainable municipal operations in different categories including facilities, fleet, purchasing, operations and the work environment. After identifying pilot jurisdictions, the team applied these best practices to the current operations of local governments in …

Sensitivity Analysis In Magnetic Resonance Elastography And A Local Wavelength Reconstruction Based On Wave Direction, Christopher Gillam

All Dissertations

or the detection of early stage cancer. MRE utilizes interior data for its inverse problems, which greatly reduces the ill-posedness from which most traditional inverse problems suffer.
In this thesis, we first establish a sensitivity analysis for viscoelastic scalar medium with complex wave number and compare it with the purely elastic case. Also we estimate the smallest detectable inclusion for breast and liver, which is about twice larger than using the purely elastic model. We also found the existence of optimal frequency (50 Hz) that maximizes the detectability when the Voigt model is used.
Second, we propose a local wavelength …

Safe: Simulation Automation Framework For Experiments, Luiz Felipe Perrone, Bryan C. Ward, Christopher S. Main

Faculty Journal Articles

The workflow of a network simulation study requires adherence to best practices in methodology so that results are credible and reproducible by third parties. The opportunities for one to introduce errors start at model description and permeate the process through to the reporting of results. The literature indicates that even publications in respected venues include inadvertent mistakes and poor application of methodology. When experts are liable to fail, it is unreasonable to expect that students would fare any better. This paper presents a system designed to provide guidance for inexperienced users of the popular ns-3 network simulator. SAFE automates the …

Effect Of Rising Temperature Due To Ozone Depletion On The Dynamics Of A Prey-Predator System: A Mathematical Model, O. P. Misra, Preety Kalra

Applications and Applied Mathematics: An International Journal (AAM)

It is well recognized that the greenhouse gas such as Chlorofluoro Carbon (CFC) is responsible directly or indirectly for the increase in the average global temperature of the Earth. The presence of CFC is responsible for the depletion of ozone concentration in the atmosphere due to which the heat accompanied with the sun rays are less absorbed causing increase in the atmospheric temperature of the Earth. The increase in the temperature level directly or indirectly affects the dynamics of interacting species systems. Therefore, in this paper a mathematical model is proposed and analyzed using stability theory to asses the effects …

A New Approach For Computing Wz Factorization, Effat Golpar-Raboky

Applications and Applied Mathematics: An International Journal (AAM)

Linear systems arise frequently in scientific and engineering computing. Various serial and parallel algorithms have been introduced for their solution. This paper seeks to compute the WZ and the ZW factorizations of a nonsingular matrix A using the right inverse of nested submatrices of A. We introduce two new matrix factorizations, the QZ and the QW factorizations, and compute the factorizations using our proposed approach.

Further Results On Fractional Calculus Of Saigo Operators, Praveen Agarwal

Applications and Applied Mathematics: An International Journal (AAM)

A significantly large number of earlier works on the subject of fractional calculus give interesting account of the theory and applications of fractional calculus operators in many different areas of mathematical analysis (such as ordinary and partial differential equations, integral equations, special functions, summation of series, et cetera). The main object of the present paper is to study and develop the Saigo operators. First, we establish two results that give the image of the product of multivariable H-function and a general class of polynomials in Saigo operators. On account of the general nature of the Saigo operators, multivariable H-function and …

Numerical Studies For Solving Fractional Riccati Differential Equation, N. H. Sweilam, M. M. Khader, A. M. S. Mahdy

Applications and Applied Mathematics: An International Journal (AAM)

In this paper, finite difference method (FDM) and Pade'-variational iteration method (Pade'- VIM) are successfully implemented for solving the nonlinear fractional Riccati differential equation. The fractional derivative is described in the Caputo sense. The existence and the uniqueness of the proposed problem are given. The resulting nonlinear system of algebraic equations from FDM is solved by using Newton iteration method; moreover the condition of convergence is verified. The convergence's domain of the solution is improved and enlarged by Pade'-VIM technique. The results obtained by using FDM is compared with Pade'-VIM. It should be noted that the Pade'-VIM is preferable because …

Stretching A Surface Having A Layer Of Porous Medium In A Viscous Fluid, M. Sajid, Z. Abbas, N. Ali, T. Javed

Applications and Applied Mathematics: An International Journal (AAM)

The present analysis deals with the steady, incompressible flow of a viscous fluid over a stretching sheet having a layer of porous medium of uniform thickness. The two-dimensional flow equations are derived in a Cartesian coordinate system. The semi-infinite region filled with a viscous fluid is divided into two regions namely, a clear fluid region and a region having a uniform pores. Darcy's law has been used for the flow of fluid in the porous medium region. An exact similar solution of the problem is obtained. The obtained solution is constrained by a relation between the porosity parameter and the …