Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

High Altitude Dependence Of Ionizing Radiation From Cosmic Rays, Zack Gibson, Akihiro Nagata, Midori Morikawa, Takuyuki Sakai, Takahiro Shimizu, Yuta Takahashi, Shusuke Okita, Raul Ramirez, Alexandra Hughlett, Toshihiro Kameda, Jr Dennison

Posters

The flux of ionizing radiation from cosmic background sources has been measured as a function of altitude using a compact Geiger counter aboard a high altitude balloon. The payload was developed by researchers from University of Tsukuba and flown under the auspices of the Utah State Get-Away-Special (GAS) team. Dose rate, temperature, pressure, humidity, altitude and position data were acquired during a ~4 hour flight up to an altitude of 32 km in August 2016. The altitude reached by this balloon was more than 5 times the height of that reached by Victor Hess’ experiment in 1912, which later won …

Seasonal Temperature Variations Controlling Cave Ventilation Processes In Cueva Larga, Puerto Rico, Rolf Vieten, Amos Winter, Sophie Friederike Warken, Andrea Schrӧder-Ritzrau, Thomas E. Miller, Denis Scholz

International Journal of Speleology

Two years of cave monitoring investigate ventilation processes in Cueva Larga, a tropical cave in Puerto Rico. The cave is 1,440 m long with a large main passage (about 120,000 m³). Cave air pCO₂ in the main passage varies seasonally, between 600 ppm in winter and 1,800 ppm in summer. The seasonal variability in cave pCO₂ permits the estimation of a cave air exchange time of 36 ± 5 days and a winter ventilation rate of 3,300 ± 1,000 m³/day for the main cave passage. Calculations of virtual temperature and differences between cave and …

The Firece Green Fire: Vol. 7 Issue 7, Wofford College Environmental Studies Program

The Fierce Green Fire

No abstract provided.

Agenda: Flpma Turns 40, University Of Colorado Boulder. Getches-Wilkinson Center For Natural Resources, Energy, And The Environment

FLPMA Turns 40 (October 21)

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) administers approximately 245 million acres of our public lands and yet, for most of our nation's history, these lands seemed largely destined to end up in private hands. Even when the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934 ushered in an important era of better managing public grazing districts and "promoting the highest use of the public lands," such use of our public lands still was plainly considered temporary, "pending its final disposal." It was not until 1976 with the passage of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) that congress adopted a policy that …

Slides: Flpma In Its Historical Context, John D. Leshy

FLPMA Turns 40 (October 21)

Presenter: John D. Leshy, Sunderland Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, U.C. Hastings College of the Law

36 slides

This session traces the history of FLPMA including, among other things, its legislative, administrative, and historical antecedents, including for example, the Public Land Law Review Commission’s 1970 report, One Third of Our Nation’s Lands. It then considers FLPMA’s unique public lands policies and requirements and how they are reflected in the BLM’s management of public lands today.

See: https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/blm/history/contents.htm

Relaxation Of Radiation Effects On The Optical Transmission Of Polymers, Alexandra Hughlett, Tyler Kippen, J. R. Dennison

Posters

Changes in optical transmission of polymers over time were studied to determine the factors contributing to relaxation of defect states induced by intense radiation doses. Samples of low density polyethylene (LDPE), polyether ether ketone (PEEK), polypropylene (PP), and polyimide (PI) received doses up to 500 MGy from an 8 MeV electron accelerator. These doses were intended to simulate long-term exposure of common spacecraft materials in geosynchronous orbit. Features and absorption edges in ~250 nm to 1000 nm UV to IR transmission spectra can be related to energies associated with various defects previously observed in these highly disordered materials. Recent work …

The Role Of Partial Surface Charge Compensation In The Properties Of Ferroelectric And Antiferroelectric Thin Films, Elena Glazkova

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Ferroelectric and antiferroelectric ultrathin films have attracted a lot of attention recently due to their remarkable properties and their potential to allow for device miniaturization in numerous applications. However, when the ferroelectric films are scaled down, it brings about an unavoidable depolarizing field. A partial surface charge compensation allows to control the residual depolarizing field and manipulate the properties of ultrathin ferroelectric films. In this dissertation we take advantage of atomistic first-principles-based simulations to expand our understanding of the role of the partial surface charge compensation in the properties of ferroelectric and antiferroelectric ultrathin films.

The application of our computational …

Improved Analysis Of Gw150914 Using A Fully Spin-Precessing Waveform Model, B. P. Abbott, K. Gill, B. Hughey, M. J. Szczepańczyk, M. Zanolin, Et Al.

Publications

This paper presents updated estimates of source parameters for GW150914, a binary black-hole coalescence event detected by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) in 2015 [Abbott et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 061102 (2016).]. Abbott et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 241102 (2016).] presented parameter estimation of the source using a 13-dimensional, phenomenological precessing-spin model (precessing IMRPhenom) and an 11-dimensional nonprecessing effective-one-body (EOB) model calibrated to numerical-relativity simulations, which forces spin alignment (nonprecessing EOBNR). Here, we present new results that include a 15-dimensional precessing-spin waveform model (precessing EOBNR) developed within the EOB formalism. (See article for remainder of abstract.)

Design And Development Of Peptidomimetic Ligands For Targeting Radiopharmaceuticals, Imaging Probes, And Immunotherapeutics In Oncologic Disease, Michael Lawrence Doligalski

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Cancer is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in the developed world. While much has been learned about these diseases in the last few decades, one of the main barriers to widespread advancement is the heterogeneity of cancer biology. A growing body of evidence supports the idea that certain protein receptors are overexpressed on the surface of tumor cells as compared to normal tissues. These extracellular biomarkers provide a unique opportunity to selectively target the tumor with both imaging and therapeutic modalities. The research in this dissertation focuses on targeting proteins on the tumor cell surface with peptidomimetic ligands. …

Block Ionomer Complexes Consisting Of Sirna And ARaft-Synthesized Hydrophilic-Block-Cationic Copolymers Ii: The Influence Of Cationic Block Charge Density On Gene Suppression, Keith Hampton Parsons, Andrew Christopher Holley, Gabrielle A. Munn, Alex S. Flynt, Charles L. Mccormick

Faculty Publications

Block ionomer complex (BIC)–siRNA interactions and effectiveness in cell transfection are reported. Aqueous RAFT polymerization was used to prepare a series of hydrophilic-block-cationic copolymers in which the cationic block statistically incorporates increasing amounts of neutral, hydrophilic monomer such that the number of cationic groups remains unchanged but the cationic charge density is diluted along the polymer backbone. Reduced charge density decreases the electrostatic binding strength between copolymers and siRNA with the goal of improving siRNA release after targeted cellular delivery. However, lower binding strength resulted in decreased transfection and RNA interference pathway activation, leading to reduced gene knockdown. Enzymatic siRNA …

Ultraluminous X-Ray Bursts In Two Ultracompact Companions To Nearby Elliptical Galaxies, Jimmy Irwin, W. Maksym, Gregory Sivakoff, Aaron Romanowsky, Dacheng Lin, Tyler Speegle, Ian Prado, David Mildebrath, Jay Strader, Jifeng Liu, Jon Miller

Faculty Publications

A search of archival X-ray data for 70 nearby galaxies has yielded two flaring sources in globular clusters or ultracompact dwarf companions of parent elliptical galaxies. One source flared once, and the other five times. When not flaring, these sources appear to be normal accreting neutron-star or black-hole X-ray binaries. Unlike magnetars and other bodies that produce repetitive flares of similar luminosity, they are located in old stellar populations.

Estimating The Impact Of Exceptional Climate Change Education On Individual Lifetime Carbon Emissions, Eugene Cordero, Diana Centeno, Elizabeth Walsh, Anne Marie Todd

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

No abstract provided.

Deep Chandra Observations Of The Compact Starburst Galaxy Henize 2–10: X-Rays From The Massive Black Hole, Amy E. Reines, Mark T. Reynolds, Jon M. Miller, Gregory R. Sivakoff, Jenny E. Greene, Ryan C. Hickox, Kelsey E. Johnson

Dartmouth Scholarship

We present follow-up X-ray observations of the candidate massive black hole (BH) in the nucleus of the low-mass, compact starburst galaxy Henize 2–10. Using new high-resolution observations from the Chandra X-ray Observatory totaling 200 ks in duration, as well as archival Chandraobservations from 2001, we demonstrate the presence of a previously unidentified X-ray point source that is spatially coincident with the known nuclear radio source in Henize 2–10 (i.e., the massive BH). We show that the hard X-ray emission previously identified in the 2001 observation is dominated by a source that is distinct from the nucleus, with the properties …

Software Engineering For Science, Jeffrey C. Carver, Neil P. Chue Hong, George K. Thiruvathukal

Computer Science: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Software Engineering for Science provides an in-depth collection of peer-reviewed chapters that describe experiences with applying software engineering practices to the development of scientific software. It provides a better understanding of how software engineering is and should be practiced, and which software engineering practices are effective for scientific software.

The book starts with a detailed overview of the Scientific Software Lifecycle, and a general overview of the scientific software development process. It highlights key issues commonly arising during scientific software development, as well as solutions to these problems.

The second part of the book provides examples of the use of …

Synthesis, Structure And Antimicrobial Property Of Green Composites From Cellulose, Wool, Hair And Chicken Feather, Chieu D. Tran, Franja Prosenc, Mladen Franko, Gerald Benzi

Chemistry Faculty Research and Publications

Novel composites between cellulose (CEL) and keratin (KER) from three different sources (wool, hair and chicken feather) were successfully synthesized in a simple one-step process in which butylmethylimidazolium chloride (BMIm⁺Cl⁻), an ionic liquid, was used as the sole solvent. The method is green and recyclable because [BMIm⁺Cl⁻] used was recovered for reuse. Spectroscopy (FTIR, XRD) and imaging (SEM) results confirm that CEL and KER remain chemically intact and homogeneously distributed in the composites. KER retains some of its secondary structure in the composites. Interestingly, the minor differences in the structure of KER …

The Consistent Behavior Of Tropical Rain: Average Reflectivity Vertical Profiles Determined By Rain Top Height, Reuven H. Heiblum, Ilan Koren, Orit Altaratz, Alexander Kostinski

Department of Physics Publications

Sixteen years of Tropical Rain Measuring Mission (TRMM) reflectivity profile data are collected for oceanic, continental, and island tropical regions within the boreal winter intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ). When sorted by the rain top height (RTH), a consistent behavior emerges where the average reflectivity profiles originating at different RTHs form non-overlapping manifolds in the height–reflectivity space, excluding the brightband regions for stratiform type profiles. Based on reflectivity slope (dBZ km⁻¹) profile characteristics and physical considerations, the profiles are divided into three classes: 1) cold profiles, which originate above the −20°C isotherm height and display convergence to a …

High-Throughput Allele-Specific Expression Across 250 Environmental Conditions, Gregory A. Moyerbrailean, Allison L. Richards, Daniel Kurtz, Cynthia A. Kalita, Gordon O. Davis, Chris T. Harvey, Adnan Alazizi, Donovan Watza, Yoram Sorokin, Nancy J. Hauff, Xiang Zhou, Xiaoquan Wen, Roger Pique-Regi, Francesca Luca

Center for Molecular Medicine and Genetics

Gene-by-environment (GxE) interactions determine common disease risk factors and biomedically relevant complex traits. However, quantifying how the environment modulates genetic effects on human quantitative phenotypes presents unique challenges. Environmental covariates are complex and difficult to measure and control at the organismal level, as found in GWAS and epidemiological studies. An alternative approach focuses on the cellular environment using in vitro treatments as a proxy for the organismal environment. These cellular environments simplify the organism-level environmental exposures to provide a tractable influence on subcellular phenotypes, such as gene expression. Expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) mapping studies identified GxE interactions in response …

The Growth Of The Central Region By Acquisition Of Counterrotating Gas In Star-Forming Galaxies, Yan-Mei Chen, Yong Shi, Christy A. Tremonti, Matt Bershady, Michael Merrifield, Eric Emsellem, Yi-Fei Jin, Song Huang, Hai Fu, David A. Wake, Kevin Bundy, David Stark, Lihwai Lin, Maria Argudo-Fernandez, Thaisa Storchi Bergmann, Dmitry Bizyaev, Joel Brownstein, Martin Bureau, John Chisholm, Niv Drory, Qi Guo, Lei Hao, Jian Hu, Cheng Li, Ran Li, Alexandre Roman Lopes, Kai-Ke Pan, Rogemar A Riffel, Daniel Thomas, Lan Wang, Renbin Yan

Physics and Astronomy Faculty Publications

Galaxies grow through both internal and external processes. In about 10% of nearby red galaxies with little star formation, gas and stars are counter-rotating, demonstrating the importance of external gas acquisition in these galaxies. However, systematic studies of such phenomena in blue, star-forming galaxies are rare, leaving uncertain the role of external gas acquisition in driving evolution of blue galaxies. Here, based on new measurements with integral field spectroscopy of a large representative galaxy sample, we find an appreciable fraction of counter-rotators among blue galaxies (9 out of 489 galaxies). The central regions of blue counter-rotators show younger stellar populations …

Abundance Of Archaias Angulatus On The West Florida Coast Indicates The Influence Of Carbonate Alkalinity Over Salinity, Sean Thomas Beckwith

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Archaias angulatus, a large symbiont-bearing foraminifer (Order Miliolida) that produces a Mg-calcite shell, is common throughout the Caribbean and warm western Atlantic region. This species lives abundantly in seagrass beds along the Springs Coast of northwest Florida (up to 4 adults per gram of sediment) where spring-fed rivers emerge from a limestone aquifer, and in Florida Bay to the southeast (25 adults/g) where the sediment is primarily biogenic carbonate. In contrast, live specimens are seldom found in the seagrass beds along the central-west coast of Florida, where barrier islands are dominated by quartz sand. My working hypothesis is that substratum …

Parallelization Of Push-Based System For Molecular Simulation Data Analysis With Gpu, Iliiazbek Akhmedov

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Modern simulation systems generate big amount of data, which consequently has to be analyzed in a timely fashion. Traditional database management systems follow principle of pulling the needed data, processing it, and then returning the results. This approach is then optimized by means of caching, storing in different structures, or doing some sacrifices on precision of the results to make it faster. When it comes to the point of doing various queries that require analysis of the whole data, this design has the following disadvantages: considerable overhead on traditional disk random I/O framework while reading from the simulation output files …

Connecting Program Synthesis And Reachability: Automatic Program Repair Using Test-Input Generation, Thanhvu Nguyen, Westley Weimer, Deepak Kapur, Stephanie Forrest

School of Computing: Technical Reports

We prove that certain formulations of program synthesis and reachability are equivalent. Specifically, our constructive proof shows the reductions between the template-based synthesis problem, which generates a program in a pre-specified form, and the reachability problem, which decides the reachability of a program location. This establishes a link between the two research fields and allows for the transfer of techniques and results between them.

To demonstrate the equivalence, we develop a program repair prototype using reachability tools. We transform a buggy program and its required specification into a specific program containing a location reachable only when the original program can …

Spatial Population Models With Fitness Based Dispersal, Chris Cosner

Mathematics Colloquium Series

Traditional continuous time models in spatial ecology typically describe movement in terms of linear diffusion and advection, which combine with nonlinear population dynamics to produce semi-linear parabolic equations and systems. In environments that are favorable everywhere in the sense that the local population growth rate is always positive, organisms can use linear advection and diffusion to achieve an optimal spatial distribution. (Here optimal means evolutionarily stable.) In regions where there are environmental “sinks” where the local growth rate is negative, it does not seem possible to achieve an optimal distribution via linear dispersal. It is possible for organisms using advection …

Moving Up

SIGNED: The Magazine of The Hong Kong Design Institute

The HKDI is on course to become a pioneer in environmentally conscious design by embedding the concept of sustainability into fashion at the start of the creative process.

Online Cross-Validation-Based Ensemble Learning, David Benkeser, Samuel D. Lendle, Cheng Ju, Mark J. Van Der Laan

U.C. Berkeley Division of Biostatistics Working Paper Series

Online estimators update a current estimate with a new incoming batch of data without having to revisit past data thereby providing streaming estimates that are scalable to big data. We develop flexible, ensemble-based online estimators of an infinite-dimensional target parameter, such as a regression function, in the setting where data are generated sequentially by a common conditional data distribution given summary measures of the past. This setting encompasses a wide range of time-series models and as special case, models for independent and identically distributed data. Our estimator considers a large library of candidate online estimators and uses online cross-validation to …

Doubly-Robust Nonparametric Inference On The Average Treatment Effect, David Benkeser, Marco Carone, Mark J. Van Der Laan, Peter Gilbert

U.C. Berkeley Division of Biostatistics Working Paper Series

Doubly-robust estimators are widely used to draw inference about the average effect of a treatment. Such estimators are consistent for the effect of interest if either one of two nuisance parameters is consistently estimated. However, if flexible, data-adaptive estimators of these nuisance parameters are used, double-robustness does not readily extend to inference. We present a general theoretical study of the behavior of doubly-robust estimators of an average treatment effect when one of the nuisance parameters is inconsistently estimated. We contrast different approaches for constructing such estimators and investigate the extent to which they may be modified to also allow doubly-robust …

Anti-Nogo-A Immunotherapy Does Not Alter Hippocampal Neurogenesis After Stroke In Adult Rats, Timothy O'Brien, Daniel Shepherd, Gwendolyn Kartje-Tillotson, Shih-Yen Tsai, Robert G. Farrer

Mathematics and Statistics: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Ischemic stroke is a leading cause of adult disability, including cognitive impairment. Our laboratory has previously shown that treatment with function-blocking antibodies against the neurite growth inhibitory protein Nogo-A promotes functional recovery after stroke in adult and aged rats, including enhancing spatial memory performance, for which the hippocampus is critically important. Since spatial memory has been linked to hippocampal neurogenesis, we investigated whether anti-Nogo-A treatment increases hippocampal neurogenesis after stroke. Adult rats were subject to permanent middle cerebral artery occlusion followed 1 week later by 2 weeks of antibody treatment. Cellular proliferation in the dentate gyrus was quantified at the …

Locality, Bulk Equations Of Motion And The Conformal Bootstrap, Daniel N. Kabat, Gilad Lifsch

Publications and Research

We develop an approach to construct local bulk operators in a CFT to order 1/N2. Since 4-point functions are not fixed by conformal invariance we use the OPE to categorize possible forms for a bulk operator. Using previous results on 3-point functions we construct a local bulk operator in each OPE channel. We then impose the condition that the bulk operators constructed in different channels agree, and hence give rise to a well-defined bulk operator. We refer to this condition as the “bulk bootstrap.” We argue and explicitly show in some examples that the bulk bootstrap leads to some of …

On Combining Family- And Population- Based Sequencing Data, Yuriko Katsumata, David W. Fardo

Biostatistics Faculty Publications

Several statistical group-based approaches have been proposed to detect effects of variation within a gene for each of the population- and family-based designs. However, unified tests to combine gene-phenotype associations obtained from these 2 study designs are not yet well established. In this study, we investigated the efficient combination of population-based and family-based sequencing data to evaluate best practices using the Genetic Analysis Workshop 19 (GAW19) data set. Because one design employed whole genome sequencing and the other whole exome sequencing, we examined variants overlapping both data sets. We used the family-based sequence kernel association test (famSKAT) to analyze the …

Causal Effect Estimation In Sequencing Studies: A Bayesian Method To Account For Confounder Adjustment Uncertainty, Chi Wang, Jinpeng Liu, David W. Fardo

Biostatistics Faculty Publications

Estimating the causal effect of a single nucleotide variant (SNV) on clinical phenotypes is of interest in many genetic studies. The effect estimation may be confounded by other SNVs as a result of linkage disequilibrium as well as demographic and clinical characteristics. Because a large number of these other variables, which we call potential confounders, are collected, it is challenging to select and adjust for the variables that truly confound the causal effect. The Bayesian adjustment for confounding (BAC) method has been proposed as a general method to estimate the average causal effect in the presence of a large number …

A Thermodynamic Description Of The Adsorption Of Simple Water-Soluble Peptoids To Silica, Anna L. Calkins, Jennifer Yin, Jacenda L. Rangel, Madeleine R. Landry, Amelia A. Fuller, Grace Y. Stokes

Chemistry and Biochemistry

The first report of a water-soluble peptoid adsorbed to silica monitored by second harmonic generation (SHG) at the liquid/solid interface is presented here. The molecular insights gained from these studies will inform the design and preparation of novel peptoid coatings. Simple 6- and 15-residue peptoids were dissolved in phosphate buffered saline and adsorbed to bare silica surfaces. Equilibrium binding constants and relative surface concentrations of adsorbed peptoids were determined from fits to the Langmuir model. Complementary fluorescence spectroscopy studies were used to quantify the maximum surface excess. Binding constants, determined here by SHG, were comparable to those previously reported for …