Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Divide And Recombined For Large Complex Data: Nonparametric-Regression Modelling Of Spatial And Seasonal-Temporal Time Series, Xiaosu Tong

Open Access Dissertations

In the first chapter of this dissertation, I briefly introduce one type of nonparametric regression method, namely local polynomial regression, followed by emphasis on one specific application of loess on time series decomposition, called Seasonal Trend Loess (STL). The chapter is closed by the introduction of D\&R; (Divide and Recombined) statistical framework. Data can be divided into subsets, each of which is applied with a statistical analysis method. This is an embarrassing parallel procedure since there is no communication between each subset. Then the analysis result for each subset are combined together to be the final analysis outcome for the …

Policy Design Tool For Managing Indoor Residential Water Demand In Water-Scarce Regions, Mujahed M. Thneibat

Open Access Dissertations

In view of population growth; climate change; and economic evolution, water resources in numerous parts of the world have reached their natural capacities. Consequently, the ability of many countries to grow; meet the basic needs of inhabitants; and protect the environment will be endangered like never before unless water resources are smartly handled and managed. ^ In the past few decades, many developed and developing countries have suffered from water scarcity, and more are certain to follow. The water security dilemma is much more challenging in developing countries. Water utilities have had to follow regulatory plans to manage demand on …

An Examination Of Geographic Patterns Of Soil Climate And Its Classification In The U.S. System Of Soil Taxonomy, Hans Edwin Winzeler

Open Access Dissertations

Soil climate, the record of temporal patterns of soil moisture and temperature, is an important component of the structure of U.S. Soil Taxonomy. The U.S. Soil Survey has used the Newhall Simulation Model (NSM) for estimating soil climate from atmospheric climate records at weather stations since the 1970s. The current soil climate map of the U.S. was published in 1994 by using NSM runs from selected weather stations along with knowledge-based hand-drawn mapping procedures. We developed a revised soil climate mapping methodology using the NSM and digital soil mapping techniques.

The new methodology is called Grid Element Newhall Simulation Model …

Unraveling The Fingerprints Of Nox Using Stable Isotopes: Implications For Nox Source Partitioning And Oxidation Chemistry, Wendell William Walters

Open Access Dissertations

The nitrogen (N) and oxygen (O) stable isotope composition (δ15N & δ18O) of nitrogen oxides (NOx )may be a useful tool for constraining NOx emission sources as well as for understanding the atmospheric oxidation pathways responsible for its removal if various NOx sources and sink processes exhibit characteristic isotopic compositions (“fingerprints”). However, this requires (1) an accurate and complete inventory of δ15N(NOx) values from major emission sources, (2) an assessment of the kinetic and equilibrium isotope effects that can impact δ15N and δ18O values of NOx, (3) and test these assumptions by conducting accurate in situ δ15N and δ18O measurements …

Preparative Mass Spectrometry Applications In Nanomaterials And Organic Synthesis, Michael Wleklinski

Open Access Dissertations

Preparative mass spectrometry was traditionally a vacuum based experiment where mass selected ion beams were deposited onto surfaces; however, recently ions have been manipulated in the open air to perform accelerated synthesis. The work of this dissertation focuses on the generation of charged ions from microdroplets and their use in organic synthesis and the preparation of atomically precise metal nanoclusters. First the mechanism for charging in the zero volt paper spray will be presented. This works builds a computational model based on the statistical fluctuation of positive and negative charges based on the theory of Dodd. It is found through …

Surface Water Infiltration In Loess Soils Of The Lower Mississippi River Valley: An Emphasis On Land Use, Matthew Thompson

Crop, Soil and Environmental Sciences Undergraduate Honors Theses

The Alluvial Aquifer is the shallowest and most heavily used groundwater aquifer in the Lower Mississippi River Valley, particularly in the Delta region of eastern Arkansas. However, the Alluvial Aquifer is being depleted faster than the rate of recharge, primarily due to excessive withdrawals for irrigated crop production. Since extensive irrigation in the highly agriculturally productive Delta region of eastern Arkansas has been a main culprit in the groundwater depletion issues the region faces, a better understanding of how ecological factors and/or agricultural best management practices could possibly increase infiltration, to consequently increase recharge, are needed in order to either …

A Comparison Of Online And Face-To-Face Achievement In Physical Science, Lisa F. Mozer

Doctor of Education in Instructional Technology Dissertations

ABSTRACT

This study provided a descriptive analysis of learning outcomes in both online and face-to-face grades 9-12 physical science courses. Archived data from a single school system were used for a comparative analysis of learning outcomes in high school physical science between students enrolled in online classes and students enrolled in face-to-face classes. The study compared two years of summative assessment scores of two student groups and, overall, found equality between the two learning environments. Online learning outcomes and face-to-face learning outcomes were similar for both school years, 2013-2014 and 2014-2015. The overall comparison between learning environments was further examined …

Sedimentology Of A Small Estuarine Marsh Along East (Pensacola) Bay, Florida, Jesse Pfadenhauer

Honors Theses

Sediment samples from a marsh along East (Pensacola) Bay were analyzed using various laboratory techniques. The color, magnetic susceptibility, organic content, carbonate content, and sediment size distribution of each sample was measured to attain an overall profile of the sedimentary characteristics of the area. Using the GPS coordinates of each collection site, samples were categorized into sub-environments based on their position within the marsh. The trends within the study area and sub-environments were evaluated and interpreted. The data indicate that this marsh is a siliciclastic, fining-inland area that is frequently inundated with tidal fluctuations and storm surges. These storm surges …

Error Analysis Of An Hdg Method For A Distributed Optimal, Huiqing Zhu, Fatih Celiker

Faculty Publications

In this paper, we present a priori error analysis of a hybridizable discontinuous Galerkin (HDG) method for a distributed optimal control problem governed by diffusion equations. The error estimates are established based on the projection-based approach recently used to analyze these methods for the diffusion equation. We proved that for approximations of degree k on conforming meshes, the orders of convergence of the approximation to fluxes and scalar variables are k+1 when the local stabilization parameter is suitably chosen.

Diazonium 4-(Trifluorovinyloxy) Perfluorobutanesulfonyl Benzenesulfonimide Zwitterionic Monomer Synthesis, Isaac D. Addo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

3-Diazonium- 4-(trifluorovinyloxy) - perfluorobutanesulfonyl benzenesulfonimide zwitterionic monomer (see figure 1) is proposed to be polymerized and further act as a new electrolyte for Polymer exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs). One reason is that, the aromatic trifluorovinyl aryl ether (TFVE) group can easily be homopolymerized to aromatic perfluorocyclobutane (PFCB) polymer. Furthermore, the diazonium moiety in the monomer is expected to covalently attach the electrolyte to the carbon electrodes support. The perfluoroalkyl(aryl) sulfonimide (PFSI) pendant provides good chemical and mechanical stability as well as better proton conductivity. Several multi-step synthetic schemes are designed to obtain such monomer from perfluoroalkyl(aryl) sulfonimide (PFSI). Among …

Comparison Of Two Methods For Developing Aggregate Population-Based Models, Oyebola E. Oyero

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Aggregate models incorporate the variation between individual parameters of individualbased models to construct a population-based model. This thesis focuses on the comparison of two different methods for creating these population-based models. The first method, the individual parameter distribution technique (IPD) focuses on the similarities and variation of parameters in an individual-based model as calculated using individual data sets [4]. The second method we consider is the nonlinear mixed effect method (NLME), which is primarily used in modeling repeated measurement data. In the NLME approach, both the fixed effects and random effects of the parameter values are estimated in the model …

Computational Quantum Chemistry Studies Of The Stabilities Of Radical Intermediates Formed During The Oxidation Of Melatonin, Constance E. Warden

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Melatonin, a nontoxic natural antioxidant, is of interest as a possible spin trap for use in spectroscopic methods to observe and identify short-lived free radicals, which have been linked to oxidative stress that may result in serious health problems. However, the reaction mechanisms for the oxidation of melatonin to form the product N¹-acetyl-N²-formyl-5-methoxykynuramine are still not well understood. Computational quantum chemistry studies have been done on four proposed reaction mechanisms, involving the following major intermediate structures: a dioxetane, an epoxide, a melatonin radical cation, and a spin radical adduct. Molecular geometries were optimized at the …

Supplement: The Rate Of Binary Black Hole Mergers Inferred From Advanced Ligo Observations Surrounding Gw150914, B. P. Abbott, R. Abbott, T. D. Abbott, M. R. Abernathy, F. Acernese, K. Ackley, C. Adams, T. Adams, P. Addesso, R. X. Adhikari, V. B. Adya, C. Affeldt, M. Agathos, K. Agatsuma, N. Aggarwal, O. D. Aguiar, L. Aiello, A. Ain, P. Ajith, B. Allen, A. Allocca, P. A. Altin, S. B. Anderson, W. G. Anderson, K. Arai, M. C. Araya, C. C. Arceneaux, J. S. Areeda, N. Arnaud, K. G. Arun, S. Ascenzi, Tiffany Z. Summerscales

Faculty Publications

© 2016. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.. This article provides supplemental information for a Letter reporting the rate of (BBH) coalescences inferred from 16 days of coincident Advanced LIGO observations surrounding the transient (GW) signal GW150914. In that work we reported various rate estimates whose 90% confidence intervals fell in the range 2-600 Gpc-3yr-1. Here we give details on our method and computations, including information about our search pipelines, a derivation of our likelihood function for the analysis, a description of the astrophysical search trigger distribution expected from merging BBHs, details on our computational methods, a description of …

The Conjugacy Problem For Automorphism Groups Of Countable Homogeneous Structures, Samuel Coskey, Paul Ellis

Mathematics Faculty Publications and Presentations

We consider the conjugacy problem for the automorphism groups of a number of countable homogeneous structures. In each case we find the precise complexity of the conjugacy relation in the sense of Borel reducibility.

Plant Community Composition And Structure Monitoring For Scotts Bluff National Monument, 2016 Data Report, Molly B. Davis, Daniel J. Swanson

United States National Park Service: Publications

Abstract

This report presents the results of vegetation monitoring efforts in 2016 at Scotts Bluff National Monument (SCBL) by the Northern Great Plains Inventory and Monitoring Network (NGPN) and Northern Great Plains Fire Ecology Program (NGPFire).

During the sixth full year of field work, crew members from NGPN visited eight long-term monitoring plots on May 23-25, 2016 to collect data on the plant communities at SCBL. This is part of a long-term monitoring effort to better understand the condition of the vegetation at SCBL. NGPN staff captured data relating to species richness, herb-layer height, abundance of individual native and non-native …

Plant Community Composition And Structure Monitoring For Agate Fossil Beds National Monument, 2016 Data Report, Aaron T. Rasor, Daniel J. Swanson

United States National Park Service: Publications

Abstract

This report presents the results of vegetation monitoring efforts in 2016 at Agate Fossil Beds National Monument (AGFO) by the Northern Great Plains Inventory and Monitoring Network (NGPN).

During the sixth full year of field work, crew members from NGPN visited six long-term plant community monitoring (PCM) plots and the Northern Great Plains Fire Effects Crew (NGPFire) visited nine fire plant community monitoring (FPCM) plots to collect data on the plant communities at AGFO. This effort is part of a long-term monitoring program established to better understand the condition of the mixed-grass prairie, riparian, and upland regions in AGFO. …

Willingness To Pay For Irrigation Water Under Scarcity Conditions, Tyler Robert Knapp

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Reliance of Arkansas agricultural producers on groundwater for irrigation has led to depletion of the Mississippi River Valley alluvial aquifer. Without intervention, consequences include insufficient groundwater to meet irrigation demand as well as drawdown of the deeper Sparta Aquifer, upon which communities in eastern Arkansas rely for non-agricultural use. Among proposed solutions to combat groundwater decline is the construction of off-farm surface water infrastructure to meet the irrigation needs of producers. Despite the importance of irrigated agriculture to Arkansas, there is little know about the economic value of irrigation water to producers. Thus, we implement a double-bounded dichotomous choice contingent …

Spatial Distribution Of Antibiotic Resistance In Soils Receiving Beef Feedlot Runoff, Scott Speicher

Department of Environmental Engineering: Theses and Other Student Research

A study was conducted to provide new insight on the potential contribution to antibiotic resistance from the land application of beef feedlot runoff to soil. This study reports the distribution and quantity of antibiotic resistant bacteria (ARBs), fecal indicator bacteria (FIB), and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in soil from (i) a field receiving long-term application of beef feedlot runoff holding pond effluent and (ii) a cool-season pasture with no history of supplemental manure application.

Soil samples were collected June 2015 at the U.S. Meat Animal Research Center near Clay Center, Nebraska. A response surface sampling design (RSSD) model based on …

Coherence, Richness And Cognitive Absorption In Website Design, L. Visinescu, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Kaplan’s theory on environmental preferences can offer a holistic perspective on cognitive absorption in ecommerce website design. Drawing on Kaplan’s theory, this paper proposes that coherence and richness of a website can enhance cognitive absorption of users. The findings from our study not only support the hypotheses, but also suggest that coherence and richness can reach an optimal proportion in website design, after which they are inversely correlated.

Cryptographic Reverse Firewall Via Malleable Smooth Projective Hash Functions, Rongmao Chen, Guomin Yang, Guomin Yang, Willy Susilo, Fuchun Guo, Mingwu Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Motivated by the revelations of Edward Snowden, postSnowden cryptography has become a prominent research direction in recent years. In Eurocrypt 2015, Mironov and Stephens-Davidowitz proposed a novel concept named cryptographic reverse firewall (CRF) which can resist exfiltration of secret information from an arbitrarily compromised machine. In this work, we continue this line of research and present generic CRF constructions for several widely used cryptographic protocols based on a new notion named malleable smooth projective hash function. Our contributions can be summarized as follows. – We introduce the notion of malleable smooth projective hash function, which is an extension of the …

Semeo: A Semantic Equivalence Analysis Framework For Obfuscated Android Applications, Zhen Hu

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Software repackaging is a common approach for creating malware. In this approach, malware authors inject malicious payloads into legitimate applications; then, to ren- der security analysis more difficult, they obfuscate most or all of the code. This forces analysts to spend a large amount of effort filtering out benign obfuscated methods in order to locate potentially malicious methods for further analysis. If an effective mechanism for filtering out benign obfuscated methods were available, the number of methods that must be analyzed could be reduced, allowing analysts to be more productive. In this thesis, we introduce SEMEO, a highly effective and …

On Path Consistency For Binary Constraint Satisfaction Problems, Christopher G. Reeson

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs) provide a flexible and powerful framework for modeling and solving many decision problems of practical importance. Consistency properties and the algorithms for enforcing them on a problem instance are at the heart of Constraint Processing and best distinguish this area from other areas concerned with the same combinatorial problems. In this thesis, we study path consistency (PC) and investigate several algorithms for enforcing it on binary finite CSPs. We also study algorithms for enforcing consistency properties that are related to PC but are stronger or weaker than PC.

We identify and correct errors in the literature …

Using Software Testing Techniques To Infer Biological Models, Mikaela Cashman

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Years of research in software testing has given us novel ways to reason about and test the behavior of complex software systems that contain hundreds of thousands of lines of code. Many of these techniques have been inspired by nature such as genetic algorithms, swarm intelligence, and ant colony optimization. However, they use a unidirectional analogy – taking from nature without giving back.

In this thesis we invert this view and ask if we can utilize techniques from testing and modeling of highly-configurable software systems to aid in the emerging field of systems biology which aims to model and predict …

The Decay Of Disease Association With Declining Linkage Disequilibrium: A Fine Mapping Theorem, Mehdi Maadooliat, Naveen K. Bansal, Jibal Upadhya, Manzur R. Farazi, Xiang Li, Max M. He, Scott J. Hebbring, Zhan Ye, Steven J. Schrodi

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

Several important and fundamental aspects of disease genetics models have yet to be described. One such property is the relationship of disease association statistics at a marker site closely linked to a disease causing site. A complete description of this two-locus system is of particular importance to experimental efforts to fine map association signals for complex diseases. Here, we present a simple relationship between disease association statistics and the decline of linkage disequilibrium from a causal site. Specifically, the ratio of Chi-square disease association statistics at a marker site and causal site is equivalent to the standard measure of pairwise …

Impact Of Myh6 Variants In Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome, Aoy Tomita-Mitchell, Karl D. Stamm, Donna K. Mahnke, Min-Su Kim, Pip M. Hidestrand, Huan-Ling Liang, Mary Goetsch, Pippa Simpson, Andrew N. Pelech, James S. Tweddell, D. Woodrow Benson, John Lough, Michael E. Mitchell

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

Hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS) is a clinically and anatomically severe form of congenital heart disease (CHD). Although prior studies suggest that HLHS has a complex genetic inheritance, its etiology remains largely unknown. The goal of this study was to characterize a risk gene in HLHS and its effect on HLHS etiology and outcome. We performed next-generation sequencing on a multigenerational family with a high prevalence of CHD/HLHS, identifying a rare variant in the α-myosin heavy chain (MYH6) gene. A case-control study of 190 unrelated HLHS subjects was then performed and compared with the 1000 Genomes Project. Damaging …

A Note On The Howson Property In Inverse Semigroups, Peter R. Jones

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

An algebra has the Howson property if the intersection of any two finitely generated subalgebras is again finitely generated. A simple necessary and sufficient condition is given for the Howson property to hold on an inverse semigroup with finitely many idempotents. In addition, it is shown that any monogenic inverse semigroup has the Howson property.

The Corona Problem For Kernel Multiplier Algebras, Eric T. Sawyer, Brett D. Wick

Mathematics Faculty Research

We prove an alternate Toeplitz corona theorem for the algebras of pointwise kernel multipliers of Besov-Sobolev spaces on the unit ball in C, and for the algebra of bounded analytic functions on certain strictly pseudoconvex domains and polydiscs in higher dimensions as well. This alternate Toeplitz corona theorem extends to more general Hilbert function spaces where it does not require the complete Pick property. Instead, the kernel functions kx (y) of certain Hilbert function spaces H are assumed to be invertible multipliers on H and then we continue a research thread begun by Agler and McCarthy in 1999, and continued …

Sustainable Dorm Display, Salix Sampson, Jaclyn Ermoyan, Teresa Huynh, Jessyca Stoepker, Amber Tillman

Environmental and Sustainability Studies Undergraduate Projects

No abstract provided.

Hydroelectric Emergency Prevention, Christian Caroll, Max Auerbach, Kristyn Reinecke

Environmental and Sustainability Studies Undergraduate Projects

No abstract provided.

Kinematics Card Sort Activity: Insight Into Students’ Thinking, Erin Berryhill, Deborah Herrington, Keith Oliver

Peer Reviewed Articles

Kinematics is a topic students are unknowingly aware of well before entering the physics classroom. Students observe motion on a daily basis. They are constantly interpreting and making sense of their observations, unintentionally building their own understanding of kinematics before receiving any formal instruction. Unfortunately, when students take their prior conceptions to understand a new situation, they often do so in a way that inaccurately connects their learning. We were motivated to identify strategies to help our students make accurate connections to their prior knowledge and understand kinematics at a deeper level. To do this, we integrated a formative assessment …