Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Comments For The Draft Residential Metals Abatement Program – Interior School Dust – Investigation Summary Report – Monroe Head Start (April 12, 2023), Nikia Greene

Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund Site

No abstract provided.

Comments For The Draft Residential Metals Abatement Program – Interior School Dust – Investigation Summary Report – Ramsay Elementary_Rev1 (April 26, 2023), Nikia Greene

Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund Site

No abstract provided.

Comments For The Draft Residential Metals Abatement Program – Interior School Dust – Investigation Summary Report – Whittier Elementary (April 13, 2023), Nikia Greene

Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund Site

No abstract provided.

Comments For The Draft Residential Metals Abatement Program – Interior School Dust – Investigation Summary Report – Margaret Leary Elementary (April 12, 2023), Nikia Greene

Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund Site

No abstract provided.

Comments For The Draft Residential Metals Abatement Program – Interior School Dust – Investigation Summary Report – Butte Central Elementary And Middle School (April 12, 2023), Nikia Greene

Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund Site

No abstract provided.

Stable Isotope Analysis Of Doryteuthis (Amerigo) Pealeii Eye Lenses To Determine Migratory Patterns In The Eastern Gulf Of Mexico Using Statoliths For Age Determination, Hannah M. Schwaiger

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Doryteuthis (Amerigo) pealeii is a common fisheries squid that occurs in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) and along the east coast of the United States. These squid are an important link in the food web, linking higher and lower trophic positions (Madsen et al., 2007), and they are also used for human consumption. The migration patterns of D. pealeii populations in the northwestern North Atlantic have been thoroughly studied when compared to those in the GoM. This research aims to combine statolith aging and stable isotope analysis to enhance the understanding of D. pealeii migration patterns throughout their short, sub-annual …

Environmental Chemical Analysis Method Optimization And Application To Northwest Cuban Marine Sediment, Thea R. Bartlett

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A method for gas chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (GC-MS/MS) in selected reaction monitoring (SRM) mode has been optimized to quantify 250 compounds of a variety of compound classes such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), oxidized PAHs, organochlorinated pesticides, polychlorinated biphenyls, biomarkers (hopanes, steranes, tri-aromatic steroids, and fecal sterols), aliphatic hydrocarbons, and plastic additives. This method was validated based on available QA/QC standards using several environmental samples, both sediment and biota, and standard reference materials. This contaminant-focused method can be used as a forensic geochemistry tool to evaluate oil contamination and other contaminant histories in future research studies. When applied to …

Synthesis, Characterization, And Separation Of Loaded Liposomes For Drug Delivery, Sandra Khalife

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Liposomes are viable candidates for drug delivery vehicles due to their ability to protect loaded compounds, dampen side effects of drugs, and be delivered to target sites in the body. The amphipathic nature of these lipid vesicles makes them very customizable through careful selection of bilayer and aqueous core components as well as synthetic and downsizing methods. However, synthetic methods may result in unencapsulated compounds remaining present alongside loaded liposomes, which require removal before the liposome suspension can be used.

This work explores the use of model DOPC as well as DOPC and CHOL liposomes and the methods that were …

Characteristics And Hydraulic Behavior Of Adsorptive Media For Use In Permeable Reactive Barriers, Shelby Rocha

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Cargill ditch is located on the property of Se7en Wetlands, a 1600-ac treatment wetland system in Lakeland, Polk County, Florida. The Se7en Wetlands property was previously utilized for phosphate mining prior to the construction of the system. Nonpoint nutrient sources derived from remnants of abandoned phosphate mines – known as “legacy phosphorus” – become mobilized by stormwater runoff and impair surface water bodies by promoting harmful algal blooms (HABs). Thus, the Cargill ditch likely conveys nutrient rich flow resulting from legacy phosphorus and is thought to be one contributing factor in the occurrence of HABs within the treatment wetland …

Comments For The Draft Residential Metals Abatement Program – Interior School Dust – Investigation Summary Report – Butte High School (April 12, 2023), Nikia Greene

Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund Site

No abstract provided.

Comments For The Draft Residential Metals Abatement Program – Interior School Dust – Investigation Summary Report – Former Hawthorne School (April 12, 2023), Nikia Greene

Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund Site

No abstract provided.

Comments For The Draft Residential Metals Abatement Program – Interior School Dust – Investigation Summary Report – Whittier Elementary (April 13, 2023), Nikia Greene

Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund Site

No abstract provided.

Reconstructing Historical Earthquake-Induced Tsunamis: Case Study Of 1852 Event Using The Adjoint Method Combined With Hmc, Chelsey Noorda

Theses and Dissertations

Seismic hazard analysis aims to estimate human risk due to natural disasters such as earthquakes. To improve seismic hazard analysis, our group is focused on earthquake induced tsunamis and the use of statistical models to reconstruct historical earthquakes. Based on the estimated wave heights given in anecdotal historical descriptions, we created observational probability distributions to model the historically recorded observations and constructed a prior distribution on the relevant earthquake parameters based on known seismicity of a given region. Then we used the software package GeoClaw, and a Metropolis-Hastings sampler to obtain a posterior distribution of earthquake parameters that most closely …

Use Only What You Need: Judicious Parallelism For File Transfers In High Performance Networks, Md Arifuzzaman, Engin Arslan

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Parallelism is key to efficiently utilizing high-speed research networks when transferring large volumes of data. However, the monolithic design of existing transfer applications requires the same level of parallelism to be used for reading, write, and network operations for file transfers. This, in turn, overburdens system resources since setting the parallelism level for the slowest component results in unnecessarily high parallelism for other components. Using more than necessary parallelism led to increased overhead on system resources and unfair resource allocation among competing transfers. In this paper, we introduce modular file transfer architecture, Marlin, to separate I/O and network operations for …

An Empirical Investigation Of Network Topology On Majority Illusion, Behavior Adoption, And Polarization, Sreeja Sreekantan Nair

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Social influence plays a significant role in shaping opinions and behaviors both online and inthe physical world. The ways in which we interact with others and the information we receive can significantly influence our beliefs and attitudes towards different issues. While online social media provide platforms for such interactions, the underlying network structure can impact various social influence phenomena, including majority illusion, behavior adoption, and polarization.

This dissertation examines the role of network topology in three social influence processes:majority illusion, behavior adoption, and polarization. The majority illusion refers to a perception bias that occurs when individuals believe that an opinion …

Salinivibrio Sp. Eagsl As A Halophilic And Ectoine-Producing Bacteria For Broad Microbial Electrochemistry Applications, Isaac P.A. Guynn, Kevin Beaver, Erin M. Gaffney, Ana Bonizol Zani, Ashwini Dantanarayana, Shelley D. Minteer

Chemistry Faculty Research & Creative Works

Salini vibrio sp. EAGSL (S. EAGSL) is an extremophile that was isolated from the Great Salt Lake (UT, USA) in 2017, and this strain has since been the focus of promising research in the field of microbial electrochemistry. Namely, S. EAGSL is an organism with both halotolerance and electroactivity, giving this microbe the unique ability to bridge the gap between power output and halotolerance in microbial fuel cells. While studying the genome, a biosynthetic gene for ectoine was identified. Ectoine is an osmolyte that is deemed a value-added chemical due to its ability to stabilize proteins and other biomolecules in …

Understanding The Flow Dynamics Of The Pearl River, Ms, Through Hydrodynamic Modeling, Nahruma Mehzabeen Pieu

Master's Theses

The Pearl River brings fresh water and nutrients into Lake Borgne regulating conditions for oyster growth in estuarine waters. However, there are no flow measurement stations installed on East Pearl or West Pearl either at the river outlets or after the upstream bifurcation of the Pearl. This study aims to model the Lower Pearl River to understand the flow dynamics in the major branches, and to determine the final outflow distribution into the Mississippi Sound, aiming to improve river forcing for ocean models studying estuarine dynamics of the Mississippi Sound.

Synthetic meandering bathymetry with updated banks is developed and applied …

The Use Of Artificial Intelligence In Higher Education: A Study On Faculty Perspectives In Universities In Egypt, Farah S. Sharawy

Theses and Dissertations

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an emerging technology that is transforming various aspects of society, including higher education. This paper examines faculty perspectives from five different institutions; The American University in Cairo (AUC), The German University in Cairo (GUC), The Arab Academy for Science and Technology (AAST), Ain Shams University, and Cairo University, on the use of AI in higher education in teaching and learning in Egypt, with all its challenges and resources available to support it, and how it can be used to achieve equity and accessibility. This research was conducted through a qualitative study using semi-structured one- on-one interviews …

Computational Qsar & Molecular Docking Of Anti- Inflammatory Asthma Drugs Against Human Serum Albumin: A Computational Approach Towards Drug Design & Drug Discovery, Sara Alkarimy

Theses and Dissertations

There is a growing need for medications to fight deep-rooted and new diseases because of their socioeconomic consequences, as evidenced by the COVID-19 epidemic which slowed down the economy and affected the social life of mankind globally. This work is a step among many other steps undertaken by research around the world in order to achieve this objective. Asthma is one of the diseases that causes the death of thousands of lives every year. This work aims at the development of novel anti-inflammatory asthma drugs where the quantum chemical descriptors of eleven anti-inflammatory asthma drugs including Ambroxol, Amoxicillin, Budesonide, Fluticasone, …

Nutrient Optimization For Vegetable Production Under Decoupled Aquaponics Using Brackish Water, Salma Walid Hany Ahmed Abdelfattah

Theses and Dissertations

As the world moves to more sustainable agriculture methods in the agribusiness industry, decoupled aquaponics is recognized as one of the newest techniques currently being utilized to achieve more local food security. As the topic is still freshly new within the industry, a finite number of publications and studies have been made that address the topic hands-on with its many variables. Subsequently, in this paper, an experiment was conducted to assess the most optimized production conditions of both lacinato kale (Brassica oleracea var.palmifolia) and Swiss chard Bright Light (Beta vulgaris ssp. Cicla var. flavescens) plants through the utilization of a …

Cationic Polymer Coating Increases The Catalytic Activity Of Gold Nanoparticles Toward Anionic Substrates, Nicholas Langer, Mason Legrand, Ofer Kedem

Chemistry Faculty Research and Publications

Organic coatings on catalytic metal nanoparticles (NPs) typically hinder their activity due to the blocking of active sites. Therefore, considerable effort is made to remove organic ligands when preparing supported NP catalytic materials. Here, cationic polyelectrolyte coatings are shown to increase the catalytic activity of partially embedded gold nanoislands (Au NIs) toward transfer hydrogenation and oxidation reactions with anionic substrates compared to the activity of identical but uncoated Au NIs. Any potential steric hindrance caused by the coating is countered by a decrease in the activation energy of the reaction by half, resulting in overall enhancement. The direct comparison to …

Exploring Surface Silanization And Characterization Of Thin Films: From Surface Passivation To Microstructural Characterization Of Porous Silicon/Silica, And Exploratory Data Analysis Of X-Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy Images, Behnam Moeini

Theses and Dissertations

Surface chemistry plays a key role in science and technology because materials interact with their environments through their surfaces. Understanding surface chemistry can help alter/improve the properties of materials. However, surface characterization and modification often require multiple characterization and synthesis techniques. Silicon/silica-based materials are technologically important, so studying their surface properties can enable future advancements. In this dissertation, I explore surface modification and characterization of different types of Si/SiO2 thin films, including silicon wafers, fused silica capillary columns, and oblique angle sputtered Si/SiO2 thin films. In Chapters 2-5, I first present a method to rapidly silanize silica surfaces using a …

Approved Butte Reduction Works (Brw) Phase Iii Quality Assurance Project Plan (Qapp) Request For Change Brw-2023-01, Josh Bryson

Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund Site

No abstract provided.

Numerical Simulation Of The Korteweg–De Vries Equation With Machine Learning, Kristina O. F. Williams, Benjamin F. Akers

Faculty Publications

A machine learning procedure is proposed to create numerical schemes for solutions of nonlinear wave equations on coarse grids. This method trains stencil weights of a discretization of the equation, with the truncation error of the scheme as the objective function for training. The method uses centered finite differences to initialize the optimization routine and a second-order implicit-explicit time solver as a framework. Symmetry conditions are enforced on the learned operator to ensure a stable method. The procedure is applied to the Korteweg–de Vries equation. It is observed to be more accurate than finite difference or spectral methods on coarse …

Effect Of Dual Inhibition Of Atypical Pkc Signaling And Pi3k/Akt Signaling On Cell Viability And Apoptosis In Clear Cell Renal Cell Carcinoma (Ccrcc)., Khandker M. Khalid

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Renal Cell Carcinoma (RCC) is the most common type of kidney cancer (85%); 75% of the cases involve conventional clear cell RCC (ccRCC). The choice of treatments recommended for clear cell carcinoma and non-clear cell carcinoma include partial nephrectomy (Stage I), radical nephrectomy (Stages II and III), and chemotherapy (stage IV). Phosphatidylinositol-3-kinase (PI3K) inhibitors can be a viable candidate in the chemotherapy of ccRCC because the PI3K/Akt pathway is frequently activated in RCC. Hence, PI3K inhibitors like Alpelisib (BYL719) can be chosen as a treatment. In addition, aPKCs (PKC-ί and PKC ζ) are overexpressed in most cancer cells, and they …

Investigation Of Challenging Transformations In Gold Catalysis, Qi Tang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation mainly contains three parts: 1) Divergent gold catalysis for alkyne trifunctionalization, encompassing three distinct modes to achieve the simultaneous formation of C-N, C-O, and C-C bonds in a single step 2) the study and development of a new method to synthesize azaborine derivatives; and 3) the construction of benzotriazole boranes (BTAB) as stable four-coordinate N-B heterocycles through gold-catalyzed alkyne hydroboration.

In the first part, alkyne trifunctionalization via divergent gold catalysis will be introduced. This novel approach involves a sequence of reactions that combine gold π-activation, vinyl gold nucleophilic addition, and gold (III) reductive elimination. By utilizing this methodology, …

Time Variability Of Methane Extraction From Hard Coal Deposits In The Upper Silesian Coal Basin (Poland) In Relation To Geological And Mining Conditions, Sławomir Kędzior, Marcin Dreger

Journal of Sustainable Mining

The extraction and economical use of methane from coal mines in the Upper Silesian Coal Basin, Poland (USCB) have shown a variable tendency in recent decades, with numerous fluctuations from year to year. In 2021, approximately 286 million m3 of methane was collected from coal mines, which accounted for approximately 40% of the total emissions of this gas to mine workings. Due to the fact that the economical use of coal mine methane brings environmental, economic and work safety benefits, increasing its extraction is an urgent need. Trends in changes in the amount of mined methane in the entire USCB …

Wildfires Disturb The Natural Skin Microbiota Of Terrestrial Salamanders, Lubna Mulla, Obed Hernandez-Gomez

Natural Sciences and Mathematics | Faculty Scholarship

Environmental change can disturb natural associations between wildlife and microbial symbionts, in many cases to the detriment of host health. We used a North American terrestrial salamander system to assess how the skin microbiota of amphibians responds to wildfires. In northern California's redwood/oak forests, we assessed how recent wildfires affected the skin microbiota of three different salamander species (Taricha sp., Batrachoseps attenuatus, and Ensatina eschscholtzii) over two different sampling seasons in 2018 and 2021. We found species-specific responses to wildfire disturbance on the alpha diversity of the skin microbiota of terrestrial salamanders, although burning in general altered the composition of …

Square-Wave Voltammetry Enables Measurement Of Light-Activated Oxidations And Reductions On N-Type Semiconductor/Metal Junction Light-Addressable Electrochemical Sensors, Enock G. Arthur, Hana Ali, Armeen Hussain, Glen D. O’Neil

Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Light-addressable electrochemical (LAE) sensing is a photoelectrochemical technique that enables high-density, individually addressed electrochemical measurements using light to activate an electrochemical reaction at the surface of a semiconducting photoelectrode. However, one major challenge is that only one electrochemical reaction (oxidation or reduction) will be activated by light. Here, we used square-wave voltammetry (SWV) to enable measurement of both types of electrochemical reactions using n-Si/Au NP LAE sensors. We demonstrated this approach for the oxidation of ferrocene methanol and the reduction of ruthenium hexamine and methylene blue. We found that for all molecules, SWV showed dramatic improvements in current under illumination …

Opto-Mechanical-Thermal Coupling Analysis Method And Implementation Of High-Precision Optical System, Liang Zhao, Zhigang Zhang, Yao Sun

Journal of System Simulation

High-precision optical system is easy to be affected by space environment. Under the condition of high temperature, structural load, etc., the image quality of the optical system becomes poor, and the opto-mechanical-thermal coupling analysis is needed. Due to the independent development of the optical simulation, structure simulation, thermal simulation and others, the simulation data can not be effectively coupled and transferred.An interdisciplinary coupling analysis method is proposed, in which the integrated analysis idea is adopted and the polynomial fitting is used as the interface to solve the irregular deformation of optical element surface. Through the implement of the best …