Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

From Sea To Lake: The Depositional History Of Saint Albans Bay, Vt, Usa, Matthew Kraft

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Sediment accumulated in lakes stores valuable information about past environments and paleoclimatological conditions. Cores previously obtained from Saint Albans Bay, located in the Northeast Arm of Lake Champlain, VT record the transition from the Champlain Sea to Lake Champlain. Belrose (2015) documented the presence of a peat horizon separating the sediments of the Champlain Sea from those of Lake Champlain. Initially, this layer was thought to comprise the transition from the marine environment of the Champlain Sea to a freshwater wetland. However, based on the results from this study, the transition between marine and freshwater conditions is thought to be …

Cargo Transport By Myosin Va Molecular Motors Within Three-Dimensional In Vitro Models Of The Intracellular Actin Cytoskeletal Network, Andrew Thomas Lombardo

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Intracellular cargo transport involves the movement of critical cellular components (e.g. vesicles, organelles, mRNA, chromosomes) along cytoskeletal tracks by tiny molecular motors. Myosin Va motors have been demonstrated to play a vital role in the transport of cargos destined for the cell membrane by navigating their cargos through the three-dimensional actin networks of the cell. Transport of cargo through these networks presents many challenges, including directional and physical obstacles which teams of myosin Va-bound to a single cargo must overcome. Specifically, myosin Va motors are presented with numerous actin-actin intersections and dense networks of filaments which can act as a …

Networks, (K)Nots, Nucleotides, And Nanostructures, Ada Morse

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Designing self-assembling DNA nanostructures often requires the identification of a route for a scaffolding strand of DNA through the target structure. When the target structure is modeled as a graph, these scaffolding routes correspond to Eulerian circuits subject to turning restrictions imposed by physical constraints on the strands of DNA. Existence of such Eulerian circuits is an NP-hard problem, which can be approached by adapting solutions to a version of the Traveling Salesperson Problem. However, the author and collaborators have demonstrated that even Eulerian circuits obeying these turning restrictions are not necessarily feasible as scaffolding routes by giving examples of …

Genetic And Demographic Consequences Of Lake And River Habitat Fragmentation On Fishes In Vermont, Peter T. Euclide

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Globally, habitat fragmentation has had a major impact on the conservation and management of many species and is one of the primary causes of species extinction. Habitat fragmentation is loosely defined as a process in which a continuous habitat is reduced to smaller, disconnected patches as the result of habitat loss, restriction of migration or the construction of barriers to movement. Aquatic systems are particularly vulnerable to habitat fragmentation, and today an estimated 48% of rivers are fragmented worldwide. My dissertation evaluates how habitat fragmentation has influenced the populations of four different species of fish in the Lake Champlain basin. …

The Progressive Evolution Of The Champlain Thrust Fault Zone: Insights From A Structural Analysis Of Its Architecture, Matthew Merson

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Near Burlington, Vermont, the Champlain Thrust fault placed massive Cambrian dolostones over calcareous shales of Ordovician age during the Ordovician Taconic Orogeny. Although the Champlain Thrust has been studied previously throughout the Champlain Valley, the architecture and structural evolution of its fault zone have never been systematically defined. To document these fault zone characteristics, a detailed structural analysis of multiple outcrops was completed along a 51 km transect between South Hero and Ferrisburgh, Vermont.

The Champlain Thrust fault zone is predominately within the footwall and preserves at least four distinct events that are heterogeneous is both style and slip direction. …

Market Efficiency In U.S. Stock Markets: A Study Of The Dow 30 And The S&P 30, Colin Michael Van Oort

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

The U.S. National Market System (NMS), the largest marketplace in the world for securities and exchange traded funds, suffers from geographic market fragmentation which leads to reduced market efficiency.

Communication lines transmit price updates and other information between geographically isolated exchanges at varying speeds, bounded above by the speed of light.

Market participants have access to federally mandated information provided by the Securities Information Processor (SIP) and privately offered information provided by the exchanges, often called direct feeds.

These feeds are quantitatively and qualitatively distinct, with the direct feeds tending to provide more information at a faster rate than the …

Governing Environmental And Economic Flows In Regional Food Systems, Michael Bishop Wironen

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Globalization, specialization, and intensification have transformed the global food system, generating material flows and impacts that span multiple scales and levels, presenting novel governance challenges. Many argue for a transition toward a sustainable food system, although the scope and specific goals are fiercely contested. Theory and method is needed to evaluate competing normative claims and build legitimacy.

In this dissertation Vermont serves as a case study to investigate how environmental and economic flows impact regional governance, focusing on efforts to manage agricultural phosphorus to achieve water quality goals. A material flow account is developed to estimate phosphorus flows embedded in …

Pharmaceutical Waste In Vermont: Results From A Survey On Purchasing, Use & Disposal, Christine Hart

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Pharmaceutical waste is an emerging form of waste with significant impacts on the environment. This study reports the results of a state-wide phone survey on pharmaceutical purchasing, use and disposal behavior among Vermont residents (n = 421). The objectives of this study were: 1) to compare the demographic nature of populations who purchase and use medicaton to those associated with leftover medication, and 2) to evaluate the impact of disposal behavior in Vermont and to recommend strategies to minimize pollution. The findings of this study showed that approximately 93% of survey participants reported purchasing of medication, 60% reported leftover medication …

The Synthesis Of Highly Substituted Aromatics And The Reaction Of Alkene Pi Systems With Vinyl Cations, Nicholas Jarrod Dodge

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Aldol cyclotrimerizations have been used to achieve the rational chemical synthesis of both fullerenes and fullerene fragments in the past. Under certain conditions this reaction produces the corresponding cyclotetramer which has sometimes been regarded as an undesired byproduct. This work details efforts to synthesize and use these cyclotetramers toward a synthesis of a C240 fullerene fragment. One principal focus in this work is tridecacyclene, a cyclic tetramer of acenaphthylene given its name by our group for its thirteen rings. Relatively low yields for the synthesis of tridecacyclene and its derivatives drove us to investigate the mechanism of its formation and …

Regularization In Symbolic Regression By An Additional Fitness Objective, Ryan Grindle

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Symbolic regression is a method for discovering functions that minimize error on a given dataset. It is of interest to prevent overfitting in symbolic regression. In this work, regularization of symbolic regression is attempted by incorporating an additional fitness objective. This new fitness objective is called Worst Neighbors (WN) score, which measures differences in approximate derivatives in the form of angles. To compute the Worst Neighbors score, place partition points between each pair of adjacent data points. For each pair of data points, compute the maximum angle between the line formed by the pair of data points and the lines …

Quantification Of Mouse Cardiac Troponin I And Myosin Binding Protein C Phosphorylation By Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (Lc-Ms), Praveena Nukareddy

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Heart failure is a major public health issue, with its prevalence estimated to be 6.5 million adults in the USA. Of the hospitalized heart failure (HF) cases, 50% are characterized by preserved ejection function (HFpEF). In HFpEF, the heart pumps a normal proportion of blood that enters it. However, thickening of the ventricular walls inhibits the chamber filling to normal volume. The direct basis of HFpEF is a slowed elongation of the cardiac muscle during the diastolic phase of the cardiac cycle. Elucidation of mechanisms that mediate relaxation of cardiac muscle could help understand the pathogenic mechanisms in HFpEF.

Myocardial …

No Farm Is An Island: Pollinators And Pollination In Agricultural Landscapes, Charles C. Nicholson

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Productive, resilient and sustainable agricultural systems are required to meet the immediate needs of a burgeoning human population, while avoiding ecosystem collapse. Agriculture provides food, fiber, fuels and other products for our current population of 7 billion and is still the major livelihood for 40% of people worldwide. By replacing natural habitat and employing chemical inputs, agriculture also negatively impacts biodiversity and impairs the provision of ecosystem services. This poses a challenge for agriculture as these impacted services are often those required for high yielding and high-quality crop production. Evidence is accumulating that agricultural management can safeguard biodiversity and ecosystem …