Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Quantitative Optical Studies Of Oxidative Stress In Rodent Models Of Eye And Lung Injuries, Zahra Ghanian

Theses and Dissertations

Optical imaging techniques have emerged as essential tools for reliable assessment of organ structure, biochemistry, and metabolic function. The recognition of metabolic markers for disease diagnosis has rekindled significant interest in the development of optical methods to measure the metabolism of the organ.

The objective of my research was to employ optical imaging tools and to implement signal and image processing techniques capable of quantifying cellular metabolism for the diagnosis of diseases in human organs such as eyes and lungs. To accomplish this goal, three different tools, cryoimager, fluorescent microscope, and optical coherence tomography system were utilized to study the …

Radial Basis Functions: Biomedical Applications And Parallelization, Ke Liu

Theses and Dissertations

Radial basis function (RBF) is a real-valued function whose values depend only on the distances between an interpolation point and a set of user-specified points called centers. RBF interpolation is one of the primary methods to reconstruct functions from multi-dimensional scattered data. Its abilities to generalize arbitrary space dimensions and to provide spectral accuracy have made it particularly popular in different application areas, including but not limited to: finding numerical solutions of partial differential equations (PDEs), image processing, computer vision and graphics, deep learning and neural networks, etc.

The present thesis discusses three applications of RBF interpolation in biomedical engineering …

Solving Boundary Value Problems On Various Domains, Ibraheem Otuf

MSU Graduate Theses

Domain-sensitivity is a hallmark in the realm of solving boundary value problems in partial differential equations. For example, the method used in solving a boundary value problem on an finite cylindrical domain is very different from one that arises from a rectangular domain. The difference is also reflected in the types of functions employed in the processes of solving these boundary value problems, as are the mathematical tools utilized in deriving an analytic solution. In this thesis, we solve an important class of partial differential equations with boundary conditions coming from various domains, such as the n dimensional cube, circles, …

The Relationship Between Lead In Groundwater And Elementary School Students' Academic Performance In Missouri, Lynnette Xiangling Li

MSU Graduate Theses

Lead exposure can come from various sources, e.g., lead mines, industrial areas, and lead based paint. Missouri has more than 4,128 lead mines. Lead is a neurotoxin. The objectives of the study were to investigate i) the spatial relationship between lead mines and lead distribution in groundwater, ii) the statistical impact of lead in groundwater on students' Missouri Assessment Program (MAP) scores, and iii) the geographic variations of lead's impact on students' MAP scores. Geographic Information Science spatial analysis tools were used to analyze the concentration of lead in groundwater within school districts in Missouri. Regression analysis was utilized to …

Non Markovian Queue With Two Types Service Optional Re-Service And General Vacation Distribution, K. Sathiya, G. Ayyappan

Applications and Applied Mathematics: An International Journal (AAM)

We consider a single server batch arrival queueing system, where the server provides two types of heterogeneous service. A customer has the option of choosing either type 1 service with probability p1 or type 2 service with probability p2 with the service times follow general distribution. After the completion of either type 1 or type 2 service a customer has the option to repeat or not to repeat the type 1 or type 2 service. As soon as the customer service is completed, the server will take a vacation with probability θ or may continue staying in the system with …

A Mathematical Model For Micropolar Fluid Flow Through An Artery With The Effect Of Stenosis And Post Stenotic Dilatation, R. B. Vijaya, K. M. Prasad, C. Umadevi

Applications and Applied Mathematics: An International Journal (AAM)

The effects of both stenosis and post stenotic dilatation have been studied on steady flow of
micropolar fluid through an artery. Assuming the stenosis to be mild, the equations governing the
flow of the proposed model are solved. Closed form expressions for the flow characteristics such
as velocity, pressure drop, and volumetric flow rate, resistance to the flow and wall shear stress
are derived. The effects of various parameters on resistance to the flow and wall shear stress
have been analyzed through the graphs. It is found that the resistance to the flow increases with
the height and length of …

Heat And Mass Transfer In Mhd Micropolar Fluid In The Presence Of Diffusion Thermo And Chemical Reaction, R. V. M.S.S Kirankumar1, V. C. C.Raju, P. D. Prasad, S. V. Varma

Applications and Applied Mathematics: An International Journal (AAM)

This work is devoted to investigating the influence of diffusion thermo effect on hydromagnetic heat and mass transfer oscillatory flow of a micropolar fluid over an infinite moving vertical permeable plate in a saturated porous medium in the presence of transverse magnetic field and chemical reaction. The dimensionless equations are solved analytically using perturbation technique. The effects of the various fluid flow parameters entering into the problem on the velocity, microrotation, temperature and concentration fields within the boundary layer are discussed with the help of graphs. Also the local skin-friction coefficient, the wall couple stress coefficient, and the rates of …

Heat Source Thermoelastic Problem In A Hollow Elliptic Cylinder Under Time-Reversal Principle, Pravin Bhad, Vinod Varghese, Lalsingh Khalsa

Applications and Applied Mathematics: An International Journal (AAM)

The article investigates the time-reversal thermoelasticity of a hollow elliptical cylinder for determining the temperature distribution and its associated thermal stresses at a certain point using integral transform techniques by unifying classical orthogonal polynomials as the kernel. Furthermore, by considering a circle as a special kind of ellipse, it is seen that the temperature distribution and the comparative study of a circular cylinder can be derived as a special case from the present mathematical solution. The numerical results obtained are accurate enough for practical purposes.

Implementation Of The Matrix Differential Transform Method For Obtaining An Approximate Solution Of Some Nonlinear Matrix Evolution Equations, M. M. Khader, A. Borhanifar

Applications and Applied Mathematics: An International Journal (AAM)

This article introduces the matrix differential transform method (MDTM) to apply to matrix partial differential equations (MPDEs) and employs it for solving matrix Fisher equations, matrix Burgers equations and matrix KdV equations. We show how the MDTM applies to the linear part and nonlinear part of any MPDE and give various examples of MPDEs to illustrate the efficiency of the method. The results obtained are in excellent agreement with the exact solution and show that the proposed method is powerful, accurate, and easy.

Parameterizing A Water-Balance Model For Predicting Stormwater Runoff From Green Roofs, Olyssa Starry, John Lea-Cox, Andrew Ristvey, Steven Cohan

University Honors College Faculty Publication and Presentations

Crop coefficients (kc) were calculated for three different species of common green roof succulents from March to November in 2011, to parameterize the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Penman-Monteith equation for use in a mechanistic green roof water-balance model. Seasonally averaged kc values for each species for 2011 were used to predict plant evapotranspiration (ET) in 2012. The adjusted FAO Penman-Monteith equation predicted the total annual ET within 3–13 mm, a substantial improvement over model predictions with kc set to 1, which overpredicted ET by 100 mm or more, depending on the species. The adjusted equation …

Indoor Inhalation Intake Fractions Of Fine Particulate Matter: Review Of Influencing Factors, Natasha Hodas, Miranda Loh, Hyeong-Moo Shin, Dingsheng Li, Deborah Bennett, Thomas E. Mckone, Olivier Jolliet, Charles J. Weschler, Matti J. Jantunen, Paul Lioy, Peter Fantke

Environmental Science and Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Exposure to fine particulate matter ( PM2.5) is a major contributor to the global human disease burden. The indoor environment is of particular importance when considering the health effects associated with PM2.5 exposures because people spend the majority of their time indoors and PM2.5 exposures per unit mass emitted indoors are two to three orders of magnitude larger than exposures to outdoor emissions. Variability in indoor PM2.5 intake fraction ( iFin,total), which is defined as the integrated cumulative intake of PM2.5 per unit of emission, is driven by a combination of building-specific, human-specific, and pollutant-specific factors. Due to a limited …

Reduced Snow Cover Alters Root-Microbe Interactions And Decreases Nitrification Rates In A Northern Hardwood Forest, Patrick O. Sorensen, Pamela H. Templer, Lynn M. Christenson, Jorge Durán, Timothy J. Fahey, Melany C. Fisk, Peter M. Groffman, Jennifer L. Morse, Adrien C. Finzi

Environmental Science and Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Snow cover is projected to decline during the next century in many ecosystems that currently experience a seasonal snowpack. Because snow insulates soils from frigid winter air temperatures, soils are expected to become colder and experience more winter soil freeze-thaw cycles as snow cover continues to decline. Tree roots are adversely affected by snowpack reduction, but whether loss of snow will affect root-microbe interactions remains largely unknown. The objective of this study was to distinguish and attribute direct (e.g., winter snow-and/ or soil frost-mediated) vs. indirect (e.g., root-mediated) effects of winter climate change on microbial biomass, the potential activity of …

A Reduced Labeled Samples (Rls) Framework For Classification Of Imbalanced Concept-Drifting Streaming Data., Elaheh Arabmakki

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Stream processing frameworks are designed to process the streaming data that arrives in time. An example of such data is stream of emails that a user receives every day. Most of the real world data streams are also imbalanced as is in the stream of emails, which contains few spam emails compared to a lot of legitimate emails. The classification of the imbalanced data stream is challenging due to the several reasons: First of all, data streams are huge and they can not be stored in the memory for one time processing. Second, if the data is imbalanced, the accuracy …

Structure-Property Relationships Of Polyisobutylene-Block-Polyamide Thermoplastic Elastomers, Morgan Dunn Heskett

Master's Theses

Thermoplastic elastomers (TPEs) are a class of polymer fit for a wide variety of applications due to their customizability. In the synthesis of these types of materials, an elastically-performing polymer, deemed the “soft block,” is combined with a stiffer “hard block” polymer, each of which can be selected based on their own specific properties in order to achieve desired material behavior in the final copolymer. Recently, the use of polyisobutylene as a soft block in combination with a polyamide hard block has been investigated for use in TPE synthesis. While the material showed some promising behavior, many properties were still …

Evolution And Rationale For United States Department Of Defense Electromagnetic Pulse Protection Standard, George H. Baker Iii

Department of Integrated Science and Technology - Faculty Scholarship

The United States (US) Department of Defense (DoD) Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) protection standard offers a solid basis for protecting commercial communication, data, and control facilities. Because of the standard’s shielded barrier and test requirements, it is not surprising that there is a strong temptation within industry and government to dismiss the MIL-STD 188-125 approach in favor of less rigorous protection methods. It is important to understand that US DoD EMP protection standard for fixed facilities, MIL-STD-188-125, reflects an evolution by trial and error that spanned a period of decades beginning with the acquisition of the Minuteman Missile System in the …

Channel Sediment And Mining-Lead Storage In Flat River Creek, Old Lead Belt, Missouri, Ralph Joseph Hill

MSU Graduate Theses

Historical mining for lead (Pb) in the Old Lead Belt District introduced large volumes of tailings into nearby streams resulting in the large-scale contamination of channel bed and bar deposits in Big River which drains the southeastern Missouri Ozarks. Tailings pile sites have been remediated so that present contamination sources to the river are primarily from the remobilization of Pb stored in channel and floodplain deposits. This study examined the channel geomorphology and sediment geochemistry of Flat River Creek (FRC), a major tributary to the Big River which drains an area that includes three of the six major mines in …

Estimating Length Statistics Of Aggregate Fried Potato Product Via Electromagnetic Radiation Attenuation, Jesse Lovitt

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

This work investigates the feasibility of using non-destructive testing, in particular radiation tomography, to recover length statistics from aggregates of fried batonnet cut potato. Non-destructive testing comprises a variety of useful techniques for determining properties of an object that might otherwise require altering or destroying the object physically. Tomography is a common form of non-destructive testing used primarily to infer properties internal to an object. This process involves exposing the object of interest to radiation and detecting the quantity of radiation energy that penetrates the object, usually resulting in a grey scale image.

To do this, an artificial data pipeline …

Security Testing With Misuse Case Modeling, Samer Yousef Khamaiseh

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Having a comprehensive model of security requirements is a crucial step towards developing a reliable software system. An effective model of security requirements which describes the possible scenarios that may affect the security aspects of the system under development can be an effective approach for subsequent use in generating security test cases.

Misuse case was first proposed by Sinder and Opdahl as an approach to extract the security requirements of the system under development [1]. A misuse case is a use case representing scenarios that might be followed by a system adversary in order to compromise the system; that is …

When The System Becomes Your Personal Docent: Curated Book Recommendations, Nevena Dragovic

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Curation is the act of selecting, organizing, and presenting content most often guided by professional or expert knowledge. While many popular applications have attempted to emulate this process by turning users into curators, we put an accent on a recommendation system which can leverage multiple data sources to accomplish the curation task. We introduce QBook, a recommender that acts as a personal docent by identifying and suggesting books tailored to the various preferences of each individual user. The goal of the designed system is to address several limitations often associated with recommenders in order to provide diverse and personalized …

Latin Squares And Their Applications To Cryptography, Nathan O. Schmidt

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

A latin square of order-n is an n x n array over a set of n symbols such that every symbol appears exactly once in each row and exactly once in each column. Latin squares encode features of algebraic structures. When an algebraic structure passes certain "latin square tests", it is a candidate for use in the construction of cryptographic systems. A transversal of a latin square is a list of n distinct symbols, one from each row and each column. The question regarding the existence of transversals in latin squares that encode the Cayley tables of finite groups …

Massively Parallel Algorithm For Solving The Eikonal Equation On Multiple Accelerator Platforms, Anup Shrestha

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

The research presented in this thesis investigates parallel implementations of the Fast Sweeping Method (FSM) for Graphics Processing Unit (GPU)-based computational plat forms and proposes a new parallel algorithm for distributed computing platforms with accelerators. Hardware accelerators such as GPUs and co-processors have emerged as general- purpose processors in today’s high performance computing (HPC) platforms, thereby increasing platforms’ performance capabilities. This trend has allowed greater parallelism and substantial acceleration of scientific simulation software. In order to leverage the power of new HPC platforms, scientific applications must be written in specific lower-level programming languages, which used to be platform specific. Newer …

A Certificateless One-Way Group Key Agreement Protocol For Point-To-Point Email Encryption, Srisarguru Sridhar

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Over the years, email has evolved and grown to one of the most widely used form of communication between individuals and organizations. Nonetheless, the current information technology standards do not value the significance of email security in today's technologically advanced world. Not until recently, email services such as Yahoo and Google started to encrypt emails for privacy protection. Despite that, the encrypted emails will be decrypted and stored in the email service provider's servers as backup. If the server is hacked or compromised, it can lead to leakage and modification of one's email. Therefore, there is a strong need for …

Cryogenic Viscous Liquids On Icy Moons, Danielle Neighbour

Civil Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The study of cryogenically viscous liquids such as methane and ethane offers critical insight into the behavior of fluids on icy moons such as Saturn’s moon Titan. Shrouded by a hazy hydrocarbon shield, Titan’s significant nitrogen atmosphere of 1.5 bar, methane-driven hydrological cycle, and lakes and rivers are vaguely similar to our Earthly home. The European-created Huygens probe, carried by the Cassini spacecraft, arrived on Titan’s surface in January 2005 [1]. Upon landing, Huygens photographed its landing site, as seen in Figure 1. The photo depicts rock like objects, thought to be comprised of water ice sitting in a dry …

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 …

Artificial Quantum Many-Body States In Complex Oxide Heterostructures At Two-Dimensional Limit, Xiaoran Liu

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As the representative family of complex oxides, transition metal oxides, where the lattice,

charge, orbital and spin degrees of freedom are tightly coupled, have been at the forefront

of condensed matter physics for decades. With the advancement of state-of-the-art heteroepitaxial deposition techniques, it has been recognized that combining these oxides on the atomic scale, the interfacial region offers great opportunities to discover emergent phenomena and tune materials' functionality. However, there still lacks general guiding principles for experimentalists, following which one can design and fabricate artificial systems on demand. The main theme of this dissertation is to devise and propose some …

Examining Denitrification In Agricultural Ditch Sediments Vegetated With Rice Cutgrass (Leersia Oryzoides): Modeling Seasonal Variation Across Increasing Levels Of Nitrate Loading And Model Application To Pre-Existing Datasets, Shannon Lee Speir

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Nitrogen (N) derived from fertilizer application in agricultural systems may contribute to significant environmental impacts, including eutrophication of fresh and coastal waters. Rice cutgrass (Leersia oryzoides) can significantly enhance denitrification potential in agricultural ditch sediments, but relationships with known drivers are not well understood. To address this, I examined effects of nitrate (NO3-) availability on dinitrogen gas (N2) and NO3- fluxes seasonally in Chapter 2. Denitrification rates were measured as N2 flux from intact vegetated sediment cores using Membrane Inlet Mass Spectrometry (MIMS). Michaelis-Menten models were developed from observations to mathematically describe N2 fluxes across the spring, summer, and fall …

Automatic Assessment Of Environmental Hazards For Fall Prevention Using Smart-Cameras, Jeffrey Kutchka

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As technology advances in the field of Computer Vision, new applications will emerge. One device that has emerged is the smart-camera, a camera attached to an embedded system that can perform routines a regular camera could not, such as object or event detection. In this thesis we describe a smart-camera system we designed, implemented, and evaluated for fall prevention monitoring of at-risk people while in bed, whether it be for a hospital patient, nursing home resident, or at home elderly resident. The camera will give a nurse or caregiver environmental awareness of the at-risk person and notify them when that …

Liming Characteristics Of A High-Calcium, Dry Flue Gas Desulfurization By-Product And Its Effects On Runoff Water Quality, Jason Richard Burgess-Conforti

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In 2013, only 37% of the 32 million Mg of flue gas desulfurization (FGD) by-products generated in the United States were reused beneficially. If FGD by-products could be used as a beneficial soil amendment, millions of megagrams may be diverted away from surface impoundments and landfills. The purpose of this research was to identify the liming characteristics of a high-Ca dry FGD (DFGD) by-product in comparison to a Class-C fly ash (FA) and reagent-grade CaCO3, and to evaluate the effects of land application to a managed grassland on runoff, plant, and soil quality. Liming characteristics were determined by measuring the …

Extending The Reach Of Directional Dark Matter Experiments Through Novel Detector Technologies, Nguyen S. Phan

Physics & Astronomy ETDs

Dark matter is believed to comprise over 80% of the matter in the Universe. Its composition could be in the form of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), which are predicted by extensions of the Standard Model, namely supersymmetric theories. Even though hints of its existence were detected in astronomical observations over eighty years ago, its detection through means other than the gravitational influence on observable luminous matter still eludes us.

Currently, there are many ongoing direct detection experiments, that aim to measure the signals left by the elastic scattering of WIMPs with nuclei in the detector target material. The detection …

High-Energy Neutron Backgrounds For Underground Dark Matter Experiments, Yu Chen

Dissertations - ALL

Direct dark matter detection experiments usually have excellent capability to distinguish nuclear recoils, expected interactions with Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) dark matter, and electronic recoils, so that they can efficiently reject background events such as gamma-rays and charged particles. However, both WIMPs and neutrons can induce nuclear recoils. Neutrons are then the most crucial background for direct dark matter detection. It is important to understand and account for all sources of neutron backgrounds when claiming a discovery of dark matter detection or reporting limits on the WIMP-nucleon cross section. One type of neutron background that is not well understood …