Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

A Quantitative Analysis Of The Fretted Terrain Valleys, Arabia Terra, Mars, Kelsey Anne Mason

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Fretted terrain describes regions on Mars with low-lying, flat valleys separated by steep cliffs that often form polygonal-shaped mesas. The fretted terrain valleys have a morphology distinct from other valleys found on Mars, and their unknown origin may hold insights into critical questions about Mars' tectonic, magmatic, and hydrologic history. Current hypoThesis for the formation of the fretted terrain include fracturing as well as hydrological flow processes such as fluvial or glacial erosion. The region for this study is located in eastern Arabia Terra and is the type-location for fretted terrain. By qualitatively and quantitatively documenting the planform, or map-view, …

A New Method For Ultra-Low Sulfate Extraction And A Pilot Study In Arid Soils, Marisela Montelongo

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Sulfur in soils is a crucial nutrient for all organisms including plants. Sulfate (SO42-), a water soluable anion, is a good source of this important element. Because of the importance of sulfur for agriculture, the use of sulfate has been well studied in temperate climate zones, and it is generally accepted that microbes play a critical role in controlling the availability of sulfate. Organically bound sulfur, such as sulfate esters and carbon-bonded sulfur, compounds that are generated and decomposed by microbes, are essential sulfur sources for plants under these conditions. For arid environments, knowledge of sulfate turnover in soils by …

Complementary Charged Molecular Imprints Of West Nile Virus Antibodies, Julio Rincon

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

There is a significant demand for robust and stable receptor molecules that can mimic biological molecules, such as antibodies. Relying only on natural recognition molecules have greatly limited the uses and capabilities of many aspects of health sciences due to product expense and stability. This is especially important in medically underserved areas where the lack of resources and faulty or limited cold-chain makes antibody based diagnostics very difficult to implement.

With molecular imprinting, it is possible to recognize diseases with the added advantage of product stability, long term use, fast preparation and ease of scalability, all while being cost effective. …

Using Underground Radon To Detect Inactive Geological Faults, Germán Rodríguez Ortiz

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This Thesis presents the results of an investigation of the concentration of radon in soil around a fault in the East Franklin Mountains in the El Paso area in West Texas. The connection between underground radon exhalations near active faults has been known for decades, but possible similar increases of underground radon levels around inactive faults have not been studied as thoroughly. Arguing that the dilatancy-diffusion model used to explain the phenomenon near active faults does not apply to the case of inactive faults, a hypoThesis is formulated under which increased levels of underground radon must be present near inactive …

Seismic Investigation Of The Kunlun Fault: Analysis Of The Indepth Iv 2-D Active-Source Seismic Dataset, William Seelig

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The Tibetan Plateau has experienced significant crustal thickening and deformation since the continental subduction and collision of the Asian and Indian plates in the Eocene. Deformation of the northern Tibetan Plateau is largely accommodated by strike-slip faulting. The Kunlun Fault is a 1000-km long strike-slip fault near the northern boundary of the Plateau that has experienced five magnitude 7.0 or greater earthquakes in the past 100 years and represents a major rheological boundary. Active-source, 2-D seismic reflection/ refraction data, collected as part of project INDEPTH IV (International Deep Profiling of Tibet and the Himalaya, phase IV) in 2007, was used …

Time Degradation Of Perovskites, Nazia Sharmin

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Perovskite organic-inorganic compounds are of interest for photovoltaic purposes, unfortunately, some of the organic-inorganic elements tend to evaporate rather rapidly rendering the films less effective for photoelectric use. In this study, we examine the evaporation of Perovskite organic-inorganic compounds produced by several manufacturing techniques. In particular we perform XRF and XPS inspections as a function of time and determine the fabrication method that best conserves iodine and lead.

Raman Microscopic Analysis Of Internal Stress In Boron-Doped Diamond Thin Films, Emma M.A. Sundin

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The correlations between induced stress on undoped and boron-doped diamond (BDD) thin films, sample chemical composition, and fabrication substrate are investigated in this study via confocal Raman microspectroscopic analysis. Stability of BDD films is relevant to fast-scan cyclic voltammetry, as film delamination and dislocation of BDD-coated electrodes that can occur during neurosurgical electrode implantation can negatively impact the biosensing reliability of this technique. Electrodes were fabricated by coating cylindrical tungsten rods using a custom-built chemical vapor deposition reactor. The results of the analysis reveal a direct correlation between regions of pure diamond and enhanced material stress, as well as preferential …

Evaluation Of A Roller Method For Geochemical Leach Testing, Troy Allen Svede

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Currently, multiple tests are being used when evaluating an MSE wall backfill material for pH, conductivity, chloride concentration, and sulfate concentration. There is no one test to measure all four characteristics when testing a soil. Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) uses four different tests to measure these characteristics. The goal of this research was to refine a simplified test procedure that was created by David Borrok et al., the Tex-620-M. The method that was developed to replace the current TxDOT test procedures Tex-620-J, Tex-128-E, and Tex-145-E test procedures is the Tex-620-M2. Leaching kinetics were analyzed for gravel and fines by …

Design And Regioselective Synthesis Of Fullerene Derivatives For Metal-Organic Hybrid Architectures, Catalina Suarez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In the last years different fullerene derivatives and endohedral fullerenes have been reported and their potential applications as electronic, magnetic, catalytic, biological and optical materials have been explored. In this work we describe the characterization of new endohedral fullerenes; the exohedral functionalization of fullerenes with organic addends or metal clusters and their application in metal-organic hybrid architectures.

We synthesized fullerene polymers with a variety of staircase linear architectures, zigzag polymers and a perfectly linear polymer using an hexakis-fullerene adduct with two 4,5-diazafluorene groups located at trans-1 positions, using Hg, Cd, Zn and33 Cu as the metal centers. Our results showed …

Active Learning Effect On The Public's Perception Of Anthropogenic Global Climate Change, Ivy Gisselle Trevizo

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Anthropogenic, or human-caused global climate change has been debated for many years among the public despite the growing evidence that there is scientific consensus on this topic. A gap has been discovered between scientific evidence of increasing temperatures and the public's perception on climate change. This gap has been hypothesized to come from the method in which the scientific community represents scientific evidence. The goal of this study was to determine if active learning techniques around local and regional climate change and climate change impacts changes the awareness, perception, and behavioral intentions of different segments of the public. The study …

Neutrino Oscillations And The Reno Experiment, Karla Rosita Tellez Giron Flores

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Neutrinos are the second most common particles in the universe, after the photons. Neutrinos (and antineutrinos) exist in three different "flavors", namely, electron, tau and muon neutrinos. A physical neutrino, however, can oscillate among these three flavors and, thus, it is said to be a mix of the three flavor states. In quantum mechanics representation, it is said that the three flavor states are the mixture of the three mass states. This mixture of neutrinos can generally be parameterized by the three so-called mixing angles (&thetas;12, &thetas;23, &thetas;13), three squared mass differences Δmij 2, i, j = 1, 2, 3 …

Synthesis And Post-Synthetic Transmetalations Of Metal-Organic Frameworks Containing Bimetallic Centers, Jose Miguel Veleta

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The heterobimetallic metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) of the type HKUST-1 were obtained through post synthetic cation exchange processes, where Cu3(BTC)2 (BTC = 1,3,5-benzenetricarboxylate) was exposed to solutions of Mn2+, Fe2+, Co2+, or Ni2+ at time intervals of 6, 12, 24, 36, 48, and 72 hours. The elemental composition of the products was analyzed by inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES), showing partial substitution of copper ions in the frameworks. Transmetalations done with Mn2+ and Ni2+ show a relatively low cation exchanged through the different time intervals, with maximum transmetalation percentages of 2.4 % for Mn2+ and 2 % for Ni2+ …

Spectroscopic Analysis Of Neurotransmitters: A Theoretical And Experimental Raman Study, Matthew Alonzo

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) was applied to investigate the feasibility in the detection and monitoring of the dopamine (DA) neurotransmitter adsorbed onto silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) at 10-11 molar, a concentration far below physiological levels. In addition, density functional theory (DFT) calculations were obtained with the Gaussian-09 analytical suite software to generate the theoretical molecular configuration of DA in its neutral, cationic, anionic, and dopaminequinone states for the conversion of computer-simulated Raman spectra. Comparison of theoretical and experimental results show good agreement and imply the presence of dopamine in all of its molecular forms in the experimental setting. The dominant …

Label-Free Raman Imaging To Monitor Breast Tumor Signatures, John Ciubuc

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Methods built on Raman spectroscopy have shown major potential in describing and discriminating between malignant and benign specimens. Accurate, real-time medical diagnosis benefits in substantial improvements through this vibrational optical method. Not only is acquisition of data possible in milliseconds and analysis in minutes, Raman allows concurrent detection and monitoring of all biological components. Besides validating a significant Raman signature distinction between non-tumorigenic (MCF-10A) and tumorigenic (MCF-7) breast epithelial cells, this study reveals a label-free method to assess overexpression of epidermal growth factor receptors (EGFR) in tumor cells. EGFR overexpression sires Raman features associated with phosphorylated threonine and serine, and …

Essays On Sofwtare Development Projects: Impact Of Social And Technological Factors On Project Performance And Co-Diffusion Of Software Sourcing Arrangements, Niharika Dayyala

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Software development is a complicated process which is accomplished by the combined effort of the key elements such as people, processes, and technology. Software development firms are on a constant quest to identify the best practices for managing the key elements to improve their software development project outcomes and to deliver successful software projects. This Dissertation aims to study key elements that can influence the software development project performance through three distinctive studies. The first essay of this Dissertation investigates the impact of people factors on software project outcomes. Specifically, it examines the impact of team characteristics on the software …

Analysis Of Gesture Frequency And Amplitude As A Function Of Personality In Virtual Agents, Alex Michael Rayon

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Embodied conversational agents are changing the way humans interact with technology. Agents are expected to behave like people, both verbally and non-verbally. Researchers within the Human-Computer Interaction community have found many attributes of an agentâ??s gesture contribute to an agentâ??s perceived personality and believability.

Gesture amplitude and frequency are two of the attributes that contribute to the naturalness of a gesture. Currently, no previous studies have defined an empirical baseline for generating natural gestures for these two attributes. I seek to discover whether gesture amplitude and frequency affect how users perceive an agentâ??s naturalness, and which gestures would be preferred …

Advancing High Spatial And Spectral Resolution Remote Sensing For Observing Plant Community Response To Environmental Variability And Change In The Alaskan Arctic, Sergio Armando Vargas

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The Arctic is being impacted by climate change more than any other region on Earth. Impacts to terrestrial ecosystems have the potential to manifest through feedbacks with other components of the Earth System. Of particular concern is the potential for the massive store of soil organic carbon to be released from arctic permafrost to the atmosphere where it could exacerbate greenhouse warming and impact global climate and biogeochemical cycles. Even though substantial gains to our understanding of the changing Arctic have been made, especially over the past decade, linking research results from plot to regional scales remains a challenge due …

Imaging Live Drosophila Brain With Two-Photon Fluorescence Microscopy, Syeed Ehsan Ahmed

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Two-photon fluorescence microscopy is an imaging technique which delivers distinct benefits for in vivo cellular and molecular imaging. Cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP), a second messenger molecule, is responsible for triggering many physiological changes in neural system. However, the mechanism by which this molecule regulates responses in neuron cells is not yet clearly understood. When cAMP binds to a target protein, it changes the structure of that protein. Therefore, studying this molecular structure change with fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) imaging can shed light on the cAMP functioning mechanism. FRET is a non-radiative dipole-dipole coupling which is sensitive to small distance …

Self-Interaction Corrected Polarizabilities Of Small Molecules, Sharmin Akter

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Density Functional Theory (DFT) is one of the most successful and popular computational Quantum Mechanical approaches to understand materials. DFT allows the prediction of material properties from the electron density. Although in principle density functional theory is exact, it, however, relies on approximate functional for exchange-correlation energy. Due to the approximate nature of the exchange-correlation functional, the self-Coulomb energy of the electrons is not exactly canceled out by the self-exchange leading the spurious self-interaction error (SIE). This error is responsible for the unphysical orbital energies of DFT and delocalization of the orbitals. The orbital energies of the valence electrons are …

Depositional Controls And Sequence Stratigraphy Of Lacustrine To Marine Transgressive Deposits In A Rift Basin, Lower Cretaceous Bluff Mesa, Indio Mountains, West Texas, Andrew Anderson

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Successful hydrocarbon exploration in former rift basins of the South Atlantic pre-salt has generated interest in understanding depositional, diagenetic, and stratigraphic controls on pre-salt deposits. However, most studies to date have focused on attributes and controls on presalt lacustrine carbonate reservoir systems and little work has been done on the overlying marine sealing facies. Currently our standard sequence stratigraphic model of marine transgression of rift systems involves a single pulse of marine flooding over fluvially-incised valleys resulting in backstepping of fluvial and estuarine siliciclastic facies within the erosionally confined zone of an incised valley. However, the pre-salt systems of the …

Estimating The Coefficients Of A Linear Differential Operator, Maria Ivette Barraza

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Principal Differential Analysis (PDA; Ramsay, 1996) is used to obtain low dimensional representations of functional data, where each observation is represented as a curve. PDA seeks to identify a Linear Differential Operator (LDO) L = ω0I + ω 1D + ... + ωmDm, where I denotes the identity function and D j the jth derivative, that satisfies as closely as possible that Lx = 0 for each functional observation x. A theorem from analysis establishes that the coefficients of the LDO are in the Sobolev space, and thus can be approximated by B-splines. Current PDA software used to estimate the …

Electronic Structure Studies On Transition Metal Containing Endohedral Fullerenes, Carbon Onions And Zinc Sulfide Cages, Shusil Bhusal

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

We present the most stable structures for VXSc3-XN@C2n (where X=1-3 and 2n=70, 76, 78 and 80) using a systematic procedure that involves all possible isomers of the host fullerene cages. Subsequently, a detailed investigation of structural and electronic properties of the lowest energy isomers is performed using density functional theory in combination with large polarized Gaussian basis sets. The search procedure developed involved structural optimizations of thousands of fullerenes and correctly identifies the experimentally observed VSc2N@C80 and V2ScN@C80 isomer as the most stable structures. The structural analysis shows that a few V-doped endohedral fullerenes do not follow the isolated pentagon …

Synthesis Of New Fullerene Derivatives For Photovoltaic And Biological Applications, Edison Castro

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Functionalized fullerenes exhibit improved solubility and different chemical and physical properties that allow applications in multiple fields such as photovoltaic and biological applications. Currently, perovskite solar cells (PSCs) are the most rapidly developing type of solar cells with certified efficiencies rising from 3.8% in 2009 to 22.1% in 2016. The good electron transporting and solution processable properties of most fullerene derivatives make them the most popular electron transporting materials (ETMs) in inverted perovskite solar cells (PSCs).

The work is reported in 11 chapters. We start with a fullerene overview followed by cleaver and elegant methodologies that allow the synThesis of …

Tracing Anthropogenic Salinity Inputs To The Semi-Arid Rio Grande River: A Multi-Isotope Tracer Approach, Sandra Garcia

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Water is an important component for life and as such water quality and availability are major concerns in the world today. In arid to semi-arid regions, freshwater quality is especially important due to its scarcity. Elevated salinity of rivers in arid regions poses potentially devastating consequences for the communities that depend on these rivers as a source of freshwater. In the Rio Grande region, high salinity has led to severe reductions in crop productivity and accumulation of salts in soils. Salinity inputs into the river may come from both anthropogenic and natural sources. Thus, identifying and quantifying salinity inputs to …

Investigation Of Earthquake And Geyser Activity From Short-Term Nodal Array Deployment Centered At Old Faithful Geyser, Susana I. Garcia

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Yellowstone National Park is home to an active caldera, centrally located on the North American continent. Several studies have concluded the existence of a hotspot that fuels the hydrothermal, geothermal and earthquake activity in the Yellowstone region. The geologic record of Yellowstone contains multiple layers of volcanic deposits that indicate the region experienced three previous massive volcanic eruptions dating back 2.05Mya, 1.2Mya and the most recent 640,000 years ago. Yellowstone is also home to one of the largest geothermal areas in the world. With this study, an in-depth look at seismicity and geyser events recorded within an active geothermal region, …

Contextual Representation Of Documents, Entities, And Faces Of People Using A News Corpus, Md Abdul Kader

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

A massive amount of unstructured data, in this information age, is composed of document collections. Examples include news articles, blog posts, scholarly publications, and reports generated by organizations as well as people. Many data mining and machine learning algorithms have been developed in the past decade to support text mining in many applications. Text mining applications cover a wide range of tasks spanning from personal information management --- to organizational decision making, to disease control through epidemic prediction, and to intelligence analysis for national security. One bottleneck has been dominating data mining and machine learning theories for all these text …

The Nonparametric Estimation Of Elliptical Distributions, Panfeng Liang

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In practice, many multivariate datasets have identical marginal distributions. Elliptical distributions can be used to model many of those datasets. In this Thesis, we will propose a Bayesian method using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods to estimate the density function underlying multivariate datasets assuming it is an elliptical distribution.

Biofunctionalized Capillary Flow Channel Platform Integrated With 3d Nanostructured Matrix To Capture Circulating Tumor Cells, Shashwat Banerjee, Ganesh Khutale, Vrushali Khobragade, Narendra Kale, Milind Pore, Govind Chate, Archana Jalota-Badhwar, Manoj Dongare, Jayant Khandare

Articles

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from peripheral blood account genetic information for cancer diagnosis and overall disease monitoring. Analysis of “liquid biopsy” holds immense promise as it may lead to new approaches for cancer treatment. The study reports effective and continuous flow microchannel system for isolating CTCs using transferrin conjugated 3D matrix synthesized by crosslinking polyethylene glycol-Fe3O4 nanostructures for rapid and efficient capturing of CTCs. The platform provides option of using multiple microchannel units in series that can influence higher cell-capture efficiency due to increasing cell-substrate contact frequency. CTCs are captured with high efficiency even at low concentration of target cells …

Integration Of Biological Effects, Fish Histopathology And Contaminant Measurements For The Assessment Of Fish Health: A Pilot Application In Irish Marine Waters, Michelle Giltrap, Jenny Ronan, John Bignell, Brett Lyons, Evelyn Collins, Heather Rochford, Brendan Mchugh, Evin Mcgovern, Lorraine Bull, James Wilson

Articles

This study investigates the use of a weight of evidence (WOE) approach to evaluate fish health status and biological effects (BEs) of contaminants for assessment of ecosystem health and discusses its potential application in support of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD). External fish disease, liver histopathology and several BEs of contaminant exposure including 7-ethoxy resorufin O-de-ethylase (EROD), acetylcholinesterase (AChE), bile metabolites, vitellogenin (VTG) and alkali labile phosphates (ALP) were measured in two flatfish species from four locations in Ireland. Contaminant levels in fish were generally low with PCBs in fish liver below OSPAR environmental assessment criteria (EAC). There were …

The Impact Of New York State's 2016 Mold Licensing Requirement On Indoor Air Quality Assessments, Angelo Lampousis, Mark Drozdov

Publications and Research

As of January 2016, New York joined a select number of states in regulating mold. The New York State Department of Labor has approved mold-related training courses in three levels, ranging from two to four days. These include the mold abatement worker, mold remediation contractor, and mold assessor courses. In this presentation we share the experience obtained to date from delivering the above referenced courses and challenges as an approved training provider. We also evaluate the relative effectiveness of the mode of delivery as it relates to different audiences.