Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Reconstructing Cosmic Filaments Around Dwarf Galaxies With The Rubin Observatory, Sarah E. Draves, Charlotte Welker, Charlotte Olsen

Publications and Research

The cosmic web is the largest structure in the universe, consisting of streams of gas and dust that connect galaxies made of stars, dark matter, and more gas and dust. Denser areas of the cosmic web tend to have more massive and redder galaxies, which implies a strong connection between cosmic structure and galaxy evolution. The degree to which galaxies are influenced by the cosmic web outside of relatively dense areas, particularly in the case of small filaments near galaxies, is still an area of active study. Low mass galaxies, known as dwarf galaxies, are particularly sensitive to the environment …

Statistical Analysis For Pre- And Post- Assessments Of Sdq And Idela Scores, Diego Murillo, Franceli L. Cibrian

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

This research aimed to assess the potential of Mazi Umntanakho ("Know Your Child") in tracking developmental milestones in young children. Mazi is a WhatsApp-based conversational agent that assists South African home visitors in evaluating and monitoring children's socio-emotional skills using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) and the International Development and Early Learning Assessment (IDELA). A field study was conducted in low-income South African communities, where 95 home visitors assessed 1,208 children. This detailed analysis of the data was collected during that deployment, focusing on investigating whether assessment scores improved over time and whether the length of time between assessments …

The Computational Eye. Deconstructing Style In Digital Art History, Paul Guhennec, Ellen Charlesworth

Artl@s Bulletin

With the aim of grounding digital methods in the art historic tradition, this paper uses the discussions around style as a springboard to ask how digital art history can extend beyond providing quantitative confirmation of known trends to enrich our current understanding of visual cultures. Drawing from the examples throughout this issue, we explore how an analysis of computational ways of seeing—or the ‘computational eye’—can expose the underlying preoccupations and priorities of our own research.

Afin de mieux ancrer les méthodes numériques dans la tradition de l’histoire de l’art, cet article se sert des discussions récentes autour du concept de …

Visualization Of Paleocurrents On A Web Application Using Gplates, Anjan Sapkota

MS in Computer Science Theses

Paleocurrents are flow directions derived from features of sedimentary rocks that reveal the direction of the current of wind or water that deposited the sediment. In 2015, Brand et al. created a global database of paleocurrents, which contains over 1,000,000 measurements worldwide: North America, South America, Australia, Great Britain, parts of Western Europe, China, Africa are fairly well represented; Antarctica, Eastern Europe, and Asia are modestly represented and Russia is poorly represented. The contribution of this thesis is a web application that uses the GPlates’ Application Programming Interface (API) to visualize global paleocurrents through time in an interactive way based …

A Fourth Planet In The Kepler-51 System Revealed By Transit Timing Variations, Kento Masuda, Jessica E. Libby-Roberts, John H. Livingston, Kevin B. Stevenson, Peter Gao, Shreyas Vissapragada, Guangwei Fu, Te Han, Michael Greklek-Mckeon, Suvrath Mahadevan, Eric Agol, Aaron Bello-Arufe, Zachory Berta-Thompson, Caleb I. Cañas, Yayaati Chachan, Leslie Hebb, Renyu Hu, Yui Kawashima, Heather A. Knutson, Caroline V. Morley, Catriona A. Murray

Pacific Faculty Work

Kepler-51 is a ≲1 Gyr old Sun-like star hosting three transiting planets with radii ≈6-9 R ⊕ and orbital periods ≈45-130 days. Transit timing variations (TTVs) measured with past Kepler and Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations have been successfully modeled by considering gravitational interactions between the three transiting planets, yielding low masses and low mean densities (≲0.1 g cm⁻³) for all three planets. However, the transit time of the outermost transiting planet Kepler-51d recently measured by the James Webb Space Telescope 10 yr after the Kepler observations is significantly discrepant from the prediction made by the three-planet TTV …

Artificial Creativity: How Artificial Intelligence Will Impact Creativity Via Post-Production, Nicole Dwyer

Honors Thesis

My thesis lives in the world of Post-Production, and it contains both a creative and written component. I was the editor for four Undergraduate thesis projects. Seeking to gain experience in editing various genres, I worked in drama, sports, period piece, coming of age, and adventure. My biggest takeaways from these projects are the importance of organization, communication, time management, and editing with a sense of imagination. I became a more confident, resilient, and prepared editor through these experiences.

Along with the hands-on filmmaking element of my thesis, I also conducted research on how artificial intelligence will impact conceptions of …

Machine Visual Perception From Sim-To-Real Transfer Learning For Autonomous Docking Maneuvers, Derek Worth, Jeffrey Choate, Ryan M. Raettig, Scott L. Nykl, Clark N. Taylor

Faculty Publications

This paper presents a comprehensive approach to enhancing autonomous docking maneuvers through machine visual perception and sim-to-real transfer learning. By leveraging relative vectoring techniques, we aim to replicate the human ability to execute precise docking operations. Our study focuses on autonomous aerial refueling as a use case, demonstrating significant advancements in relative navigation and object detection. We introduce a novel method for aligning digital twins using fiducial targets and motion capture data, which facilitates accurate pose estimation from real-world imagery. Additionally, we develop cost-efficient annotation automation techniques for generating high-quality You Only Look Once training data. Experimental results indicate that …

Investigating The Efficacy Of Prompt Engineering Techniques For Research Survey Paper Generation Using Large Language Models, Innocent Obed Awidi

Theses and Dissertations

The recent advancements in large language models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, offer promising potential for automating academic writing tasks. This study investigates the efficacy of prompt engineering techniques in guiding LLMs to generate high-quality research survey papers, specifically exploring their application in the fields of artificial intelligence (AI) in drug development and large language model customization for classification. Using a mixed-methods approach, this research assessed the impact of prompt engineering on the coherence, relevance, and overall quality of generated content through quantitative and qualitative analyses. Techniques including prompt refinement, contextual prompting, and iterative prompting were systematically applied to enhance the …

Graph Neural Networks Powered Scientific Paper Recommendation, Junhao Shen

Computer Science and Engineering Theses and Dissertations

Scientific paper recommendation systems aim to help researchers discover relevant papers amidst the vast and ever-growing body of literature. With the exponential yearly increase in scientific publications, the demand for effective paper recommendation solutions has become both critical and increasingly challenging. In recent years, deep learning techniques have revolutionized recommender systems, and scientific paper recommendations have naturally integrated these advancements. In this dissertation, we address these challenges through three progressive contributions.

First, we enhance traditional content-based methods using Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) by introducing a Graph Convolutional Network-strengthened Topic Modeling (GCN-TM) approach. This method improves upon conventional topic modeling techniques …

Butte Priority Soils Operable Unit (Bpsou) Final Bpsou Insufficiently Reclaimed Sites Belle Of Butte (Bres No. 8 & Ur-39) Remedial Action Work Plan (Rawp) Request For Change Ir- 2024-Ra-01, Mike Mcanulty

Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund Site

No abstract provided.

Intraspecific Variability Of Rice Root Knot Nematodes Across Diverse Agroecosystems For Sustainable Management, Sandip Mondal, Arnab Purohit, Anjan Hazra, Sampa Das, Manohar Chakrabarti, Matiyar Rahaman Khan, Horacio Lopez-Nicora, Dipankar Chakraborti, Abhishek Mukherjee

School of Integrative Biological & Chemical Sciences Faculty Publications

In the rice agroecosystems of Southeast Asia, rice root knot nematode (Meloidogyne graminicola) significantly impairs yield, representing a major species within the ‘graminis-group’ known for its morphological similarities with other root knot nematodes (RKNs). This study delves into the variations in reproductive potential, morphology, morphometrics, and genetic diversity among thirty RKN populations in rice across three distinct agroecological zones in Jharkhand, India. Despite notable differences in reproductive potential among the populations, morphological and morphometric correlations to reproductive potential were inconclusive. However, male and juvenile morphometrics were crucial for identifying intraspecific variability. Genetic analysis utilizing five molecular markers (ITS, …

Source Anisotropies And Pulsar Timing Arrays, Bruce Allen, Deepali Agarwal, Joseph D. Romano, Serena Valtolina

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Publications

Pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) hunt for gravitational waves (GWs) by searching for the correlations that GWs induce in the time-of-arrival residuals from different pulsars. If the GW sources are of astrophysical origin, then they are located at discrete points on the sky. However, PTA data are often modeled, and subsequently analyzed, via a “standard Gaussian ensemble.” That ensemble is obtained in the limit of an infinite density of vanishingly weak, Poisson-distributed sources. In this paper, we move away from that ensemble, to study the effects of two types of “source anisotropy.” The first (a), which is often called “shot noise,” …

Mathematics In Amusement Parks, Kacey Laumann

Honors Projects

This project focuses specifically on the Walt Disney World Park, Magic Kingdom. I started by collecting data through the MyDisneyExperience app. By recording the data, I was then able to create polynomial functions to the fifth the degree. Each attraction received a function which allowed me to predict the wait times for that attraction. Then, by graphing the functions and analyzing the graph using calculus the “best time” and “worst time” to go to the attraction were found. After the analysis the information is used to build a unique schedule for a guest. Then the guest receives this schedule after …

Rings Of Power: Controlling Sod Mimic Activity By The Addition Of Pyridine Rings Within The Pyridinophane Scaffold, Katherine J. Smith, Timothy M. Schwartz, David M. Freire, Cameron Bowers, Sarah K. Dunn, Jackson F. Bonnell, Magy A. Mekhail, Giridhar Akkaraju, Kayla N. Green

Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles and Research

Superoxide dismutase enzymes are a major defense against superoxide, which is a potent reactive oxygen species. Misregulation of reactive oxygen species and subsequent neuronal damage are etiological hallmarks of neurodegenerative disease. Macrocyclic small molecules have offered inroads toward functional SOD1 mimics. Herein, we report a series of five tetra-aza macrocyclic ^RPy₂N₂ ligands, varied by 4-position substitution of the pyridine ring with both electron-donating (R = OMe) and withdrawing groups (R = Cl, I, and CF₃) to offer the first comparison to well-studied ^RPyN₃ congeners and other mimics in the literature. New ligands …

Does A Name Make A Difference? Teaching Random Selection In The Classroom, Venessa Singhroy, Rommel Robertson, Kostas Stroumbakis

Numeracy

In Statistics education, it is crucial to emphasize the foundational significance of random selection, which underpins statistical methodologies and ensures unbiased representation of populations in samples. However, students often struggle to grasp the concept’s complexities, leading to challenges in applying random selection methods effectively. This paper examines the gap between students’ theoretical understanding of randomness and their practical application of this concept. Using an Explanatory Sequential Design, this study presents an instructional activity aimed at teaching the concept of randomness in the selection process and proposes modifications to enhance student comprehension. The activity, implemented in undergraduate Statistics and Psychology courses, …

D101n: A Unique And Ill-Understood Familial Als-Related Sod1 Mutant, Analisa Lott

Honors Program Theses and Research Projects

Background: Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is a fatal neurodegenerative disease, with 90% of documented cases considered sporadic and about 10% showing a hereditary link; such cases are deemed as familial ALS (fALS). Superoxide dismutase (SOD), a copper-zinc binding enzyme that protects cells from damaging free radicals, has been linked to fALS with certain toxic gain of function mutations, such as the D101N mutant. The human SOD1 D101N mutant has been shown to be associated with rapidly progressing neurodegeneration yet is less prone to aggregation than similar mutants, but its deviation from wild-type (WT) SOD1 remains misunderstood.

Objective: Although the D101N …

Website Portfolio, Thomas Roch

Honors Program Theses and Projects

No abstract provided.

Comparing Metabolism And Hypoxia Tolerance Of Native And Non-Native Florida Freshwater Fishes In Climate Change Scenarios, Benjamin A. Share

All HCAS Student Capstones, Theses, and Dissertations

As climate change brings rising water temperatures and lower dissolved oxygen (DO) concentrations to freshwater bodies, it has become increasingly important to understand how this will affect ecosystems with established non-native or invasive species. Fishes of the family Cichlidae are the most pervasive non-native fishes in the Everglades and may increase their range further north under a changing climate. To better understand potential invasibility and competition with native fishes, the metabolism and hypoxia tolerance of non-native Blue Tilapia Oreochromis aureus was compared to native Bluegill Lepomis macrochirus when acclimated across a range of seasonal and projected temperatures. Intermittent-flow respirometry was …

Applications Of Neural Networks In Parkinson’S Disease Diagnosis, Saladin Minhaaj

Theses

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a complex and debilitating neurodegenerative disorder that affects millions of people worldwide. Early and accurate diagnosis is crucial for effective treatment and management of PD. This thesis explores the application of neural networks in PD diagnosis, leveraging their ability to learn patterns from large datasets and make accurate predictions.

Thesis provides an overview of PD, including its symptoms, diagnosis, and current challenges in diagnosis. We then delve into the fundamentals of neural networks, including supervised learning, mathematical interpretations, and parametric models. This research focuses on the development of neural network models that can accurately diagnose PD …

A Latent Class Assessment Of Healthcare Access Factors And Disparities In Breast Cancer Care Timeliness, Matthew Dunn, Didong Li, Marc Emerson, Caroline Thompson, Hazel Nichols, Sarah Van Alsten, Mya Roberson, Stephanie Wheeler, Lisa Carey, Terry Hyslop, Jennifer Elston Lafata, Melissa Troester

Kimmel Cancer Center Faculty Papers

BACKGROUND: Delays in breast cancer diagnosis and treatment lead to worse survival and quality of life. Racial disparities in care timeliness have been reported, but few studies have examined access at multiple points along the care continuum (diagnosis, treatment initiation, treatment duration, and genomic testing).

METHODS AND FINDINGS: The Carolina Breast Cancer Study (CBCS) Phase 3 is a population-based, case-only cohort (n = 2,998, 50% black) of patients with invasive breast cancer diagnoses (2008 to 2013). We used latent class analysis (LCA) to group participants based on patterns of factors within 3 separate domains: socioeconomic status ("SES"), "care barriers," and …

Screensafefuture: A Parent-Empathetic And Pragmatic Mhealth Application For Toddlers' Brain Development Addressing Screen-Addiction Challenges, Nafisa Anjum, Md. Mehedi Hasan, Syeda Umme Salma, Liang Zhao, Maria Valero, Nazmus Sakib

Faculty Articles

The surging incidents of infants and toddlers screen addiction in the United States are becoming a pressing concern, given its compound impact on cognitive, mental, and physical growth. To address this era's critical child health and development problem, in this paper an innovative mHealth application—ScreenSafeFuture—is proposed. ScreenSafeFuture provides practical solutions that seamlessly fit into parents' busy lifestyles, acknowledging the effectiveness and convenience of smartphones as a healthcare tool. The solution includes essential features designed to enhance the experience between parents and their children under 3 years old encompassing an alternative activity advocator for a personalized parent-offspring scenario, screen time tracking …

Nanofabrication Of Tetraphenyl Porphyrin Surface Assemblies Linked With Tin Tetrachloride: A Scanning Probe Microscopy Investigation, Quynh Do

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Scanning probe microscopy (SPM) and colloidal lithography methods were used to study the covalent coupling of porphyrins to surfaces. In this dissertation, experimental methods for SPM operation, techniques, and applications are described. Measurement of tip-sample interactions between a sharp tip and surface is translated into digital image data maps with x-, y-, and z-data. Colloidal lithography can be used to fabricate test platforms for AFM studies. The periodicity and arrangement of the designed nanostructures is determined by the size of the colloidal particles used for surface masks. Data processing is required to obtain images and topography information from raw AFM …

Alphafold2-Based Characterization Of Apo And Holo Protein Structures And Conformational Ensembles Using Randomized Alanine Sequence Scanning Adaptation: Capturing Shared Signature Dynamics And Ligand-Induced Conformational Changes, Nishank Raisinghani, Vedant Parikh, Brandon Foley, Gennady M. Verkhivker

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

Proteins often exist in multiple conformational states, influenced by the binding of ligands or substrates. The study of these states, particularly the apo (unbound) and holo (ligand-bound) forms, is crucial for understanding protein function, dynamics, and interactions. In the current study, we use AlphaFold2, which combines randomized alanine sequence masking with shallow multiple sequence alignment subsampling to expand the conformational diversity of the predicted structural ensembles and capture conformational changes between apo and holo protein forms. Using several well-established datasets of structurally diverse apo-holo protein pairs, the proposed approach enables robust predictions of apo and holo structures and conformational ensembles, …

The Impact Of Student Engagement Activities On Future Climate Change Adaptation: The Case Of Student Simulation Models, Bassel Mostafa Elkalaf

Future Journal of Social Science

This paper explores the critical role of student engagement in addressing the growing challenges of climate change, with a focus on the Model United Nations (MUN) as a case study. As climate-related security threats increase globally, educational platforms that prepare youth for effective leadership in climate politics are more essential than ever. MUN, a widely practiced student activity simulating global policy-making, provides a valuable opportunity for students to deepen their understanding of the interconnectedness between climate change, peace, and security. By participating in MUN simulations, students engage in debates, develop innovative solutions, and practice diplomatic skills, all while exploring the …

Why Linear Faults Have Fewer Earthquakes: A Geometric Explanation, Julio C. Urenda, Aaron Velasco, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Earthquakes usually occur in the vicinity of fault lines. Until recently, geophysical analysis implied that the fault shape should not strongly affect the frequency of its earthquakes. However, recent statistical analysis has shown that faults whose shape is close to linear experience much fewer earthquakes than faults of more complex shape. Based on this empirical fact, researchers have adjusted the corresponding geophysical models, so the updated models do explain this newly discovered phenomenon. The experience of geophysics shows that the updated model will probably need to be updated again when new data appears. It is therefore desirable to come up …

Fair Economic Division: How To Modify Shapley Value To Take Into Account That Different People Have Different Productivity, Christian Servin, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Purpose: When several participants, working together, gained some amount of money, what is the fair way to distribute this amount between them? This is the problem that the future Nobelist Lloyd Shapley was working on when he proposed what is now called the Shapley value -- a division uniquely determined by natural fairness assumptions. However, this solutions is not universal: it assumes that all participants are equal -- in particular, that they have equal productivity. In practice, people have different productivity levels, and these productivity levels can differ a lot: e.g., some software engineers are several times more productive than …

How Shapley Value And Its Generalizations Can Help In The Analysis Of Complex Engineering Systems And What Next, Niklas Winnewisser, Michael Beer, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

For a complex engineering system -- such as a city's street network -- it is important to predict how its functionality is decreased when some of these components break down, and, if repairs are needed and repairs budget is limited, which subset of the set of components should be repaired first to maximize the resulting functionality. For systems with a large number of components, the number of possible subsets is astronomical, we cannot try to simulate all these subsets. So, the natural idea is to approximate the actual dependence of functionality on the subset by a simple expression -- linear …

What Is Optimal Granularity When Estimating Reliability Of A Complex Engineering Systems, Niklas Winnewisser, Michael Beer, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

For complex engineering systems, the usual way to estimate their reliability is to run simulations. If the resulting estimate does not satisfy the desired reliability level, we must replace some components with more reliable and again run simulations. This can take several iterations, so the required computation time often becomes unrealistically long. It is known that it is possible to speed up computations if components belong to a few types, and components of each type are identical. So, a natural idea to deal with the general case is to use the general granularity idea, i.e., to group components with similar …

Investigating Crystalline Rock Weathering In Distinct Climate And Ecological Settings: Insights From Shallow Seismic Refraction, Rachel Uecker

All Dissertations

Despite decades of research, understanding the subsurface of the critical zone (CZ) remains a challenge, constrained by limited access to information at depth. Traditionally, boreholes, outcrops, soil pits, and near-surface (<1 meter) geochemical measurements provided access to and quantified CZ structure. These methods, though valuable in their detail, are spatially limited, and many landscape-scale weathering hypotheses are based on these observations. In recent years, geophysical techniques have been applied to characterize large-scale CZ structure and test the validity of existing hypotheses. This dissertation harnesses nearly 10 kilometers of seismic refraction data from diverse ecoregions across the United States to challenge prevailing assumptions about weathering patterns and CZ evolution. The objective of this work is to characterize the interpreted range of weathered materials in each ecoregion and connect them to remotely-sensed information like canopy height, elevation, slope, and aspect. To do this, this work first investigates differences in weathering at depth in a north and south-facing slope system in the Laramie Range, Wyoming. The motivation for this work came from nearly a century of soil and geochemical studies from the western United States that show a greater degree and depth of weathering on north-facing slopes when compared to south-facing slopes. Our seismic refraction data were used to show that there is not a significant difference in weathering thickness at depth between north and south-facing aspects at the study site, thus conflicting with the hypothesis that there would be. Next, the hypothesis that the depth of weathering is affected by elevation was tested in the San Jacinto Mountains in southern California. The motivation for this work came from several geochemical studies in the Sierra Nevada Mountains that show ecologically prosperous mid-elevations possess an ideal combination of temperature and precipitation to produce a greater degree and depth of weathering. Again, the seismic results from the San Jacinto Mountains provided observations that conflict with the existing hypothesis that climate conditions dominate the thickness of weathering seen in rocks. Lastly, I used seismic refraction data and topographic curvature to build a groundwater model of a watershed in the Carolina Piedmont. The results of this model reveal that seismic refraction as an application for including more realistic geometry in groundwater models can improve model calibration fits. This model is the first of its kind, and, therefore, is an important step forward in merging geophysical data with the hydrogeologic and modeling field and, with further development, can be used to explore the role of topographic and regional groundwater flow as a driver of CZ evolution.

Case Study On Seney National Wildlife Refuge: How The Upper Peninsula Led Wildlife Conservation In The Beginning Of The Twentieth Century, Holly A. Galligan

HS 390 Primary Research Papers

The research presented in this paper will weave together the story of how the Upper Peninsula became a crucial hub for wildlife conservation in the first half of the twentieth century. Seeking to answer the question of how and why this occurred, as well as why it is distinct from the social movement of the 1960s, the research is based on public awareness, photographic research developments, and the concept of the national system for conservation. Hunting played the main role in the motivations for this movement therefore, it is also heavily discussed throughout. The previous research on this subject emerged …