Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Ankle Mobility And Balance In A Healthy College-Aged Population: A Correlational Study, Anna Johnson, Maddy Roiger, Ellie Stewart, Leah Jackson

Science Symposium

This study aimed to investigate the relationship between ankle mobility and balance in a young, healthy population, filling a gap in existing literature primarily focused on older adults. The findings revealed no significant correlation between ankle mobility and balance measures in the college-aged subjects. While previous research in elderly populations suggested a link between ankle mobility and balance, this study suggests that such a relationship may not hold true for younger individuals. These results underscore the importance of considering age-related differences and overall health status when exploring factors affecting balance, potentially guiding future research and intervention strategies aimed at improving …

Search For Vector-Like B Quarks In Cms Run 2, Kalin Johnson, Xiaohe Shen, Julie Hogan

Science Symposium

We present a search for a single vector-like B quark that decays to a top quark and W boson. In the single lepton final state, the B quark can be reconstructed from the lepton, missing transverse momentum, and one large-radius jet. We will present developments of the RDataFrame workflows for the search and optimization of the B quark reconstruction process.

Spectral Characterization Of High-Speed Sers Fluctuations, Makayla Schmidt, Emily A. Farley, Marit A. Engevik, Alexandre G. Brolo, Nathan Lemke, Nathan Lindquist

Science Symposium

The concept of plasmonic “hotspots” is central to the broad field of nanophotonics. In surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS), hotspots can increase Raman scattering efficiency by orders of magnitude. Hotspot dimensions may range from a few nanometers down to the atomic scale and are able to generate SERS signals from single molecules. However, these single-molecule SERS signals often show significant fluctuations, and the concept of intense, localized, yet static hotspots has come into question. Recent experiments have shown these SERS intensity fluctuations (SIFs) to occur over an extremely wide range of timescales, from seconds to micro-seconds, due to the various physical …

Effect Of Recommending Users And Opinions On The Network Connectivity And Idea Generation Process, Sriniwas Pandey, Hiroki Sayama

Northeast Journal of Complex Systems (NEJCS)

The growing reliance on online services underscores the crucial role of recommendation systems, especially on social media platforms seeking increased user engagement. This study investigates how recommendation systems influence the impact of personal behavioral traits on social network dynamics. It explores the interplay between homophily, users’ openness to novel ideas, and recommendation-driven exposure to new opinions. Additionally, the research examines the impact of recommendation systems on the diversity of newly generated ideas, shedding light on the challenges and opportunities in designing effective systems that balance the exploration of new ideas with the risk of reinforcing biases or filtering valuable, unconventional …

"It's Like Educating Us Older People...": Unveiling Needs And Expectations Regarding Educational Features Within Parental Control Tools, Prakriti Dumaru, Mahdi Nasrullah Al-Ameen

Computer Science Faculty and Staff Publications

As children are getting access to devices at an increasingly younger age, parents need to grapple with new ways to protect them from online risks. This indicates the need for support from parental control tools to enhance their self-efficacy, which we refer to as educational features. This is little addressed in the existing literature on parental mediation. As we begin to address this gap, we created a low-fidelity prototype with designs of Google's existing parental control as our baseline design. We used the baseline design in semi-structured interviews with 12 parents whose children (aged below 14) are active Internet users, …

Global Fits In The Supersymmetric Georgi-Machacek Model, Yingnan Xu

Physics Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, we study a supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model with Higgs triplets in the scalar sector. We begin with a review of the Standard Model (SM), particularly the electroweak sector and the Higgs mechanism. In the SM, the Higgs mechanism requires the presence of a complex Higgs doublet to break the electroweak symmetry and endow particles with a mass; this process is called Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking (SSB). Although this is the simplest possibility, higher scalar representations may also contribute to the electroweak breaking process (EWSB). The extent to which these higher representations contribute to EWSB is constrained …

An Examination Of Behavior Of Youtube Commenters, John E. Leonard

Computer Science ETDs

YouTube comments are a unique form of social media, as viewers mainly interact with other viewers through comments sections, and cannot choose to interact with specific people. This lack of control over which comments are presented to them forces users to view spam.

Multiple general patterns of behavior were found in the dataset of YouTube comments. For example, most users posted just after a video’s publication. In addition, users tended to watch videos in the evening over the early morning.

A novel method was found for quantifying the likelihood of coordinated accounts being controlled by one person using time sharing. …

Statistical Approaches For The Early Detection Of Colorectal Cancer Using Longitudinal Biomarkers, Emily Berry

Statistical Science Theses and Dissertations

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third leading cause of cancer-related death in the United States [45]. CRC is believed to advance from adenomatous polyps creating a unique opportunity for both early detection and cancer prevention [4, 23]. Like other diseases, CRC screening reduces mortality by detecting cancer at earlier, more treatable stages; however, it can also reduce incidence through the removal of precancerous lesions [4]. As a result, screening is recommended for average-risk adults ≥ 45 years of age and includes a variety of tests [4, 12]. Despite alternate screening options, colonoscopy capacity is often cited as a barrier to …

A First Look Into Targeted Clickbait And Its Countermeasures: The Power Of Storytelling, Ankit Shrestha, Audrey Flood, Saniat Sohrawardi, Matthew Wright, Mahdi Nasrullah Al-Ameen

Computer Science Student Research

Clickbait headlines work through superlatives and intensifiers, creating information gaps to increase the relevance of their associated links that direct users to time-wasting and sometimes even malicious websites. This approach can be amplified using targeted clickbait that takes publicly available information from social media to align clickbait to users’ preferences and beliefs. In this work, we first conducted preliminary studies to understand the influence of targeted clickbait on users’ clicking behavior. Based on our findings, we involved 24 users in the participatory design of story-based warnings against targeted clickbait. Our analysis of user-created warnings led to four design variations, which …

Unboxing The Complicated Near Term Climatic And Geomorphic History Of Mars, Joshua Matthew Williams

Earth and Planetary Sciences ETDs

It has long been thought that glacial processes were unlikely within the tropical regions of Mars. However, growing evidence, including this work has identified and quantified relic glacial forms within the equatorial regions. These findings have major implications for understanding Martian climate history and its sensitivity to changes in insolation. As well, the presence of ice in the equatorial region of Mars has significant implications for the past global redistribution of the water ice in the Martian cryosphere. In this manuscript, I clarify and refine our understanding of the morphology of glacial features in the equatorial zone by applying novel …

Online Temporal Data Mining And Learning: Pursuing Enhanced Efficiency And Robust Algorithms, Sheng Zhong

Computer Science ETDs

Time series data mining and learning serve as a cornerstone across various domains, including finance, healthcare, and science. Recent advancements in network and sensor technologies have ignited an increasing interest in real-time temporal data mining and learning techniques. Various tasks benefit from these techniques, such as environmental monitoring, event detection, anomaly identification, and forecasting. However, these techniques still face significant challenges in the online environment settings, encompassing aspects like efficiency, accuracy, robustness, and scarcity of labeled data. This dissertation presents four innovative solutions: FilCorr, DCT-MASS, FewSig, and BitLINK to overcome these challenges. We evaluate each method and showcase their practical …

"I Feel Like He's Looking In The Computer World To Be Social, But I Can't Trust His Judgement": Reimagining Parental Control For Children With Asd, Prakriti Dumaru, Bryson D. Hackler, Audrey Flood, Mahdi Nasrullah Al-Ameen

Computer Science Faculty and Staff Publications

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) often seek comfort from devices (e.g., smartphones) to deal with social overstimulation. However, such reliance exposes them to inappropriate digital content and increases susceptibility to mimicry and social vulnerability. Thus, parents having children with ASD encounter unique challenges in regulating their device usage, which are little addressed in the existing literature on parental mediation. As we begin to address this gap, we designed low-fidelity prototypes centered around open communication and self-regulation, which we refined based on the feedback from six ASD experts in two focus groups. We evaluated updated designs (presented in the form …

Generative Ai In User-Generated Content, Yiqing Hua, Shuo Niu, Jie Cai, Lydia B. Chilton, Hendrick Heuer, Donghee Yvette Wohn

Computer Science

Generative AI (Gen-AI) is rapidly changing the landscape of User-Generated Content (UGC) on social media. AI tools for generating text, images, and videos, such as Large-Language Models (LLM), image generation AI, AI-powered video material tools, and deep fake technologies, are accelerating creators in obtaining content ideas, drafting outlines, and streamlining creative workflows. The capabilities of Gen-AI could introduce new opportunities to lower the bar and accelerate the pace of content creation for grassroots creators, thereby expanding the volume of AI-generated UGC on social media. However, we lack the necessary understanding of how the wide deployment of such technologies will impact …

Deformation Mapping And Modeling Of The Aleutian Volcanoes With Insar And Numerical Models, Jiahui Wang

Earth Sciences Theses and Dissertations

Surface deformation mapping is an essential component for comprehensive monitoring of volcanic activities, serving as a vital tool for discerning crucial insights into magma dynamics, storage, and migration for accurate hazard forecasting, assessment, and mitigation. However, monitoring of the volcanic deformation across the Aleutian volcanic arc is usually limited by the lack of terrestrial sensors deployed due to their remote locations and hostile environmental conditions, necessitating alternative methodologies for data acquisition and analysis.

My PhD study aims at precisely mapping the crustal deformation for the Aleutian volcanoes and tracking the evolution of the magmatic system with Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar …

The Geology And Geochemistry Of The Western Iron Ore Group Greenstone Belt, Singhbhum Craton, Eastern India, Jordan Wright

Earth Sciences Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents new data on the origin of the Western Iron Ore Group (W-IOG), a Paleoarchean succession deposited on sialic rocks of the Singhbhum Craton. U-Pb ages from zircons from a tuff overlying the Lower Shales just below a banded iron formation (BIF) pin the age of the section to 3.39 Ga. Unconformably overlying the whole IOG section is the Darjing Group, which contains the Birtola Sandstone (on the basis of this work, now estimated to be 2.35 Ga). The lack of penetrative deformation and low-grade metamorphism makes these rocks excellent subjects for combined radiogenic and stable isotope studies. …

Advancing Coupled Cluster Methods: Tensor Factorization And Analytic Gradient Implementation, Tingting Zhao

Chemistry Theses and Dissertations

With the rapid advancement of computing capabilities, computational chemistry has become increasingly indispensable in both experiment design and the interpretation of experimental outcomes. Wave-function-based quantum mechanistic methods are highly sought after for their ability to provide high-accuracy data and their potential for systematic improvement. However, to extend their applicability to larger molecules, it is essential to employ rank-reducing approximations to these methods. This dissertation dedicates Chapters Three and Four to the development of rank-reduced methodologies. Additionally, beyond single-point energies, molecular geometries and properties of molecule-excited states hold paramount importance across diverse fields of chemistry. Hence, Chapter Five presents the work …

Investigating The Effects Of Suspended Algal Content, Dissolved Oxygen, And Temperature On A High-Frequency Acoustic Attenuation System In A Controlled Laboratory Environment, Noah Watson

Honors Theses

The Single Frequency Acoustic Attenuation System (SFAAS) has been developed at the National Center for Physical Acoustics (NCPA). This system uses acoustic methods to monitor fine suspended sediment concentration in streams. Site-specific calibrations are necessary for this system, and previous research has indicated that algal concentration or dissolved oxygen concentration of water may affect collected data. Temperature, dissolved oxygen concentration, and fluorescence, used as a proxy for algal concentration, were monitored during this system’s use, and calibrations were derived to account for the effect of each of these variables on acoustic measurements. It has been shown that temperature has a …

Investigation Of Residual Mineral Content Of Bauxite Stockpiles, Saline Mining District, Arkansas, U.S.A., Melanie L. Ertons

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The former mining town of Bauxite is in the Saline County Mining District, in central Arkansas. Bauxite is located approximately 40 km (25 mi) southwest of Little Rock just east of Benton, Arkansas. This area contains extensive deposits of bauxite ore and nepheline syenite previously mined by Aluminum Company of America using open pit and subsurface mining techniques. This study incorporates five bauxite stockpiles (SP1, Clay, SP2, SP3, SP4) with varying amounts of alumina content situated on approximately 10 acres of land within an area of the former mine recognized as Section 20. Over the past several years, there has …

Comparison Of Various Theoretical Measures Of Aromaticity Within Monosubstituted Benzene, Caleb K. Swain, Steve Scheiner

Chemistry and Biochemistry Faculty Publications

The effects of monosubstitution on the aromaticity of benzene are assessed using a number of different quantitative schemes. The ability of the mobile π-electrons to respond to an external magnetic field is evaluated using several variants of the NICS scheme which calculate the shielding of points along the axis perpendicular to the molecule. Another class of measures is related to the drive toward the uniformity of C-C bond lengths and strengths. Several energetic quantities are devised to approximate an aromatic stabilization energy and the tendency of the molecule to maintain planarity. There is a lack of consistency in that the …

Depositional Facies Analysis Of The Cotton Valley Group Sandstones Of The Blackburn Field, Northern Louisiana Using Well Logs And Cores; Implications For Carbon Sequestration, Frederick Owusu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Cotton Valley Group (CVG) consists of tight sandstones with heterogeneous reservoir properties due to variations in depositional environments and diagenesis, spanning across eastern Texas through the Florida panhandle. It has served as a hydrocarbon target since the 1940s, and with recent technological advances, there is renewed exploration of the tight reservoirs within the group. Across northern Louisiana, the CVG has moderate to good reservoir properties, whereas those south extending westward across the Sabine uplift into east Texas decrease in porosity and permeability. With reservoir depletion coupled with its relatively simple mineralogy, these sandstone units may serve as good, localized …

Exploring The Mandelbrot Set, James Shirley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Mandelbrot set is a mathematical mystery. Finding its home somewhere be-
tween holomorphic dynamics and complex analysis, the Mandelbrot set showcases
its usefulness in fields across the many realms of math—ranging from physics to nu-
merical methods and even biology. While typically defined in terms of its bounded
sequences, this thesis intends to illuminate the Mandelbrot set as a type of param-
eterization of connectivity itself, specifically that of complex-valued rational maps
of the form z → z² + c. This fully illustrated guide to the Mandelbrot set merges
the worlds of intuition and theory with a series of …

Timber And Tornadoes: A Journalistic View Of Mississippi's Escalating Climate Challenge, Alice Ann Hollingsworth, Alice Ann Hollingsworth

Honors Theses

Timber and Tornadoes: A Journalistic View of Mississippi’s Escalating Climate Challenges is a project which explores the impact of climate change on the state of Mississippi and its industries. Specific areas of interest were the recent onslaught of wind disasters including tornadic activity and hurricanes as well as the impact of weather events on the timber and forestry industries in the state. This project involved interviews of industry professionals as well as academic experts. In addition, interview questions and necessary supplemental context were developed using significant background research. Emphasizing the potential challenges that climate change will present for the state …

Climate Change In Mississippi: A Journalistic Exploration Of Education And Activism, Kala Nance

Honors Theses

Climate Change in Mississippi: A Journalistic Exploration of Education and Activism takes an investigative, journalistic approach toward climate change in Mississippi. Specifically, how education and awareness have a direct impact on Mississippi industries, people and legislation. The project explored the level of acknowledgement of climate change across the state, and how certain individuals used advocacy to encourage education about climate change to raise awareness of the severity of the situation. This project includes interviews with university professors and researchers, non-profit organizations, educational groups and working individuals in some of Mississippi’s largest areas of employment. Additionally, this project draws on research …

Manipulative, Dark, And Unethical Design Practices In Ui & Ux Design, Ryan Edward Brown

Honors Theses

This thesis examines the pervasive and detrimental effects of manipulative user interface and user experience design (UI/UX) practices on individuals and society. Focusing on three critical areas – accessibility, dark patterns, and polarization – the study employs a mixed-methods approach, combining findings from a comprehensive literature review, an analysis of specific design patterns and methods, and a survey of user experiences.
The literature review covers topics such as the importance of accessibility in design education, the prevalence of dark patterns in mobile and desktop sites, the role of personalization algorithms in shaping user experiences, and the formation of echo chambers …

Capturing Higher-Order Relationships Through Information Decomposition, Aobo Lyu

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Mutual information between two random variables is a well-studied notion, whose understanding is fairly complete. Mutual information between one random variable and a pair of other random variables, however, is a far more involved notion. Specifically, Shannon's mutual information does not capture fine-grained interactions between those three variables, resulting in limited insights in complex systems. To capture these fine-grained higher-order interactions among variables, Williams and Beer proposed a framework called Partial Information Decomposition (PID) to decompose this mutual information to information atoms, called unique, redundant, and synergistic, and proposed several operational axioms that these atoms must satisfy. This conceptual …

And Food Justice For All: Advancing Access To Just And Sustainable Food Systems, Makenna Grace Landry

Graduate Student Portfolios, Professional Papers, and Capstone Projects

A collection of work exploring food justice and food access programming in Western Montana, as well as a critique of the Bayer-Monsanto merger.

Exploring The Complex Landscape Of Proteins: From Intrinsically Disordered Proteins To Peptidomimetics Through Computational Approaches, Tongtong Li

Chemistry and Chemical Biology ETDs

Protein function is closely related to their three-dimensional structures. However, some proteins lack a well-defined structure, so-called intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs). They prefer to interconvert among different conformations in isolation and undergo a disorder-to-order transition upon binding to a partner. IDPs or proteins with intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs), constituting a large portion of the human proteome, are involved in many cellular activities and are therefore highly relevant to our health. In my dissertation, I used computational methods to systematically study systems including dynamic proteins, disordered proteins in complex with their targets, and synthetic peptidomimetics to reveal the unique physical properties …

Entanglement With Neutral Atoms In The Simulation Of Nonequilibrium Dynamics Of One-Dimensional Spin Models, Anupam Mitra

Physics & Astronomy ETDs

Quantum entanglement is a key ingredient for quantum information processing with capabilities beyond that of classical computation. We study the generation and role of entanglement in the dynamics of spin-1/2 models, both for the design of quantum gates for general-purpose quantum computation and for quantum simulation of interacting spin models. We introduce the neutral atom Mølmer-Sørensen gate, involving rapid adiabatic Rydberg dressing interleaved in a spin-echo sequence. We show its robustness to quasi-static experimental imperfections and favorable scaling with the time-energy scales of Rydberg-mediated entanglement generation. In quantum simulation, we consider critical behavior in quench dynamics of transverse field Ising …

Paleoecology Of The Late Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway And Gulf Coastal Plain, Ceara Kathleen Quinn Purcell

Earth and Planetary Sciences ETDs

This dissertation presents research into the paleobiogeography and paleoecology of the Western Interior Seaway (WIS) and Gulf Coastal Plain (GCP) during the Late Cretaceous. The dataset utilized here includes an extensive record of marine invertebrates from over 200 years of fossil collecting and sedimentary data collated from over 45 different literature sources, representing approximately 17 million years of deposition. The high-resolution of this dataset, and its extensive geographic distribution and temporal duration, make it ideal for exploring various ecological questions. Using these data, I have attempted to reconstruct paleobiogeographic provinces as published in prior works, explore functional diversity patterns, and …

A Weather Radar Analysis Of The Effects Of The Albuquerque Urban Area On Thunderstorms From 2001 To 2020, Alexandra Jane Vivier

Geography ETDs

Urban areas have been found to affect the atmosphere locally through changes in emissions, thermal properties, the addition of moisture, and changes in airflow patterns. This study assessed the relationship between urban areas in central New Mexico and thunderstorm intensity and duration between 2001 and 2020. Weather radar data was used to derive thunderstorm events, as it is well-suited to fast-changing thunderstorm conditions. Regression analyses were used to determine the relationship between developed land cover and thunderstorm intensity and duration, while controlling for factors such as elevation, aspect, and near-surface temperatures. It was found that developed land cover was statistically …