Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Carbon Farming In Wa, Department Of Agriculture And Food, Western Australia, Department Of Regional Development And Lands, Western Australia

Natural resources published reports

Fact sheets:

1. Applying biochar to improve soil quality and crop productivity

2. Reducing methane emissions from cattle using feed additives

3. Cattle breeding for lower greenhouse gas emissions

4. Managing genetic codes to reduce methane emissions from cattle

5. Managing pastures and stocking rate to reduce methane emissions from cattle

6. Claying as a method of increasing soil carbon content

7. Green and brown manuring as part of carbon farming

8. Permanent environmental plantings to earn carbon credits

9. Nitrous oxide emissions from agricultural soils

10. Sheep genetics in methane reduction

11. Managing sheep pastures to reduce methane production …

Distributions Of Particulate Heme B In The Atlantic And Southern Oceans- Implications For Electron Transport In Phytoplankton, Martha Gledhill, Eric P. Achterberg, David J. Honey, Maria C. Nielsdottir, Micha J.A. Rijkenberg

OES Faculty Publications

Concentrations of heme b, the iron-containing component of b-type hemoproteins, ranged from b concentrations were enhanced in the photic zone and decreased with depth. Heme b concentrations correlated positively with chlorophyll a (chl a) in the TNA (r=0.41, pb did not correlate with chl a in the IB or SS. In the IB and SS, stations with high-chlorophyll and low-nutrient (Fe and/or Si) concentrations exhibited low heme bconcentrations relative to particulate organic carbon (< 0.1 μmolmol^-1, and high chl a:heme b ratios (> 500). High chl a:heme b ratios resulted from relative decreases in …

Contractional Tectonics : The Himalayan Orogen And Perdido Fold-Thrust Belt, Dian He

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on the kinematic evolution of two major categories of contractional tectonics: collisional orogenic belts and toe structures of passive margins, which are characterized by fold-thrust belts that are hundreds of kilometer-scale and tens of kilometer-scale, respectively. The Himalayan orogen is an excellent example of collisional orogenic belts along convergent plate boundaries. It is commonly structurally defined as three stacked units separated by two fault systems: the Main Central thrust (MCT) and South Tibet detachment (STD). The development and emplacement of the middle unit, the Himalayan crystalline core, has long been debated within the extrusion framework, a process …

Advancing The Field Of Polypeptoids Through The Synthesis Of Novel Architectures And Thermoresponsive Polymers, Samuel Henry Lahasky

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Peptidomimetic polymers are an emerging class of polymers that are structurally related to polypeptides. Due to their structural similarities, these polymers can be used to study some of the physical aspects of polypeptides (for example, protein folding). They are also increasingly being used in the fields of biology and drug-delivery. Some members of peptidomimetic polymers include polyacrylamides, polyoxazolines and polypeptoids. Polymer synthesis and characterization has been performed for both polyacrylamides and polyoxazolines, with research dating back to the 1950s and 1980s respectively. Research in the field of polypeptoids has not been as extensive; however, emerging synthetic strategies are allowing for …

Toward Digitizing The Human Experience : A New Resource For Natural Language Processing, Jerry Scott Weltman

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

A long-standing goal of Artificial Intelligence is to program computers that understand natural language. A basic obstacle is that computers lack the common sense that even small children acquire simply by experiencing life, and no one has devised a way to program this experience into a computer. This dissertation presents a methodology and proof-of-concept software system that enables non-experts, with some training, to create simple experiences. For the purposes of this dissertation, an experience is a series of time-ordered comic frames, annotated with the changing intentional and physical states of the characters and objects in each frame. Each frame represents …

Amplifying Conjugated Polymers For Fluorescent Chemosensing, Deepa Pangeni

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Chemo- and biosensors based on fluorescent conjugated polymers benefit from greater detection sensitivity due to amplification of the electronic perturbations produced by analyte binding. This amplification stems from the exciton-transporting properties of conjugated polymers. In the conventional sensor design paradigm, excitons migrate from the bulk of the polymer to the analyte binding sites which can be either fluorescence quenching sites (turn-off sensors) or lower energy fluorophores (turn-on sensors). In this dissertation, we proposed an alternative design paradigm when analyte binding creates a higher energy gap site in the polymer backbone. In the case of isolated polymer chains in dilute solution, …

Scanning Probe Investigations Of The Surface Self-Assembly Of Organothiols And Organosilanes Using Nanoscale Lithography, Tian Tian

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Particle lithography and scanning probe lithography were applied to study the kinetics and mechanisms of surface self-assembly processes. Organothiols on Au(111) and organosilane on Si(111) were chosen as model systems for investigations at the nanoscale using atomic force microscopy (AFM). Fundamental insight of structure/property interrelationships and understanding the properties of novel materials are critical for developments with molecular devices. Methods using an AFM probe for nanofabrication have been applied successfully to prepare sophisticated molecular architectures with high reproducibility and spatial precision. The established capabilities of AFM-based nanografting were reviewed for inscribing patterns of diverse composition, to generate complicated surface designs …

Magnetic Deflections Of Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays From Centaurus A, Azadeh Keivani

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The origin and mass composition of ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) are among the mysteries of particle astrophysics. Since UHECRs are mostly or entirely charged particles, they will be deflected in cosmic magnetic fields on their way to Earth. UHECR deflections in the Galactic magnetic fields (GMF) should be considered to identify their origin and nature.

The calculated Galactic magnetic deflections of UHECRs from a source strongly depend on the GMF model. I use the recent GMF model of Jansson and Farrar (JF12), a 35-parameter model which includes coherent, striated and random components and is constrained by WMAP7 Galactic synchrotron …

Are 34s-Enriched Authigenic Sulfide Minerals A Proxy For Elevated Methane Flux And Gas Hydrates In The Geologic Record?, Walter S. Borowski, Nancy M. Rodriguez, Charles K. Paull, William Ussler Iii

EKU Faculty and Staff Scholarship

The sulfate–methane transition (SMT) zone is a diagenetic transition within anoxic marine sediments created by the metabolic activity of a consortium of sulfate-reducing bacteria and methane-oxidizing Archaea. As interstitial dissolved sulfate is consumed by microbially mediated sulfate reduction of sedimentary organic matter (SOM) and anaerobic oxidation of methane (AOM) large enrichments of ³⁴S occur in the interstitial sulfate pool. These isotopic enrichments are transmitted to the dissolved sulfide pool (∑HS⁻) and subsequently into sulfide minerals (So, ∼FeS, FeS₂).

We investigate the sulfur isotopic composition of pore-water sulfate and sulfide minerals at three sites underlain …

A Comparison Of Raman, Ftir And Atr-Ftir Micro Spectroscopy For Imaging Human Skin Tissue Sections., Syed Mehmood Ali, Franck Bonnier, Helen Lambkin, Kathleen Flynn, V Mcdonagh, Claragh Healy, T C. Lee, Fiona Lyng, Hugh Byrne

Articles

Raman and Infrared absorption spectroscopies are compared for the analysis of human hand skin tissue sections. The tissue sections have been formalin fixed and paraffin processed, and subsequently dewaxed. Fourier Transform infrared (FTIR) spectra are preprocessed using the resonant Mie – extended multiplicative scattering algorithm to remove spectral artefacts. FTIR images of resolution 4cm^-1, analysed using K-means cluster analysis, reveal the double layer structure of the dermis and epidermis, but no further layer differentiation is achieved using the higher spatial resolution of the Attenuated Total Reflection imaging or improved spectral resolution of 2cm^-1. At comparable spectral …

Raman Spectroscopy In Nanomedicine: Current Status And Future Perspectives, Hugh Byrne, Mark Keating

Articles

Raman spectroscopy is a branch of vibration spectroscopy which is capable of probing the chemical composition of materials. Recent advances in Raman microscopy have added significantly to the range of applications which now extend from medical diagnostics to exploring interfaces between biological organisms and nanomaterials. In this review, Raman is introduced in a general context, highlighting some of the areas in which the technique has found success in the past, as well as some of the potential benefits it offers over other analytical modalities. The subset of Raman techniques which specifically probe the nanoscale, namely Surface Enhanced and Tip Enhanced …

Raman Micro Spectroscopy Study Of The Interaction Of Vincristine With A549 Cells Supported By Expression Analysis Of Bcl-2 Protein, Haq Nawaz, Amaya Garcia, Aidan Meade, Fiona Lyng, Hugh Byrne

Articles

Understanding the interaction of anticancer drugs with model cell lines is important to elucidate the mode of action of these drugs as well as to develop cost effective and rapid screening methods. Raman spectroscopy has been demonstrated to be a valuable technique for high throughput, noninvasive analysis. The interaction of vincristine with a human lung adenocarcinoma cell line (A549)was investigated using Raman micro spectroscopy. The results were correlated with parallel measurements from the MTT cytotoxicity assay, which yielded an IC₅₀ value of 0.10 ± 0.03 μM. The Raman spectral data acquired from vincristine treated A549 cells was analysed to …

The Bio-Nano-Interface In Predicting Nanoparticle Fate And Behaviour In Living Organisms: Towards Grouping And Categorising Nanomaterials And Ensuring Nanosafety By Design, Hugh Byrne, Arti Ahluwalia, Diana Boraschi,, Bengt Fadeel, Peter Gehr, Arno C. Gutleb, Michaela Kendall, Manthos Papadopoulos, Iseult Lynch

Articles

In biological media, nanoparticles acquire a coating of biomolecules (proteins, lipids, polysaccharides) from their surroundings, which reduces their surface energy and confers a biological identity to the particles. This adsorbed layer is the interface between the nanomaterial and living systems and therefore plays a significant role in determining the fate and behaviour of the nanoparticles. This review summarises the state of the art in terms of understanding the bio-nano interface and provides direction for potential future research directions and some recommendations for future priorities and strategies to support the safe implementation of nanotechnologies. The central premise is that nanomaterials must …

Mass Spectrometric Analysis Of Oxidized Eicosapentaenoic Acid Sodium Salt, Kelsey D. Jordan, Rita K. Upmacis

Faculty Papers and Publications

Eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) is an omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) with 20 carbon atoms and 5 carbon-carbon double bonds. Mammalian cells cannot synthesize long chain PUFAs such as EPA de novo, and, thus, the most effective way to enrich cells in EPA is by dietary intake of fish oils. EPA supplementation causes an increase in its concentration in plasma lipids and in cell membrane phospholipids. Many beneficial effects of EPA supplementation have been noted, including (1) the potential to sensitize cancerous tumors towards chemotherapy, (2) the promotion of cardiovascular health, and (3) the alleviation of some mental disorders, but results …

Effects Of Micro-Solvation On Room Temperature Ionic Liquids, Joseph Wellington Golden

Honors Theses

Room temperature ionic liquids (RTILs) have received much attention lately. These compounds are made completely of ions and are liquid at or near room temperature. These liquid salts have a number of unique properties that make them an interesting system to study. These properties include almost zero vapor pressure, thermal stability, large liquidus range, etc. Due to these properties and others, ionic liquids (ILs) have attracted much attention in the emerging field of green chemistry as potentially new solvents for many of the hazardous and volatile solvents currently in use. Moreover, the complex interactions of the anion and cation systems …

Equivalences Of Dessins D'Enfants, Rachel M. Volkert

Honors Program Theses

Dessins d'enfants are bipartite graphs with a cyclic ordering given to the set of edges that meet at each vertex. Merling and Perlis presented a method by which to construct pairs of dessins d'enfants using the permutations induced by the action of a finite group on the cosets of two locally conjugate subgroups of that group. They called these pairs of dessins Gassmann equivalent and investigated some of their properties. First, we discuss several properties of pairs of dessins that imply Gassmann equivalence. Then, using elementwise conjugate subgroups, we introduce and investigate a weaker type of equivalence of dessins, which …

A Study In Merger Induced Galaxy Evolution Through Post-Starburst Systems, Zachary Dean Griffith

Honors Program Theses

We discuss an optical study of a triple galaxy system at a redshift of 0.06. In optical images from Data Release 7 of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), the system consists of a close pair plus another galaxy at a projected distance of 35 kpc. Tidal features extending at least 30 kpc are visible to the southeast of both the galaxy pair and the third member of the system, suggesting significant interaction. One of the the pair and the more isolated galaxy are low-luminosity radio sources. The lone galaxy appears extended in a radio map from the FIRST survey. …

Clean Up Our Home: Ellen Swallow Richards' Human Ecology And Emerging Environmental Ideologies, 1890-1915, Raeann Lillian Swanson

Honors Program Theses

In the late 1880s, after years of study and hard work, Ellen Richards began publishing her ideas on the home and the natural and urban environment. She called for the knowledge of basic scientific principles to be available to everyone. She believed that ignorance was holding back the public from altering their environment to make life healthier, happier, and safer. Over one hundred years later, Malcolm Gladwell wrote the book The Tipping Point. In his book, Gladwell explores the Broken Windows Theory that social scientists claimed they developed in the 1980s. The Broken Windows Theory states that there is a …

Analysis Of Mathematical Descriptions Of Gravitational Microlensing, Sarah Michelle Pearce

Honors Program Theses

This thesis will provide an analysis of some aspects of gravitational microlensing and the quantitative descriptions used to model the astrophysical systems involved. One aspect of the mathematical description of micro lensing events that is investigated in this thesis is the evolution of micro lensing equations from the formalism of general relativity. The derivation of these equations from those governing general relativity and the bending of light rays in geometric optics is explicitly determined. The relationship between the equations used to model events and the light curves produced is investigated. The effect of degeneracies in the mathematical equations used to …

Developing Crochet Patterns For Surfaces Of Non-Constant Curvature, Katherine Lea Pearce

Honors Program Theses

The purpose of this project is to develop an algorithm to create crochet patterns for a variety of surfaces. I start with surfaces of constant curvature: the Euclidean surface and the sphere. Then, I generate patterns for surfaces of revolution by calculating the change in circumference for each row of stitches. My methods suggest an approach to crochet more surfaces such as surfaces whose cross section is not a circle. This research demonstrates how crochet can act as a discrete model of differential geometry. Producing these patterns allows for further research into the surfaces themselves by providing accurate models as …

A Bank Erosion Hazard Index (Behi) Study Of Dry Run Creek, Cedar Falls, Iowa, Cara Wright

Honors Program Theses

Dry Run Creek is a watershed located in Cedar Falls; Iowa and it is on a list of the state's impaired waterways. One reason it may be impaired is that there is excessive erosion in the stream. This study assessed the Bank Erosion Hazard Index of portions of the creek to determine erosion hotspots. The majority of the banks in all the branches had a Low score, meaning that the BEHI was less than 11.9. The minimum BEHI score is O and the maximum score is 40. The lower the score, the better the condition of the bank. Portions of …

An Effective Field Theory Calculation Of N(P, D)Γ Cross-Section For Big Bang Nucleo-Synthesis, Rasha Adnan Kamand

Theses and Dissertations

Studying the nuclear reaction n(p,d)γ and calculating its cross-section is not only a matter of interest from theoretical particle physics point of view but also from the viewpoint of cosmology. We now know that the universe is made up of only 5% baryonic matter. So, computing the density of baryons is of particular importance to physicists in general and cosmologists in particular. Deuterium production during Big Bang Nucleo-synthesis (BBN) is very sensitive to the density of baryons, thus baryon density can be inferred from the abundance of deuterium. In order to calculate deuterium abundance one needs to use the cross-section …

Quantifying The Impact Of Various Radioactive Background Sources On Germanium-76 Zero-Neutrino-Double-Beta-Decay Experiments, Katarina Leila Mizouni

Theses and Dissertations

The goal of searching for 0vBB-decay is to probe an absolute neutrino mass scale suggested by the mass-splitting parameters observed by neutrino oscillation experiments. Furthermore, observation of 0vBB-decay is an explicit instance of lepton-number non-conservation. To detect the rare events such as 0vBB-decay, half-lives of the order of 10^25-10^27 years have to be probed. Using an active detector with a large volume, such as hundreds of kilograms of HPGe in the case of MAJORANA, and taking efficient measures to mitigate background of cosmic and primordial origins are necessary for the success of a sensitive 0vBB-decay experiment.

One focus of the …

Applications Of The Lopsided Lovász Local Lemma Regarding Hypergraphs, Austin Tyler Mohr

Theses and Dissertations

The Lovász local lemma is a powerful and well-studied probabilistic technique useful in establishing the possibility of simultaneously avoiding every event in some collection. A principle limitation of the lemma's application is that it requires most events to be independent of one another. The lopsided local lemma relaxes the requirement of independence to negative dependence, which is more general but also more difficult to identify. We will examine general classes of negative dependent events involving maximal matchings of uniform hypergraphs, partitions of sets, and spanning trees of complete graphs. The results on hypergraph matchings (together with the configuration model of …

Study On Covolume-Upwind Finite Volume Approximations For Linear Parabolic Partial Differential Equations, Rosalia Tatano

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis we solve two-dimensional linear parabolic partial differential equations with pure Dirichelet boundary conditions, using the bilinear covolume-upwind finite volume method on rectangular grids to discretize the spatial variables and the Crank-Nicholson method for the time variable. These PDEs provide a model for problems from various fields of engineering and applied sciences, such as unsteady viscous flow problems, the simulation of oil extraction from underground reservoirs, transport of air and ground water pollutants and modeling of semiconductor devices. Finite volume method has the important advantage of allowing the conversion of integrations over the control volume to integrations over …

Coloring Pythagorean Triples And A Problem Concerning Cyclotomic Polynomials, Daniel White

Theses and Dissertations

One may easily show that there exist $O( \log n)$-colorings of $\{1,2, \ldots, n\}$ such that no Pythagorean triple with elements $\le n$ is monochromatic. In Chapter~\ref{CH:triples}, we investigate two analogous ideas. First, we find an asymptotic bound for the number of colors required to color $\{1,2,\ldots ,n\}$ so that every Pythagorean triple with elements $\le n$ is $3$-colored. Afterwards, we examine the case where we allow a vanishing proportion of Pythagorean triples with elements $\le n$ to fail to have this property.

Unrelated, in 1908, Schur raised the question of the irreducibility over $\Q$ of polynomials of the form …

Review Of Us And Eu Initiatives Toward Development, Demonstration, And Commercialization Of Lignocellulosic Biofuels, Venkatesh Balan, David Chiaramonti, Sandeep Kumar

Civil & Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Advanced biofuels produced from lignocellulosic biomass offer an exciting opportunity to produce renewable liquid transportation fuels, biochemicals, and electricity from locally available agriculture and forest residues. The growing interest in biofuels from lignocellulosic feedstock in the United States (US) and the European Union (EU) can provide a path forward toward replacing petroleum-based fuels with sustainable biofuels which have the potential to lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The selection of biomass conversion technologies along with feedstock development plays a crucial role in the commercialization of next-generation biofuels. There has been synergy and, even with similar basic process routes, diversity in the …

Quasinovo: Algorithms For De Novo Peptide Sequencing, James Paul Cleveland

Theses and Dissertations

High-throughput proteomics analysis involves the rapid identification and characterization of large sets of proteins in complex biological samples. Tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) has become the leading approach for the experimental identification of proteins. Accurate analysis of the data produced is a computationally challenging process that relies on a complex understanding of molecular dynamics, signal processing, and pattern classification. In this work we address these modeling and classification problems, and introduce an additional data-driven evolutionary information source into the analysis pipeline.

The particular problem being solved is peptide sequencing via MS/MS. The objective in solving this problem is to decipher the …

Insects As Indicators Of Environmental Stress, De Anna Estella Beasley

Theses and Dissertations

In the face of climate change-related events and anthropogenic disturbances, understanding the impacts of these events on species richness, abundance and distribution is important for us to mitigate biodiversity loss and better predict consequences for the environment and for human life. Insects are excellent models for understanding the consequences of environmental stress due to the sensitivity of their development and behavior. The overall focus of my dissertation research is the investigation of fluctuating asymmetry and oviposition behavior as indicators of environmental stress. My research includes a meta-analysis of published literature, and empirical research that was part of a collaborative initiative …

The Reproductive Ecology Of Plethodontid Salamanders In The South Carolina Inner Coastal Plain, Heather Rena Oswald

Theses and Dissertations

Nest- site selection is a critical process in the life history of amphibians, directly influencing offspring survival and parental fitness. When and where an amphibian chooses to nest is strongly influenced by a range of environmental cues. We monitored plethodontid salamander breeding behavior in seepage wetlands in the South Carolina inner Coastal Plain. Seepage wetlands are ideal for monitoring semiaquatic salamander breeding, because they provide habitat for both larval and adult salamanders while having relatively predictable, constant water temperatures and presence year round. We observed the breeding phenology of three sympatric salamanders (Eurycea cirrigera, Desmognathus auriculatus, and Pseudotriton ruber) in …