Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

High Dimensional Non-Linear Optimization Of Molecular Models, Joseph C. Fogarty

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Molecular models allow computer simulations to predict the microscopic properties of macroscopic systems. Molecular modeling can also provide a fully understood test system for the application of theoretical methods. The power of a model lies in the accuracy of the parameter values which govern its mathematical behavior. In this work, a new software, called ParOpt, for general high dimensional non-linear optimization will be presented. The software provides a very general framework for the optimization of a wide variety of parameter sets. The software is especially powerful when applied to the difficult task of molecular model parameter optimization. Three applications of …

Wordless Intervention For Epilepsy In Learning Disabilities (Wield): Study Protocol For A Randomized Controlled Feasibility Trial, Marie-Anne Durand, Bob Gates, Georgina Parkes, Asif Zia

Dartmouth Scholarship

Epilepsy is the most common neurological problem that affects people with learning disabilities. The high seizure frequency, resistance to treatments, associated skills deficit and co-morbidities make the management of epilepsy particularly challenging for people with learning disabilities. The Books Beyond Words booklet for epilepsy uses images to help people with learning disabilities manage their condition and improve quality of life. Our aim is to conduct a randomized controlled feasibility trial exploring key methodological, design and acceptability issues, in order to subsequently undertake a large-scale randomized controlled trial of the Books Beyond Words booklet for epilepsy.

Exploring Variability In Population Dynamics And The Influence Of Environmental Factors On Recruitment Of An Estuarine Fish, Elizabeth Herdter Smith

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The focus of this dissertation was to explore variability in population dynamics and environmental factors influential to recruitment of spotted seatrout in Florida with the end goal of testing the incorporation of select environmental variables into the current regional stock assessment models for spotted seatrout. In Chapter 2, I compared the age and size structure of six estuary populations of this species and determined whether there was significant spatial covariation in recruitment. The results of this chapter indicated that the dynamics of each local estuary population are governed more likely by environmental factors than genetic similarities. Further, they suggest that …

Top Of The Order: Modeling The Optimal Locations Of Minor League Baseball Teams, W. Coleman Conley

Undergraduate Economic Review

Over the last twenty-five years, minor league baseball franchises have defined firm mobility. Revisiting the work of Michael C. Davis (2006), I construct a logistic regression model to predict which cities house minor league baseball teams. Six variables are tested for inclusion in the model, including population, income level, the number of major-league professional sports teams in a city, five-year population change, and distance from the closest professional team. Based on the model's predicted probabilities, cities are ranked in order of highest probability of having a team at each of the different levels from Class A to Class AAA.

Constrained Bayesian Estimation Of Inverse Probability Weights For Nonmonotone Missing Data, Baoluo Sun, Eric J. Tchetgen Tchetgen

Harvard University Biostatistics Working Paper Series

No abstract provided.

It's A Small World After All – And We're All Connected, Alaina Bernard

UCF Forum

We’ve probably all had the song “it’s a small world” stuck in our heads after visiting Fantasyland at Walt Disney World. This simple song highlights how we all are connected, and was created to promote the message of international peace and inclusion of diversity. Walt Disney sped up the tempo from the original version and made it more cheery, but it is arguably a simple message that we continue to strive for decades later.

Metallopeptides From Design To Catalysis: Structure, Oxidative Activities, And Inhibition Studies Of Designed And Naturally Occurring Metallopeptides, Alaa Hassan Hashim

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Structural and mechanistic complexities of copper-dioxygen systems have attracted much attention in the field of bioinorganic chemistry, both in model systems and trapped protein intermediates. The research presented herein is focused on model and naturally occurring metallopeptide systems, from its design to catalysis. Copper is used as the coordinating metal ion, with cobalt and zinc as probes for metal binding. The bioinorganic chemistry of copper proteins and its coordination and spectroscopic properties are briefly discussed in chapter 1. The next two chapters are centered on the de novo design of a minimalistic metallopeptide system with an amino acid sequence of …

Mantle-Crust Interaction In Granite Petrogenesis In Post-Collisional Settings: Insights From The Danubian Variscan Plutons Of The Romanian Southern Carpathians, Ciprian Cosmin Stremtan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The issue of granite petrogenesis plays a key role in our overall understanding of the growth and differentiation of continents, as well as in our ability to unravel the tectonic histories of orogenic belts. Granites are ubiquitous magmatic products found in almost all tectonic settings: oceanic and continental rifts (i.e., plagiogranites - extreme basalt differentiates), active continental margins (e.g,. the granitic batholiths of central and southern Andes), continent-continent collision zones (e.g., the orogenic batholiths of the Himalayas, Western Anatolia), post-collisional settings (e.g., the Variscan provinces of Europe), complex within-plates settings (e.g., Limmo massif, Afar, Ethiopia). Furthermore, granitoids are characterized by …

Cosm News, Georgia Southern University

College of Science & Mathematics: News & Publications (2012-2022)

• Grad Student & Professor featured in GS Foundation Annual Report

Co(Ii) Based Metalloradical Catalysis: Carbene And Nitrene Transfer Reactions, Joseph B. Gill

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Radical chemistry has attracted a large amount of research interest over the last few decades and radical reactions have recently been recognized as powerful tools for organic synthesis. The synthetic applications of radicals have been demonstrated in many fields, including in the synthesis of complex natural products. Radical reactions have a number of inherent synthetic advantages over their ionic counterparts. For example, they typically proceed at fast reaction rates under mild and neutral conditions in a broad spectrum of solvents and show significantly greater functional group tolerance. Furthermore, radical processes have the capability of performing in a cascade fashion, allowing …

U.S. Drought Monitor, November 18, 2014, Eric Luebehusen

United States Agricultural Commodities in Drought Archive

Drought map of U.S. for November 18, 2014 (11/18/14) plus: U.S. crop areas experiencing drought (map), Approximate percentage of crop located in drought, by state (bar graph), Percent of crop area located in drought, past 52 weeks (line graph) for: Corn, Soybeans, Hay, Cattle, Winter wheat.

Testing Gene-Environment Interactions In The Presence Of Measurement Error, Chongzhi Di, Li Hsu, Charles Kooperberg, Alex Reiner, Ross Prentice

UW Biostatistics Working Paper Series

Complex diseases result from an interplay between genetic and environmental risk factors, and it is of great interest to study the gene-environment interaction (GxE) to understand the etiology of complex diseases. Recent developments in genetics field allows one to study GxE systematically. However, one difficulty with GxE arises from the fact that environmental exposures are often measured with error. In this paper, we focus on testing GxE when the environmental exposure E is subject to measurement error. Surprisingly, contrast to the well-established results that the naive test ignoring measurement error is valid in testing the main effects, we find that …

Tools For Managing The Past Web, Michele C. Weigle, Michael L. Nelson, Yasmin Alnoamany, Ahmed Alsum, Justin Brunelle, Mat Kelly, Hany Salaheldeen

Computer Science Presentations

PDF of a powerpoint presentation from the Archive-It Partners Meeting in Montgomery, Alabama, November 18, 2014. Also available on Slideshare.

Electrostatic Breakdown Analysis, Sam Hansen

Senior Theses and Projects

Materials potentially suitable for spacecraft construction were exposed to electrostatic discharge in the USU Materials Physics Group lab, with hopes of identifying samples that possess greater resistance to breakdown. Breakdown shape and size may be important to determining material suitability for spacecraft construction [1]. The discharge damage sites of tested samples were examined, measured and logged into a matrix file for data analysis. Once logged, data was sorted within the matrix and compared graphically to identify trends.

Electrostatic Breakdown Analysis, Sam Hansen, Jr Dennison, Allen Andersen

Senior Theses and Projects

Materials potentially suitable for spacecraft construction were exposed to electrostatic discharge in the USU Materials Physics Group lab, with hopes of identifying samples that possess greater resistance to breakdown. Breakdown shape and size may be important to determining material suitability for spacecraft construction [1]. The discharge damage sites of tested samples were examined, measured and logged into a matrix file for data analysis. Once logged, data was sorted within the matrix and compared graphically to identify trends.

Anonymized Video Analysis Methods And Systems, Marjorie Skubic, James M. Keller, Fang Wang, Derek T. Anderson, Erik Stone, Robert H. Luke Iii, Tanvi Banerjee, Marilyn J. Rantz

Kno.e.sis Publications

Methods and systems for anonymized video analysis are described. In one embodiment, a first silhouette image of a person in a living unit may be accessed. The first silhouette image may be based on a first video signal recorded by a first video camera. A second silhouette image of the person in the living unit may be accessed. The second silhouette image may be of a different view of the person than the first silhouette image. The second silhouette image may be based on a second video signal recorded by a second video camera. A three-dimensional model of the person …

Vegetation Controls On Weathering Intensity During The Last Deglacial Transition In Southeast Africa, Sarah J. Ivory, Michael M. Mcglue, Geoffrey S. Ellis, Anne-Marie Lézine, Andrew S. Cohen, Annie Vincens

Earth and Environmental Sciences Faculty Publications

Tropical climate is rapidly changing, but the effects of these changes on the geosphere are unknown, despite a likelihood of climatically-induced changes on weathering and erosion. The lack of long, continuous paleo-records prevents an examination of terrestrial responses to climate change with sufficient detail to answer questions about how systems behaved in the past and may alter in the future. We use high-resolution records of pollen, clay mineralogy, and particle size from a drill core from Lake Malawi, southeast Africa, to examine atmosphere-biosphere-geosphere interactions during the last deglaciation (~ 18-9 ka), a period of dramatic temperature and hydrologic changes. The …

Magneto-Optical Kerr Eect Study Of Magnetic Anisotropy In Soft Ferromagnets, Tatiana Marie Eggers

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The continued progress of modern information technology relies on understanding the influence of magnetic anisotropy on magnetic thin films. In this work, two sources of magnetic anisotropy are examined in two different soft ferromagnets: a uniaxial anisotropy induced during the fabrication of Ni₈₀Fe₂₀ and exchange anisotropy, or exchange bias, which occurs at the interface of Ni₇₇Fe₁₄Cu₅Mo₄/Fe₅₀Mn₅₀ bilayer. A home-built Magneto-optical Kerr effect magnetometer is used to measure the magnetic response of the soft ferromagnetic films and details of its construction are also discussed. A simple model …

Paraxial Ray Optics Cloaking, Joseph S. Choi, John C. Howell

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

Despite much interest and progress in optical spatial cloaking, a three-dimensional (3D), transmitting, continuously multidirectional cloak in the visible regime has not yet been demonstrated. Here we experimentally demonstrate such a cloak using ray optics, albeit with some edge effects. Our device requires no new materials, uses isotropic off-the-shelf optics, scales easily to cloak arbitrarily large objects, and is as broadband as the choice of optical material, all of which have been challenges for current cloaking schemes. In addition, we provide a concise formalism that quantifies and produces perfect optical cloaks in the small-angle (‘paraxial’) limit.

Cosm News, Georgia Southern University

College of Science & Mathematics: News & Publications (2012-2022)

• Biology Student & Faculty featured in GS Foundation Annual Report

Water Scarcity In The Jordan River Basin, Matthew Cook

Scholarly Horizons: University of Minnesota, Morris Undergraduate Journal

The watershed of the Jordan River stretches over four countries – Jordan, Syria, Israel, and Lebanon – and includes the region of Palestine. With the land and its resources hotly contested by all parties involved, the dwindling supply of drinking and irrigation water from viable sources has led to scrambling exploitation, leaving the river and its connected lakes in an ever-worsening state of deterioration. Increased suspended solids, presence of toxin-producing cyanobacteria, and accelerated evapotranspiration have led to a slower, shallower, murkier, and lower health quality trickle taking the place of the once-revered River Jordan (Comair et al., “Watershed Delineation” …

Evolution Of Acyl-Substrate Recognition By A Family Of Acyl-Homoserine Lactone Synthases, Quin H. Christensen, Ryan M. Brecht, Dastagiri Dudekula, E. Peter Greenberg, Rajesh Nagarajan

Chemistry and Biochemistry Faculty Publications and Presentations

Members of the LuxI protein family catalyze synthesis of acyl-homoserine lactone (acyl-HSL) quorum sensing signals from S-adenosyl-L-methionine and an acyl thioester. Some LuxI family members prefer acyl-CoA, and others prefer acyl-acyl carrier protein (ACP) as the acyl-thioester substrate. We sought to understand the evolutionary history and mechanisms mediating this substrate preference. Our phylogenetic and motif analysis of the LuxI acyl-HSL synthase family indicates that the acyl-CoA-utilizing enzymes evolved from an acyl-ACP-utilizing ancestor. To further understand how acyl-ACPs and acyl-CoAs are recognized by acyl-HSL synthases we studied BmaI1, an octanoyl-ACP-dependent LuxI family member from Burkholderia mallei, and BjaI, an …

University Professors’ Perceptions About The Impact Of Integrating Google Applications On Students’ Communication And Collaboration Skills, Jacqueline L. Cahill

Journal of Research Initiatives

A qualitative research study was conducted and data were collected by interviewing university professors on their perceptions about the impact of integrating Google Apps, as a means of classroom instructional delivery, on students’ communication and collaboration skills. The participants consisted of eight university professors from a major university, who integrate, or had previously integrated at least two Google Apps Education Edition collaborative tools into their instructional strategies. The result of this study has the potential to benefit universities that are debating on whether utilizing teaching collaborative technology skills, as an instruction tool, would engage students and enhance their communication skills. …

Cosm News, Georgia Southern University

College of Science & Mathematics: News & Publications (2012-2022)

• U.S. National Tick Collection Temporarily Closed

Iterative Solutions To The Steady-State Density Matrix For Optomechanical Systems, P. D. Nation, J. R. Johansson, M. P. Blencowe, A. J. Rimberg

Dartmouth Scholarship

We present a sparse matrix permutation from graph theory that gives stable incomplete Lower- Upper (LU) preconditioners necessary for iterative solutions to the steady state density matrix for quantum optomechanical systems. This reordering is efficient, adding little overhead to the computation, and results in a marked reduction in both memory and runtime requirements compared to other solution methods, with performance gains increasing with system size. Either of these benchmarks can be tuned via the preconditioner accuracy and solution tolerance. This reordering optimizes the condition number of the approximate inverse, and is the only method found to be stable at large …

Multimessenger Search For Sources Of Gravitational Waves And High-Energy Neutrinos: Initial Results For Ligo-Virgo And Icecube, M. G. Aartsen, M. Ackermann, J. Adams, J. A. Aguilar, M. Ahlers, M. Ahrens, Mario C. Diaz, Soma Mukherjee, Volker Quetschke, Malik Rakhmanov

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Publications

We report the results of a multimessenger search for coincident signals from the LIGO and Virgo gravitational-wave observatories and the partially completed IceCube high-energy neutrino detector, including periods of joint operation between 2007-2010. These include parts of the 2005-2007 run and the 2009-2010 run for LIGO-Virgo, and IceCube's observation periods with 22, 59 and 79 strings. We find no significant coincident events, and use the search results to derive upper limits on the rate of joint sources for a range of source emission parameters. For the optimistic assumption of gravitational-wave emission energy of 10-2M c2 at ∼150Hz with ∼60ms duration, …

Boscor: Extending R From The Desktop To The Grid, Derek J. Weitzel, Jaime Frey, Marco Mambelli, Dan Fraser, Miha Ahronovitz, David Swanson

Holland Computing Center: Faculty Publications

In this paper, we describe a framework to execute R functions on remote resources from the desktop using Bosco. The R language is attractive to researchers because of its high level programming constructs which lower the barrier of entry for use. As the use of the R programming language in HPC and High Throughput Computing (HTC) has grown, so too has the need for parallel libraries in order to utilize computing resources.

Bosco is middleware that uses common protocols to manage job submissions to a variety of remote computational platforms and resources. The researcher is able to control and monitor …

Warm Water Benthic Foraminifera Document The Pennsylvanian-Permian Warming And Cooling Events – The Record From The Western Pangea Tropical Shelves, Vladimir Davydov

Geosciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

Shallow warm water benthic foraminifera (SWWBF), including all larger fusulinids (symbiont-bearing benthic foraminifera), are among the best indicators of paleoclimate and paleogeography in the Carboniferous and Permian. The distribution of benthic foraminifera in space and time constrain important tectonic, paleogeographic and climatic events at a global scale. The North American shelves during Pennsylvanian and Permian time - though geographically within the tropical belt - are characterized by temperate environments with significantly lower foraminifera diversification and rare occurrences of warm water Tethyan forms, that are in general appear in the region as a migration entities. Such environments allow documentation of warming …

Multimessenger Search For Sources Of Gravitational Waves And High-Energy Neutrinos: Initial Results For Ligo-Virgo And Icecube, Tiffany Summerscales, Icecube Collaboration, Ligo Scientific Collaboration And The Virgo Collaboration

Faculty Publications

We report the results of a multimessenger search for coincident signals from the LIGO and Virgo gravitational-wave observatories and the partially completed IceCube high-energy neutrino detector, including periods of joint operation between 2007–2010. These include parts of the 2005–2007 run and the 2009–2010 run for LIGO-Virgo, and IceCube’s observation periods with 22, 59 and 79 strings. We find no significant coincident events, and use the search results to derive upper limits on the rate of joint sources for a range of source emission parameters. For the optimistic assumption of gravitational-wave emission energy of 10−2  M⊙c2 at ∼150  Hz with ∼60 …

Protecting Web Servers From Web Robot Traffic, Derek Doran

Kno.e.sis Publications

No abstract provided.