Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Us Coast And Geodetic Survey Aerial Photos From 1927, 1928, 1932, 1935, 1952 And 1954 Covering South Florida, Peter Harlem

Sea Level Rise Collection

Summary of the Dr. Harold R. Wanless collection of film copies and scanning project.

El Niño Southern Oscillation (Enso) Enhances Co2 Exchange Rates In Freshwater Marsh Ecosystems In The Florida Everglades, Sparkle L. Malone, Christina L. Staudhammer, Steve F. Oberbauer, Paulo Olivas, Michael G. Ryan, Jessice L. Schedlbauer, Henry W. Loescher, Gregory Starr

FCE LTER Journal Articles

This research examines the relationships between El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), water level, precipitation patterns and carbon dioxide (CO2) exchange rates in the freshwater wetland ecosystems of the Florida Everglades. Data was obtained over a 5-year study period (2009–2013) from two freshwater marsh sites located in Everglades National Park that differ in hydrology. At the short-hydroperiod site (Taylor Slough; TS) and the long-hydroperiod site (Shark River Slough; SRS) fluctuations in precipitation patterns occurred with changes in ENSO phase, suggesting that extreme ENSO phases alter Everglades hydrology which is known to have a substantial influence on ecosystem carbon dynamics. Variations in …

Language And Visual Perception Associations: Meta-Analytic Connectivity Modeling Of Brodmann Area 37, Alfredo Ardilla, Byron Bernal, Monica Rosselli

Nicole Wertheim College of Nursing and Health Sciences

Background. Understanding the functions of different brain areas has represented a major endeavor of neurosciences. Historically, brain functions have been associated with specific cortical brain areas; however, modern neuroimaging developments suggest cognitive functions are associated to networks rather than to areas. Objectives. The purpose of this paper was to analyze the connectivity of Brodmann area (BA) 37 (posterior, inferior, and temporal/fusiform gyrus) in relation to (1) language and (2) visual processing. Methods. Two meta-analyses were initially conducted (first level analysis).The first one was intended to assess the language network in which BA37 is involved. The second one was intended to …

Development Of A Lab-On-A-Chip Device For Rapid Nanotoxicity Assessment In Vitro, Pratikkumar Shah

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Increasing useof nanomaterials in consumer products and biomedical applications creates the possibilities of intentional/unintentional exposure to humans and the environment. Beyond the physiological limit, the nanomaterialexposure to humans can induce toxicity. It is difficult to define toxicity of nanoparticles on humans as it varies by nanomaterialcomposition, size, surface properties and the target organ/cell line. Traditional tests for nanomaterialtoxicity assessment are mostly based on bulk-colorimetric assays. In many studies, nanomaterials have found to interfere with assay-dye to produce false results and usually require several hours or days to collect results. Therefore, there is a clear need for alternative tools that can …

Differential Cross Section Measurements For The Production Of Awboson In Association With Jets In Proton–Proton Collisions At √S=7tev, Cms Collaboration, Cern, Switzerland, V. Gaultney, Samantha Hewamanage, Stephan Linn, Pete E. Markowitz, German Martinez, Jorge Luis Rodriguez

Department of Physics

Measurements are reported of differential cross sections for the production of a W boson, which decays into a muon and a neutrino, in association with jets, as a function of several variables, including the transverse momenta (pT) and pseudorapidities of the four leading jets, the scalar sum of jet transverse momenta (HT), and the difference in azimuthal angle between the directions of each jet and the muon. The data sample of pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7TeV was collected with the CMS detector at the LHC and corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 5.0fb−1. The measured cross sections …

Paris Talks: The Art Of Climate Communication, Phaedra Pezzullo

Sea Level Rise Collection

No abstract provided.

Measurement Of The Pp→Zzproduction Cross Section And Constraints On Anomalous Triple Gauge Couplings In Four-Lepton Final States At √S=8tev, Cms Collaboration, Cern, Switzerland, V. Gaultney, Samantha Hewamanage, Stephan Linn, Pete E. Markowitz, German Martinez, Jorge Luis Rodriguez

Department of Physics

A measurement of the inclusive ZZproduction cross section and constraints on anomalous triple gauge couplings in proton–proton collisions at √s=8TeVare presented. The analysis is based on a data sample, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 19.6fb−1, collected with the CMS experiment at the LHC. The measurements are performed in the leptonic decay modes ZZ →, where=e, μand =e, μ, τ. The measured total cross section σ(pp →ZZ) =7.7 ±0.5(stat)+0.5−0.4(syst)±0.4 (theo) ±0.2(lumi)pb, for both Zbosons produced in the mass range 60

Biosensors For Inorganic And Organic Arsenicals, Jian Chen, Barry P. Rosen

HWCOM Faculty Publications

Arsenic is a natural environmental contaminant to which humans are routinely exposed and is strongly associated with human health problems, including cancer, cardiovascular and neurological diseases. To date, a number of biosensors for the detection of arsenic involving the coupling of biological engineering and electrochemical techniques has been developed. The properties of whole-cell bacterial or cell-free biosensors are summarized in the present review with emphasis on their sensitivity and selectivity. Their limitations and future challenges are highlighted.

Search For New Resonances Decaying Via Wz To Leptons In Proton–Proton Collisions At √S=8 Tev, Cms Collaboration, Cern, Switzerland, Samantha Hewamanage, Stephan Linn, Pete E. Markowitz, German Martinez, Jorge Luis Rodriguez

Department of Physics

A search is performed in proton–proton collisions at √s=8TeVfor exotic particles decaying via WZ to fully leptonic final states with electrons, muons, and neutrinos. The data set corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 19.5fb−1. No significant excess is observed above the expected standard model background. Upper bounds at 95% confidence level are set on the production cross section of a Wboson as predicted by an extended gauge model, and on the WW Zcoupling. The expected and observed mass limits for a Wboson, as predicted by this model, are 1.55 and 1.47TeV, respectively. Stringent limits are also set in the context …

Non-Invasive Clinical Parameters For The Prediction Of Urodynamic Bladder Outlet Obstruction: Analysis Using Causal Bayesian Networks, Myong Kim, Abhilash Cheeti, Changwon Yoo, Minsoo Choo, Jae-Seung Paick, Seung-June Oh

School of Computing and Information Sciences

Purpose: To identify non-invasive clinical parameters to predict urodynamic bladder outlet obstruction (BOO) in patients with benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) using causal Bayesian networks (CBN). Subjects and Methods: From October 2004 to August 2013, 1,381 eligible BPH patients with complete data were selected for analysis. The following clinical variables were considered: age, total prostate volume (TPV), transition zone volume (TZV), prostate specific antigen (PSA), maximum flow rate (Qmax), and post-void residual volume (PVR) on uroflowmetry, and International Prostate Symptom Score (IPSS). Among these variables, the independent predictors of BOO were selected using the CBN model. The predictive performance of the …

An Alternative Goodness-Of-Fit Test For Normality With Unknown Parameters, Weiling Shi

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Goodness-of-fit tests have been studied by many researchers. Among them, an alternative statistical test for uniformity was proposed by Chen and Ye (2009). The test was used by Xiong (2010) to test normality for the case that both location parameter and scale parameter of the normal distribution are known. The purpose of the present thesis is to extend the result to the case that the parameters are unknown. A table for the critical values of the test statistic is obtained using Monte Carlo simulation. The performance of the proposed test is compared with the Shapiro-Wilk test and the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. …

Exploring The Use Of Everglades Agricultural Area Canal Water As Base Medium For The Mass Production Of Algae For Biofuels, Nina N. De La Rosa

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Freshwater use is a major concern in the mass production of algae for biofuels. This project examined the use of canal water obtained from the Everglades Agricultural Area as a base medium for the mass production of algae. This water is not suitable for human consumption, and it is currently used for crop irrigation. A variety of canals were found to be suitable for water collection. Comparison of two methods for algal production showed no significant difference in biomass accumulation. It was discovered that synthetic reticulated foam can be used for algal biomass collection and harvest, and there is potential …

Techniques For Efficient Execution Of Large-Scale Scientific Workflows In Distributed Environments, Selim Kalayci

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Scientific exploration demands heavy usage of computational resources for large-scale and deep analysis in many different fields. The complexity or the sheer scale of the computational studies can sometimes be encapsulated in the form of a workflow that is made up of numerous dependent components. Due to its decomposable and parallelizable nature, different components of a scientific workflow may be mapped over a distributed resource infrastructure to reduce time to results. However, the resource infrastructure may be heterogeneous, dynamic, and under diverse administrative control. Workflow management tools are utilized to help manage and deal with various aspects in the lifecycle …

Development Of A Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy Method For The Detection Of Benzodiazepines In Urine, Erika L. Doctor

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Benzodiazepines are among the most prescribed compounds for anti-anxiety and are present in many toxicological screens. These drugs are also prominent in the commission of drug facilitated sexual assaults due their effects on the central nervous system. Due to their potency, a low dose of these compounds is often administered to victims; therefore, the target detection limit for these compounds in biological samples is 10 ng/mL. Currently these compounds are predominantly analyzed using immunoassay techniques; however more specific screening methods are needed.

The goal of this dissertation was to develop a rapid, specific screening technique for benzodiazepines in urine samples …

Evidence Of Climate Variability And Tropical Cyclone Activity From Diatom Assemblage Dynamics In Coastal Southwest Florida, Emily R. Nodine

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Estuaries are dynamic on many spatial and temporal scales. Distinguishing effects of unpredictable events from cyclical patterns can be challenging but important to predict the influence of press and pulse drivers in the face of climate change. Diatom assemblages respond rapidly to changing environmental conditions and characterize change on multiple time scales. The goals of this research were to 1) characterize diatom assemblages in the Charlotte Harbor watershed, their relationships with water quality parameters, and how they change in response to climate; and 2) use assemblages in sediment cores to interpret past climate changes and tropical cyclone activity.

Diatom assemblages …

Habitat Use Of The Key Largo Woodrat (Neotoma Floridana Smalli), Lauren J. Barth

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Key Largo woodrats are an endangered subspecies with an extremely limited habitat. This study sought to understand woodrat habitat preferences in order to guide management. Woodrats build stick nests from natural and artificial materials, so nest distribution and nest occupancy were used as indicators of preference. Distribution was determined by nest surveys, and remote cameras were used to assess occupancy. Forest structure, human disturbance, nest, and animal presence metrics were also collected. More nests were found along abandoned roads than along forest transects and more artificial nests were occupied than natural nests. These findings indicate that woodrats prefer areas with …

A 5', 8-Cyclo-2'-Deoxypurine Lesion Induces Trinucleotide Repeat Deletion Via A Unique Lesion Bypass By Dna Polymerase Β., Meng Xu, Yanhao Lai, Zhongliang Jiang, Michael A. Terzidis, Annalisa Masi, Chryssostomos Chatgilialoglu, Yuan Liu

Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry

5′,8-cyclo-2′-deoxypurines (cdPus) are common forms of oxidized DNA lesions resulting from endogenous and environmental oxidative stress such as ionizing radiation. The lesions can only be repaired by nucleotide excision repair with a low efficiency. This results in their accumulation in the genome that leads to stalling of the replication DNA polymerases and poor lesion bypass by translesion DNA polymerases. Trinucleotide repeats (TNRs) consist of tandem repeats of Gs and As and therefore are hotspots of cdPus. In this study, we provided the first evidence that both (5′R)- and (5′S)-5′,8-cyclo-2′-deoxyadenosine (cdA) in a CAG repeat tract caused CTG repeat deletion exclusively …

Hacking The Curriculum: Creating Collaborative Classrooms, Robert E. Gutsche Jr.

Sea Level Rise Collection

Description of collaboration between FIU faculty students and high school students.

Development Of Presumptive And Confirmatory Analytical Methods For The Simultaneous Detection Of Multiple Improvised Explosives, Kelley L. Peters

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, there has been a dramatic increase in the use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) due to ease of synthesis and improved controls placed on commercial/military explosives. Commonly used materials for IED preparations include fertilizers and industrial chemicals containing oxidizers such as ClO₃^-, ClO₄^-, and NO₃^-, as well as other less stable compounds, such as peroxides. Due to these materials having a wide range of volatility, polarity, and composition, detection can be challenging, increasing the amount of time before any analytical information on the identity of the explosive can …

3d Navigation With Six Degrees-Of-Freedom Using A Multi-Touch Display, Francisco Raul Ortega

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

With the introduction of new input devices, such as multi-touch surface displays, the Nintendo WiiMote, the Microsoft Kinect, and the Leap Motion sensor, among others, the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) finds itself at an important crossroads that requires solving new challenges. Given the amount of three-dimensional (3D) data available today, 3D navigation plays an important role in 3D User Interfaces (3DUI). This dissertation deals with multi-touch, 3D navigation, and how users can explore 3D virtual worlds using a multi-touch, non-stereo, desktop display.

The contributions of this dissertation include a feature-extraction algorithm for multi-touch displays (FETOUCH), a multi-touch and gyroscope …

Novel Approaches For The Synthesis Of C-5 Modified Pyrimidine Nucleosides, Yong Liang

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The antiviral or anticancer activities of C-5 modified pyrimidine nucleoside analogues validate the need for the development of their syntheses. In the first half of this dissertation, I explore the Pd-catalyzed cross-coupling reaction of allylphenylgermanes with aryl halides in the presence of SbF₅/TBAF to give various biaryls by transferring multiple phenyl groups, which has also been applied to the 5-halo pyrimidine nucleosides for the synthesis of 5-aryl derivatives. To avoid the use of organometallic reagents, I developed Pd-catalyzed direct arylation of 5-halo pyrimidine nucleosides. It was discovered that 5-aryl pyrimidine nucleosides could be synthesized by Pd-catalyzed direct arylation …

Fall Update: See What We've Been Doing, Robert E. Gutsche Jr.

Sea Level Rise Collection

This post includes text related to the required October Interim Report for the Online News Association, which was submitted on October 28, 2014.

Text Analytics Of Social Media: Sentiment Analysis, Event Detection And Summarization, Chao Shen

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the last decade, large numbers of social media services have emerged and been widely used in people's daily life as important information sharing and acquisition tools. With a substantial amount of user-contributed text data on social media, it becomes a necessity to develop methods and tools for text analysis for this emerging data, in order to better utilize it to deliver meaningful information to users.

Previous work on text analytics in last several decades is mainly focused on traditional types of text like emails, news and academic literatures, and several critical issues to text data on social media have …

Search For Pair Production Of Third-Generation Scalar Leptoquarks And Top Squarks In Proton–Proton Collisions At √S=8tev, Cms Collaboration, Cern, Switzerland, Samantha Hewamanage, Stephan Linn, Pete E. Markowitz, German Martinez, Jorge Luis Rodriguez

Department of Physics

A search for pair production of third-generation scalar leptoquarks and supersymmetric top quark partners, top squarks, in final states involving tau leptons and bottom quarks is presented. The search uses events from a data sample of proton–proton collisions corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 19.7fb−1, collected with the CMS detector at the LHC with √s=8TeV. The number of observed events is found to be in agreement with the expected standard model background. Third-generation scalar leptoquarks with masses below 740GeV are excluded at 95% confidence level, assuming a 100% branching fraction for the leptoquark decay to a tau lepton and a …

New Bivariate Lifetime Distributions Based On Bath-Tub Shaped Failure Rate, Mengying Li

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A class of lifetime distributions which has received considerable attention in modelling and analysis of lifetime data is the class of lifetime distributions with bath-tub shaped failure rate functions because of their extensive applications. The purpose of this thesis was to introduce a new class of bivariate lifetime distributions with bath-tub shaped failure rates (BTFRFs). In this research, first we reviewed univariate lifetime distributions with bath-tub shaped failure rates, and several multivariate extensions of a univariate failure rate function. Then we introduced a new class of bivariate distributions with bath-tub shaped failure rates (hazard gradients). Specifically, the new class of …

Household Preferences For Financing Hurricane Risk Mitigation: A Survey Based Empirical Analysis, Damon Fitzgerald

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

After a series of major storms over the last 20 years, the state of financing for U.S. natural disaster insurance has undergone substantial disruptions causing many federal and state backed programs against residential property damage to become severally underfunded. In order to regain actuarial soundness, policy makers have proposed a shift to a system that reflects risk-based pricing for property insurance. We examine survey responses from 1394 single-family homeowners in the state of Florida for support of several natural disaster mitigation policy reforms. Utilizing a partial proportional odds model we test for effects of location, risk perception, socio-economic and housing …

Measurement Of The Ttproduction Cross Section In Pp Collisions At√S=8 Tev In Dilepton Final States Containing One Τ Lepton, Cms Collaboration, Cern, Switzerland, Samantha Hewamanage, Stephan Linn, Pete E. Markowitz, German Martinez, Jorge Luis Rodriguez

Department of Physics

The top-quark pair production cross section is measured in final states with one electron or muon and one hadronically decaying τlepton from the process tt→(ν)(τντ)bb, where =e, μ. The data sample corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 19.6fb−1collected with the CMS detector in proton–proton collisions at √s=8TeV. The measured cross section σtt=257 ±3(stat)±24(syst)±7(lumi)pb, assuming a top-quark mass of 172.5GeV, is consistent with the standard model prediction.

Eyes In The Sky: Alta Partners Begin To Capture Rising Seas, Robert E. Gutsche Jr.

Sea Level Rise Collection

FIU-ALTA Partnership Captures High-Resolution Images of SLR.

Media Alert: Students Build Water Sensors In Prep For King Tide Day, Robert E. Gutsche Jr.

Sea Level Rise Collection

Announcement of collaborative work between the MAST@FIU BBC and FIU's School of Journalism and Mass Communication for King Tide Day events on October 9, 2015.

Applying Downscaled Global Climate Model Data To A Hydrodynamic Surface-Water And Groundwater Model, Eric Swain, Lydia Stefanova, Thomas Smith

FCE LTER Journal Articles

Precipitation data from Global Climate Models have been downscaled to smaller regions. Adapting this downscaled precipitation data to a coupled hydrodynamic surface-water/groundwater model of southern Florida allows an examination of future conditions and their effect on groundwater levels, inundation patterns, surface-water stage and flows, and salinity. The downscaled rainfall data include the 1996-2001 time series from the European Center for MediumRange Weather Forecasting ERA-40 simulation and both the 1996-1999 and 2038-2057 time series from two global climate models: the Community Climate System Model (CCSM) and the Geophysical Fluid Dynamic Laboratory (GFDL). Synthesized surface-water inflow datasets were developed for the 2038-2057 …