Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

College Of Natural Sciences Newsletter, Spring 2024, College Of Natural Sciences

College of Natural Sciences Newsletters and Reports

Page 1 Dean's Message
Page 2 New Faculty and New Club on Campus
Page 3 2024 URSCAD Awards
Page 4 Day of Scholars 2024
Page 5 SDSU's First Representation at the Association for Anatomy's 2024
Annual Conference
Page 6-7 2024 Honor's College Convocation
Page 8 Other Student Activities
Page 9 Faculty Awards
Page 10-11 Other News
Page 12 2024 Drone Day and American Association of Geographers Convention - Hawaii
Page 13 55th Annual Geography Convention
Page 14 2024 Stethoscope Ceremony
Page 15 Open PRAIRIE Data

The Effects Of Amphibole- And Sulfide-Producing Melts On Crustal Strength In Gabbros Of Lower Oceanic Crust In Oceanic Core Complexes, Mid-Atlantic And Southwest Indian Ridges, Trevor Hoffmann

Master's Theses

This study investigates gabbro-cored oceanic core complexes in the slow-spreading Mid-Atlantic Ridge (MAR) and the ultraslow spreading Southwest Indian Ridge (SWIR). Dikelets are a texture found in thin section samples from these systems that form as a result of crystal-plastic deformation. Thin section samples from the Atlantis Massif, MARK Area, and 13˚-15˚ North of the MAR and the Atlantis Bank of the SWIR were observed with petrography to find these dikelets and identify what type of dikelet is present. SEM-EDS is used to identify the mineral assemblages present in the dikelets. LA-ICP-MS is used on amphibole to determine if its …

Cost-Risk Analysis Of The Ercot Region Using Modern Portfolio Theory, Megan Sickinger

Master's Theses

In this work, we study the use of modern portfolio theory in a cost-risk analysis of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT). Based upon the risk-return concepts of modern portfolio theory, we develop an n-asset minimization problem to create a risk-cost frontier of portfolios of technologies within the ERCOT electricity region. The levelized cost of electricity for each technology in the region is a step in evaluating the expected cost of the portfolio, and the historical data of cost factors estimate the variance of cost for each technology. In addition, there are several constraints in our minimization problem to …

Guardians Of The Data: Government Use Of Ai And Iot In The Digital Age, Jannat Saeed

Honors Theses

The exponential growth of technology, epitomized by Moore's Law – “the observation that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit will double every two years”– has propelled the swift evolution of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies. This phenomenon has revolutionized various facets of daily life, from smart home devices to autonomous vehicles, reshaping how individuals interact with the world around them. However, as governments worldwide increasingly harness these innovations to monitor and collect personal data, profound privacy concerns have arisen among the general populace. Despite the ubiquity of AI and IoT in modern society, formal …

The Synthesis And Characterization Of 9,10-Bis-(Iodoethynyl)Anthracene For 2d Molecular Crystals From Halogen-Bonding, Nehemiah Antoine

Honors Theses

Two-dimensional crystals have unique properties, giving them the potential to develop practical items such as electronics, biomedicine, and sensors. Our goal is to use chemical principles to synthesize molecules that spontaneously form 2D crystals with designed patterns and properties. For this, we will exploit directional, non-covalent interactions to determine what pattern will form in 2D. In this project halogen-bonding will be utilized: halogen-bonding is the interaction between the electrophilic region of a halogen and a nucleophilic region of a Lewis base. We are functionalizing anthracenes with iodine and nitrogen to form halogen bonds that enable the molecules to pack more …

Applications Of Conic Programming Reformulations, Sarah Kelly

All Dissertations

In general, convex programs have nicer properties than nonconvex programs. Notably, in a convex program, every locally optimal solution is also globally optimal. For this reason, there is interest in finding convex reformulations of nonconvex programs. These reformulation often come in the form of a conic program. For example, nonconvex quadratically-constrained quadratic programs (QCQPs) are often relaxed to semidefinite programs (SDPs) and then tightened with valid inequalities. This dissertation gives a few different problems of interest and shows how conic reformulations can be usefully applied.

In one chapter, we consider two variants of the trust-region subproblem. For each of these …

How Do Nuclear Isomers Influence The Gamma-Ray Bursts In Binary Neutron Star Mergers?, Maria Babiuc-Hamilton, Joseph I. Powell

Physics Faculty Research

Neutron star mergers are astrophysical “gold mines,” synthesizing over half of the elements heavier than iron through rapid neutron capture nucleosynthesis. The observation of the binary neutron star merger GW170817, detected both in gravitational waves and electromagnetic radiation, marked a breakthrough. One electromagnetic component of this event, the gamma ray burst GRB 170817A, has an unresolved aspect: the characteristics of its prompt gamma-ray emission spectrum. In this work, we investigate that gamma-ray spectra in such GRBs may be influenced by de-excitations from isomeric transitions. Our study begins with a review of current knowledge on GRB structure and of r-process nucleosynthesis …

Implications Of The 2023 Flood On The Lower Diamond Fork River, Ut, Christian J. Stewart

Watershed Sciences Student Research

The lower Diamond Fork River is located on publicly accessible land owned by the Utah Reclamation Mitigation and Conservation Commission and the United States Forest Service. It is located a 30 minute drive away from the Provo-Orem Metropolitan Area and the stream runs parallel to the Diamond Fork Road, giving anglers convenient access to several miles of publicly fishable stream. The focus of this study is the lower Diamond Fork River between US Highway 6 and the Diamond Fork Campground, UT (Figure 1).

(R2082) Two New Operations And Extended Modal Operators On Bipolar Pythagorean Fuzzy Matrices, S. Sriram, K. Sivaranjani

Applications and Applied Mathematics: An International Journal (AAM)

In this paper, two novel binary operations concerning bipolar Pythagorean fuzzy matrices are delineated. Several algebraic properties, such as commutativity and associativity, are explored. Additionally, extended modal operators for Bipolar Pythagorean fuzzy matrices are introduced. Subsequently, these methodologies are applied to a decision-making scenario wherein a scoring matrix is formulated and alternatives are ranked according to their cumulative score values.

Exploring The Potentials Of Delafossite-Coated Cotton Textiles: Photocatalytic Self-Cleaning, Uv-Blocking, Anti Microbial Activity And Hydrophobicity, Shahria Ahmed

Theses and Dissertations

Delafossite materials demonstrate multifunctional applications due to their excellent catalytic properties, which vary depending on their morphology, particle size, and synthetic method. Herein, a few novel applications of the delafossites are reported, which can be implemented in commercial, medical, and domestic settings. In present work we are presenting two different delafossite CuGaO2 and CuFeO2 nanoparticles and its composite with cotton fiber. Multifunctional cotton fabric is prepared by depositing a uniform coating layer of CuGaO2 and CuFeO2, exhibits excellent photocatalytic self-cleaning, UV blocking, and antimicrobial activity. CuGaO2 and CuFeO2 nanoparticle concentrations of 1mM and 2mM were deposited over the cotton fabric …

Privacy Protection In Mobile Photography With Face Cloaking, Rithyka Heng

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

In a world of increasing connectivity, privacy is becoming ever-more difficult to maintain. People have little control over the capture of their image while in public and have even less control over the online sharing or posting of their image. This leaves many people vulnerable to being tracked or profiled via their image’s presence in other people’s photos. This thesis implements and evaluates an approach to privacy protection that involves the photographers protecting the privacy of bystanders. Because most photographs are now being taken by smartphones, a mobile application is decidedly the technology that would best achieve widespread adoption and …

Exploring Decentralized Computing Using Solid And Ipfs For Social Media Applications, Pranav Balasubramanian Natarajan

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

As traditional centralized social media platforms face growing concerns over data privacy, censorship, and lack of user control, there has been an increasing interest in decentralized alternatives. This thesis explores the design and implementation of a decentralized social media application by integrating two key technologies: Solid and the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS). Solid, led by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, enables users to store and manage their personal data in decentralized "Pods," giving them ownership over their digital identities. IPFS, a peer-to-peer hypermedia protocol, facilitates decentralized file storage and sharing, ensuring content availability and resilience against censorship. By leveraging these technologies, the …

An In-Network Approach For Pmu Missing Data Recovery With Data Plane Programmability, Jack Norris

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Phasor measurement unit (PMU) systems often experience unavoidable missing and erroneous measurements, which undermine power system observability and operational effectiveness. Traditional solutions for recovering missing PMU data employ a centralized approach at the control center, resulting in lengthy recovery times due to data transmission and aggregation. In this work, we leverage P4-based programmable networks to expedite missing data recovery. Our approach utilizes the data plane programmability offered by P4 to present an in-network solution for PMU data recovery. We establish a data-plane pipeline on P4 switches, featuring a customized PMU protocol parser, a missing data detection module, and an auto-regressive …

The Quantitative Analysis And Visualization Of Nfl Passing Routes, Sandeep Chitturi

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The strategic planning of offensive passing plays in the NFL incorporates numerous variables, including defensive coverages, player positioning, historical data, etc. This project develops an application using an analytical framework and an interactive model to simulate and visualize an NFL offense's passing strategy under varying conditions. Using R-programming and data management, the model dynamically represents potential passing routes in response to different defensive schemes. The system architecture integrates data from historical NFL league years to generate quantified route scores through designed mathematical equations. This allows for the prediction of potential passing routes for offensive skill players in response to the …

Automatic Extraction Of Vulnerability Information For Security Operators Using Gpt Models, Waeland Elder

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Artificial intelligence has progressed rapidly in recent years, greatly revolutionizing the world and helping to automate increasingly complex tasks. However, there are still some disciplines where the problem of automation has not yet been thoroughly tackled, such as in software vulnerability management. Vulnerability management is a critical component of cybersecurity for an organization. Until recently, learning about a vulnerability required a security operator to manually search and read through online information and security advisories to find needed information. Doing so is a significantly time-consuming task, as these advisories tend to be quite lengthy and packed with information about various technologies. …

Challenges For Room Temperature Operation Of Electrically Pumped Gesn Lasers, A. R. Ellis, D. A. Duffy, I. P. Marko, S. Acharya, W. Du, S. Q-. Yu, S. J. Sweeney

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Recent demonstrations of room-temperature lasing in optically pumped GeSn show promise for future CMOS compatible lasers for Si-photonics applications. However, challenges remain for electrically pumped devices. Investigation of the processes that limit device performance is therefore vital in aiding the production of future commercial devices. In this work, a combined experimental and modelling approach is utilised to explore the dominant loss processes in current devices. By manipulating the band structure of functioning devices using high hydrostatic pressure techniques at low temperature, the dominant carrier recombination pathways are identified. This reveals that 93 ± 5% of the threshold current is attributable …

A Study Of Cybersecurity Landscape In The United States: Trend, Regional Variations, And Socioeconomic Factors, Trang Thi Thu Horn

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Internet has become an essential part of our daily lives. Cyberspace has emerged significantly with an enormous number of users, creating a lucrative hunting field for cybercriminals. The exponential growth of internet users and online activities, along with the increased sophistication of cybercrimes, is raising significant global concerns for individuals, organizations, and governments. This research aims to explore the cybersecurity landscape in the United States, investigate regional variations, and the potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the number of cybercrimes. The study utilizes a mixed research method approach, including historical analysis and a Delphi study. Historical analysis studied …

Geologic Face Mapping Methodology Utilizing Global Positioning Systems And Unmanned Aircraft Systems, Luke Whitenburg

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Geologic field mapping has traditionally been a low-technology process, limited by time in the field and a delicate balance between data collection and coverage area. Advancements in Global Positioning Systems (GPS), Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), and software packages offer new tools and techniques for collecting high volume, accurate geologic information. These tools can provide geologists with safe and efficient ways to collect and process greater volumes of field data.

Field data for this study was collected from three open pit mines using a Trimble Geo 7X GPS unit with Geo 7 Series Rangefinder module and a Phantom 4 Pro V2.0 …

Mathematical And Computational Analysis Of Certain Regularizations For The 3d Navier-Stokes Equations And Nonlocal Peridynamic Conservation Laws, Isabel Safarik

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

Voigt regularization is a technique used to model turbulent flows, offering advantages such as sharing steady states with the Navier-Stokes equations and requiring no modification of boundary conditions. We explore a modification to the Voigt regularization technique by introducing fractional dissipation into the system, specifically incorporating a fractional power, r. In this work, the proofs are in the context of periodic boundary conditions. The resulting fractional Navier-Stokes-Voigt (fNSV) and fractional Euler-Voigt (fEV) equations are studied for global well-posedness in three dimensions. It is shown that global well-posedness holds in the 3D case for fEV when the fractional power r …

Ecological Dynamics Of Cenozoic North American Mammals, Alexandria Brandis Shupinski

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

Understanding how community structure is affected by various ecological, climatic, and environmental changes is a long-standing goal in ecology. However, disentangling human impacts from these other variables is difficult when using short modern timescales and anthropogenically altered communities. The fossil record provides a means to investigate community structure dynamics across critical intervals, excluding humans as a variable. Here, in three studies, I assess changes in North American mammal paleocommunity structure across the last 66 million years (Ma) at multiple temporal and spatial scales. In Chapter 1, I identify changes in mammal functional diversity (FD) locally and continentally, using three independent …

Drag Reduction In Channel Flow Configurations For Laminar And Turbulent Flow Past Superhydrophobic Surfaces, Henry Louis Ems

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

In this work, we present friction drag reduction in minichannel laminar flow past superhydrophobic metallic surfaces. Femtosecond laser surface processing (FLSP), a one-step scalable method, was used to create permanent microscale and nanoscale structures on 316 stainless steel plates. The resulting superhydrophilic plates were covered by tall (215 μm) or short (27 μm) structures. The FLSP plates were then transitioned to superhydrophobic by evaporative deposition of a fluorinated silane, a low surface energy coating. Using purified water, the friction factor was obtained by measuring pressure drop along a minichannel with a rectangular cross section for flow rates corresponding …

Aggregate Games: Computations And Applications, Jared Soundy

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

Existing computational game theory studies consider compact representations of games that capture agent interaction in real-world environments and examine computation aspects of computing equilibrium concepts to analyze or predict agent behavior.

One of the most well-studied representations that capture many commonly studied real-world environments is aggregate games. Aggregate games, first systematically studied by Nobel laureate Reinhard Selten, have various applications in modeling the decision-making interdependence of agents, where each agent’s utility function depends on their own actions and the aggregations or summarizations of the actions of all agents. These applications include Cournot oligopoly competition, public good contribution, and voting, where …

Learning Scene Semantics For 3d Scene Retrieval, Natalie Gleason

Honors Theses

This project presents a comprehensive exploration into semantics-driven 3D scene retrieval, aiming to bridge the gap between 2D sketches/images and 3D models. Through four distinct research objectives, this project endeavors to construct a foundational infrastructure, develop methodologies for quantifying semantic similarity, and advance a semantics-based retrieval framework for 2D scene sketch-based and image-based 3D scene retrieval. Leveraging WordNet as a foundational semantic ontology library, the research proposes the construction of an extensive hierarchical scene semantic tree, enriching 2D/3D scenes with encoded semantic information. The methodologies for semantic similarity computation utilize this semantic tree to bridge the semantic disparity between 2D …

Generative Ai In Education From The Perspective Of Students, Educators, And Administrators, Aashish Ghimire

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

This research explores how advanced artificial intelligence (AI), like the technology that powers tools such as ChatGPT, is changing the way we teach and learn in schools and universities. Imagine AI helping to summarize thick legal documents into something you can read over a coffee break or helping students learn how to code by offering personalized guidance. We looked into how teachers feel about using these AI tools in their classrooms, what kind of rules schools have about them, and how they can make learning programming easier for students. We found that most teachers are excited about the possibilities but …

Plumbing The Depths Of The Shallow End: Exploring Persistent Homology Using Small Data, R. Anne Flynn

All NMU Master's Theses

Persistent homology is a prominent tool in topological data analysis. This thesis is designed to be an introduction and guide to a beginner in persistent homology. This comprehensive overview discusses the math used behind it, the code needed to apply it, and its current place in the field. We explain and demonstrate the algebraic topology which fuels persistent homology. Homotopies inspire homology groups, which are able to determine how many holes a shape has. By visualizing data as a shape, persistent homology determines what type of holes are present.

We demonstrate this by using the package TDA in the manipulation …

Instant3d: Instant Text-To-3d Generation, Ming Li, Pan Zhou, Jia-Wei Liu, Jussi Keppo, Shuicheng Yan, Xiangyu Xu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Text-to-3D generation has attracted much attention from the computer vision community. Existing methods mainly optimize a neural field from scratch for each text prompt, relying on heavy and repetitive training cost which impedes their practical deployment. In this paper, we propose a novel framework for fast text-to-3D generation, dubbed Instant3D. Once trained, Instant3D is able to create a 3D object for an unseen text prompt in less than one second with a single run of a feedforward network. We achieve this remarkable speed by devising a new network that directly constructs a 3D triplane from a text prompt. The core …

Learning Adversarial Semantic Embeddings For Zero-Shot Recognition In Open Worlds, Tianqi Li, Guansong Pang, Xiao Bai, Jin Zheng, Lei Zhou, Xin Ning

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Zero-Shot Learning (ZSL) focuses on classifying samples of unseen classes with only their side semantic information presented during training. It cannot handle real-life, open-world scenarios where there are test samples of unknown classes for which neither samples (e.g., images) nor their side semantic information is known during training. Open-Set Recognition (OSR) is dedicated to addressing the unknown class issue, but existing OSR methods are not designed to model the semantic information of the unseen classes. To tackle this combined ZSL and OSR problem, we consider the case of “Zero-Shot Open-Set Recognition” (ZS-OSR), where a model is trained under the ZSL …

Time-Controllable Keyword Search Scheme With Efficient Revocation In Mobile E-Health Cloud, Yinbin Miao, Feng Li, Xinghua Li, Zhiquan Liu, Jianting Ning, Hongwei Li, Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo, Deng, Robert H.

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Electronic health (e-health) systems may outsource data such as patient e-health records to mobile cloud servers for efficiency gains (e.g., minimizing local storage and computation costs). However, such a move may result in privacy implications in the presence of semi-honest cloud servers. Searchable Encryption (SE) can potentially facilitate privacy-preserving searches based on keywords for encrypted data stored in the mobile cloud, but most existing SE solutions do not support temporal access control (i.e., a mechanism that grants access permissions to users for specified time ranges). Hence, in this paper we design a time-controllable keyword search scheme by using an attribute-based …

Secure Multiparty Protocols On Blockchain With Fairness And Scalability, Joshua Holmes

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Secure multiparty computation is a major field of research in modern cryptography. It allows for the creation of a protocol that maintains the privacy of the inputs and ensures that violation of the protocol results in no undue benefit to the violator or detriment to an honest party. These protocols can be used in many fields. In this dissertation, we explore the application of the mechanisms of secure party computation in the context of peer-to-peer lending, fair exchange with cryptocurrencies, consensus, and electronic voting. In all these areas, honesty of execution and fairness in the outcome should be assured or …

Best Practices For Offline Evaluation For Top-N Recommendation: Candidate Set Sampling And Statistical Inference, Ngozi Ihemelandu

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Evaluation of recommender systems is key to ensuring that we are making progress by only promoting proposed algorithms that actually outperform the state-of-the-art. Evaluation can be performed offline using logged historic data, or online such as A/B tests. Offline evaluation is the most popular evaluation paradigm used in recent research publications because of its accessibility. It has been an area of study since its earliest days, and is still currently an active area of research. Even though significant work has been done to improve the process and metrics of offline evaluation, it still faces fundamental difficulties. Given the significant role …