Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Thiophene Based Molecular Sensors Towards Mercury Detection, Austin K. Shigemoto, Carolyn N. Virca, Sam Underwood, Lauren Shetterly, Theresa M. Mccormick

Student Research Symposium

Toxic heavy metals such as mercury have increased in concentration in the environment due to pollution. Inorganic mercury in the environment can be later converted to a more toxic form: methylmercury. Regular consumption of fish containing methylmercury can lead to several cognitive and motor disorders as well as Minamata disease. The current methods used to detect both methylmercury and inorganic mercury in sea life and drinking water involve long sample preparation and cost. In order to more efficiently track this toxic metal in the environment and identify contaminated food and water sources, a cheaper and faster method of detection is …

Math And Sudoku: Exploring Sudoku Boards Through Graph Theory, Group Theory, And Combinatorics, Kyle Oddson

Student Research Symposium

Encoding Sudoku puzzles as partially colored graphs, we state and prove Akman’s theorem [1] regarding the associated partial chromatic polynomial [5]; we count the 4x4 sudoku boards, in total and fundamentally distinct; we count the diagonally distinct 4x4 sudoku boards; and we classify and enumerate the different structure types of 4x4 boards.

Listening To Lasers: Photoacoustic Gas Sensing, Michael Hopkins

Student Research Symposium

Herein lies the makings of a sensor for gaseous materials due to the technique known as photo-acoustic spectroscopy. Whereby a gas filled metallic tube of known resonance has an impingement to its open aspect a beam of photons of known colour and at a specified rate such that the rate of incoming light corpuscles matches the natural standing wave frequency for the column of gas within said tube, to wit resonance. Through foresight of the molecular orbital theory and historic datums on the subject of infrared spectroscopy one naturally comes to the employment of absorbance transfiguring energy to kinetic motions …

The Dc Algorithm & The Constrained Fermat-Torricelli Problem, Nathan Peron Lawrence, George Blikas

Student Research Symposium

The theory of functions expressible as the Difference of Convex (DC) functions has led to the development of a rich field in applied mathematics known as DC Programming.We survey the work of Pham Dinh Tao and Le Thi Hoai An in order to understand the DC Algorithm (DCA) and its use in solving clustering problems. Further, we present several other methods that generalize the DCA for any norm. These powerful tools enable researchers to reformulate objective functions, not necessarily convex, into DC Programs.

The Fermat-Torricelli problem is visited in light of convex analysis and various norms. Pierre de Fermat proposed …

How 5-Day Weather Patterns And Buoyancy Regulation Impact Algal Community Assemblage, Roberta Brunkalla

Student Research Symposium

The purpose of this study is to model how 5-day weather patterns and algal buoyancy regulation influence the competition between two bloom forming cyanobacteria species in Upper Klamath Lake, Oregon. Sudden changes in weather patterns can quickly impact lake thermal structure, which can rapidly influence the competition between buoyancy regulating cyanobacteria. By modeling competition, I hope to address how altered climate would shift the competitive advantage to toxin forming cyanobacteria. I plan on accomplishing this by coupling a one-dimensional hydrodynamic and algal competition model, with lake specific physiological parameters. A sensitivity test of the model could reveal dramatic shifts in …

Aquifer Vulnerability Modeling In New Jersey Through The Use Of Modified Drastic Methodology, Clement Uduk, Tanja Hopmans

Student Research Symposium

Due to the global average increase in temperature over the last 50 years, sea levels have been rising and making coastal aquifers more susceptible to saltwater intrusion. The average rate of sea level rise has increased from 2 mm/year to 3.5 mm/year during the twentieth century. The state of New Jersey is not only densely populated but the development along coastlines makes inundation a potential serious threat. New Jersey is diverse in aquifer types, in addition to the types of water bodies surrounding New Jersey, and makes for an interesting case study for groundwater vulnerability. The EPA has a universal …

Then And Now: Vegetative Change Detection On Mount St. Helens 2000-2015, Douglas S. Thalacker, Andrés Holz

Student Research Symposium

The 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens (MSH) proved a dramatic event with many important socio-economic consequences. In addition, this eruption resulted in an array of ecological consequences with subsequent studies and profound theoretical ramifications. The eruption created a complex gradient in disturbance severity on the northern aspect of MSH3, promoting successional processes from varying starting points and change rates. This study uses a landscape-scale approach to quantify spatio-temporal trends in vegetative responses to the eruption from 2000-2015, relying on Landsat TM and ETM+ imagery focusing on the primary and (i.e. no biological legacies) secondary (i.e. with biological legacies) succession …

Collecting Image Cropping Dataset: A Hybrid System Of Machine And Human Intelligence, Uyen T. Mai, Feng Liu

Student Research Symposium

Image cropping is a common tool that exists in almost any image editor, yet automatic cropping is still a difficult problem in Computer Vision. Since images nowadays can be easily collected through the web, machine learning is a promising approach to solve this problem. However, an image cropping dataset is not yet available and gathering such a large-scale dataset is a non-trivial task. Although a crowdsourcing website such as Mechanical Turk seems to be a solution to this task, image cropping is a sophisticated task that is vulnerable to unreliable annotation; furthermore, collecting a large-scale high-quality dataset through crowdsourcing is …