Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Sustainable Management Of Facemask Waste Generated From Covid-19 Pandemic In Bhutan, Tshering Yangdon, Twisuk Punpeng, Sirima Mongkolosomit, Kampol Nanthapong, Kinzang Yangden

Journal of Health Research

Background: The rise in facemask waste with the uncertainty of deposition data and all its concomitant pressure on management has resulted in new risks and challenges for achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs). The purpose of this mixed methods study was to estimate facemask waste generation and examine management in Bhutan since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Method: One thousand five hundred and twenty-seventh (1,527) consenting members of the public from Class A Thromdes (self-governing municipalities) were surveyed online from February to April 2022, to estimate mask waste using descriptive statistics. This was supported by the waste characterization conducted in Memelhakha, the biggest …

Climate Change And Environmental Justice, Clement Loo

Environmental Studies Publications

This chapter provides a broad overview of the relationship between climate change and environmental justice. It provides (1) a brief review of the concept of environmental justice, (2) discussion about how environmental justice applies to climate change, and (3) several examples of how environmental justice has been integrated into climate governance.

Mastery Based Grading For Secondary Mathematics, Anderson Trimm

Professional Learning Day

Dr. Trimm will discuss in detail his design and implementation of a mastery grading system in calculus at IMSA and how it offers many benefits over traditional grading. Dr. Trimm will also explain how it makes creating assessments and grading easier and less work for the teacher, while being more accurate.

An Undergraduate Consortium For Addressing The Leaky Pipeline To Computing Research, James C. Boerkoel Jr., Mehmet Ergezer

All HMC Faculty Publications and Research

Despite an increasing number of successful interventions designed to broaden participation in computing research, there is still significant attrition among historically marginalized groups in the computing research pipeline. This experience report describes a first-of-its-kind Undergraduate Consortium (UC; https://aaai-uc.github.io/about) that addresses this challenge by empowering students with a culmination of their undergraduate research in a conference setting. The UC, conducted at the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), aims to broaden participation in the AI research community by recruiting students, particularly those from historically marginalized groups, supporting them with mentorship, advising, and networking as an accelerator toward graduate school, AI research, …

Plagiarism Deterrence In Cs1 Through Keystroke Data, Kaden Hart, Chad Mano, John M. Edwards

Computer Science Student Research

Recent work in computing education has explored the idea of analyzing and grading using the process of writing a computer program rather than just the final submitted code. We build on this idea by investigating the effect on plagiarism when the process of coding, in the form of keystroke logs, is submitted for grading in addition to the final code. We report results from two terms of a university CS1 course in which students submitted keystroke logs. We find that when students are required to submit a log of keystrokes together with their written code they are less likely to …

Accurate Estimation Of Time-On-Task While Programming, Kaden Hart, Christopher M. Warren, John Edwards

Computer Science Student Research

In a recent study, students were periodically prompted to self-report engagement while working on computer programming assignments in a CS1 course. A regression model predicting time-on-task was proposed. While it was a significant improvement over ad-hoc estimation techniques, the study nevertheless suffered from lack of error analysis, lack of comparison with existing methods, subtle complications in prompting students, and small sample size. In this paper we report results from a study with an increased number of student participants and modified prompting scheme intended to better capture natural student behavior. Furthermore, we perform a cross-validation analysis on our refined regression model …

A Result In The Theory Of Twin Primes, Nelson Carella

Publications and Research

This article determines a lower bound for the number of twin primes $p$ and $p+2$ up to a large number $x$.

Iron-Catalyzed Oxidative Α-Amination Of Ketones With Primary And Secondary Sulfonamides, Fubin Song, So Hyun Park, Christine Wu, Alexandra E. Strom

Chemistry: Faculty Publications

We report the iron-catalyzed α-amination of ketones with sulfonamides. Using an oxidative coupling approach, ketones can be directly coupled with free sulfonamides, without the need for prefunctionalization of either substrate. Primary and secondary sulfonamides are both competent coupling partners, with yields from 55% to 88% for deoxybenzoin-derived substrates.

Fallacies In The Design Of Climate Change Policies: A Response To Richard Epstein, Richard L. Revesz

Texas A&M Law Review

This Essay criticizes Professor Richard Epstein’s approach to climate change regulation, which he characterizes as one involving taking modest steps at first, observing the results of these steps, and then using the lessons learned to inform the next steps. Epstein’s approach depends critically on a particular class of damage function determining how greenhouse gas emissions cause harm—specifically, damage functions that lack discontinuities. And it also depends on the ability to observe in real time how the function occurs. Neither of these conditions are met with respect to climate change. The Essay also shows that Epstein’s approach is further undermined by …

Observing Human Mobility Internationally During Covid-19, Shane Allcroft, Mohammed Metwaly, Zachery Berg, Isha Ghodgaonkar, Fischer Bordwell, Xinxin Zhao, Xinglei Liu, Jiahao Xu, Subhankar Chakraborty, Vishnu Banna, Akhil Chinnakotla, Abhinav Goel, Caleb Tung, Gore Kao, Wei Zakharov, David A. Shoham, George K. Thiruvathukal, Yung-Hsiang Lu

Computer Science: Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article analyzes visual data captured from five countries and three U.S. states to evaluate the effectiveness of lockdown policies for reducing the spread of COVID-19. The main challenge is the scale: nearly six million images are analyzed to observe how people respond to the policy changes.

Isomerization Of Galactose To Tagatose: Recent Advances In Non-Enzymatic Isomerization, Jikai Zhao, Zhuo Wang, Qing Jin, Danyi Feng, Juhee Lee

School of Earth, Environmental, & Marine Sciences Faculty Publications

The valorization of galactose derived from acid whey to low-calorie tagatose has gained increasing attention. Enzymatic isomerization is of great interest but faces several challenges, such as poor thermal stability of enzymes and a long processing time. In this work, non-enzymatic (supercritical fluids, triethylamine, arginine, boronate affinity, hydrotalcite, Sn-β zeolite, and calcium hydroxide) pathways for galactose to tagatose isomerization were critically discussed. Unfortunately, most of these chemicals showed poor tagatose yields (70%). The latter is able to form a tagatose–calcium hydroxide–water complex, which stimulates the equilibrium toward tagatose and prevents sugar degradation. Nevertheless, the excessive use of calcium hydroxide may …

Stellar Atmosphere Models For Select Veritas Stellar Intensity Interferometry Targets, Jackson Ladd Sackrider, Jason P. Aufdenberg, Katelyn Sonnen

Beyond: Undergraduate Research Journal

Since 2020 the Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System (VERITAS) has observed 48 stellar targets using the technique of Stellar Intensity Interferometry (SII). Angular diameter measurements by VERITAS SII (VSII) in a waveband near 400 nm complement existing angular diameter measurements in the near-infrared. VSII observations will test fundamental predictions of stellar atmosphere models and should be more sensitive to limb darkening and gravity darkening effects than measurements in the near-IR, however, the magnitude of this difference has not been systematically explored in the literature. In order to investigate the synthetic interferometric (as well as spectroscopic) appearance of stars …

Optimal Monohedral Tilings Of Hyperbolic Surfaces, Leonardo Digiosia, Jahangir Habib, Jack Hirsch, Lea Kenigsberg, Kevin Li, Dylanger Pittman, Jackson Petty, Christopher Xue, Weitao Zhu

Rose-Hulman Undergraduate Mathematics Journal

The hexagon is the least-perimeter tile in the Euclidean plane for any given area. On hyperbolic surfaces, this "isoperimetric" problem differs for every given area, as solutions do not scale. Cox conjectured that a regular k-gonal tile with 120-degree angles is isoperimetric. For area π/3, the regular heptagon has 120-degree angles and therefore tiles many hyperbolic surfaces. For other areas, we show the existence of many tiles but provide no conjectured optima. On closed hyperbolic surfaces, we verify via a reduction argument using cutting and pasting transformations and convex hulls that the regular 7-gon is the optimal n-gonal tile of …

Strong Recovery In Group Synchronization, Bradley Stich

Rose-Hulman Undergraduate Mathematics Journal

The group synchronization problem is to estimate unknown group elements at the vertices of a graph when given a set of possibly noisy observations of group differences at the edges. We consider the group synchronization problem on finite graphs with size tending to infinity, and we focus on the question of whether the true edge differences can be exactly recovered from the observations (i.e., strong recovery). We prove two main results, one positive and one negative. In the positive direction, we prove that for a sequence of synchronization problems containing the complete digraph along with a relatively well behaved prior …

The Determining Number And Cost Of 2-Distinguishing Of Select Kneser Graphs, James E. Garrison

Rose-Hulman Undergraduate Mathematics Journal

A graph $G$ is said to be \emph{d-distinguishable} if there exists a not-necessarily proper coloring with $d$ colors such that only the trivial automorphism preserves the color classes. For a 2-distinguishing labeling, the \emph{ cost of $2$-distinguishing}, denoted $\rho(G),$ is defined as the minimum size of a color class over all $2$-distinguishing colorings of $G$. Our work also utilizes \emph{determining sets} of $G, $ sets of vertices $S \subseteq G$ such that every automorphism of $G$ is uniquely determined by its action on $S.$ The \emph{determining number} of a graph is the size of a smallest determining set. We investigate …

Reconversion Of Parahydrogen Gas In Surfactant-Coated Glass Nmr Tubes, Robert V. Chimenti, James Daley, James Sack, Jennifer Necsutu, Nicholas Whiting

College of Science & Mathematics Departmental Research

The application of parahydrogen gas to enhance the magnetic resonance signals of a diversity of chemical species has increased substantially in the last decade. Parahydrogen is prepared by lowering the temperature of hydrogen gas in the presence of a catalyst; this enriches the para spin isomer beyond its normal abundance of 25% at thermal equilibrium. Indeed, parahydrogen fractions that approach unity can be attained at sufficiently low temperatures. Once enriched, the gas will revert to its normal isomeric ratio over the course of hours or days, depending on the surface chemistry of the storage container. Although parahydrogen enjoys long lifetimes …

2023 March 2 - Tennessee Weekly Drought Summary, Tennessee Climate Office, East Tennessee State University

Tennessee Climate Office Weekly Drought Summaries

No abstract provided.

Wallaby Pilot Survey: Hydra Cluster Galaxies Uv And H I Morphometrics, Benne W. Holwerda, Frank Bigiel, Albert Bosma, Helene M. Courtois, Nathan Deg, Helga Dénes, Ahmed Elagali, Bi-Qing For, Baerbel Koribalski, Denis A. Leahy, Karen Lee-Waddell, Ángel R. López-Sánchez, Se-Heon Oh, Tristan N. Reynolds, Jonghwan Rhee, Kristine Spekkens, Jing Wang, Tobias Westmeier, O Ivy Wong

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Galaxy morphology in atomic hydrogen (H I) and in the ultraviolet (UV) are closely linked. This has motivated their combined use to quantify morphology over the full H I disc for both H I and UV imaging. We apply galaxy morphometrics: concentration, asymmetry, gini, M₂₀ and multimode-intensity-deviation statistics to the first moment-0 maps of the WALLABY Survey of galaxies in the hydra cluster centre. Taking advantage of this new H I survey, we apply the same morphometrics over the full H I extent on archival GALEX FUV and NUV data to explore how well H I truncated, extended ultraviolet …

Searching For Tev Dark Matter In Irregular Dwarf Galaxies With Hawc Observatory, R. Alfaro, C. Alvarez, J. C. Arteaga-Velázquez, D. Avila Rojas, H. A.Ayala Solares, R. Babu, D. Huang, R. Turner, Et Al.

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

We present the results of dark matter (DM) searches in a sample of 31 dwarf irregular (dIrr) galaxies within the field of view of the HAWC Observatory. dIrr galaxies are DM-dominated objects in which astrophysical gamma-ray emission is estimated to be negligible with respect to the secondary gamma-ray flux expected by annihilation or decay of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). While we do not see any statistically significant DM signal in dIrr galaxies, we present the exclusion limits (95% C.L.) for annihilation cross section and decay lifetime for WIMP candidates with masses between 1 and 100 TeV. Exclusion limits from …

Text And Data Mining Applications For Teaching Music Bibliography, Taylor Greene, Laurie Sampsel

Library Presentations, Posters, and Audiovisual Materials

Text and data mining (TDM) is a process of increasing interdisciplinary potential and one with many practical applications for music graduate students. TDM, however, remains a topic rarely introduced in the music bibliography course. Understandably, talk of artificial intelligence, algorithms, and programming languages are intimidating to music students, but thanks to software applications, knowledge about these computer science topics are not required to participate in research using TDM. This presentation explores ways to introduce digital humanities to music students through TDM.

In our presentation, we will discuss two approaches to incorporating TDM into the music bibliography course, focusing on two …

Partnering To Advance Equity In Coastal Resilience: Lessons Learned For Research And Practice Collaborations For On-The-Ground Projects, Ren-Neasha Blake Gilmore, Marina Saitgalina, Jennifer Whytlaw, Nicole Hutton, Tom Allen, Joshua Behr, Wie Yusuf

Presentations, Lectures, Posters, Reports

No abstract provided.

Benthic Habitat Mapping Of Mountain Top Bank Within The Northern Gulf Of Mexico Through Integrated Geophysical And Visual Data Analysis, Bethany Pertain

Master's Theses

Mesophotic coral ecosystems (MCEs) are among the seafloor ecosystems that have been poorly studied throughout the world’s oceans, but they are a vital and diverse ecosystem that should be prioritized for future mapping and ecological studies. Priority should be given to them because they possess natural, social, and economic values, and face a variety of threats, all of which, if not better understood will result in the loss of this unique ecosystem. Insights into these ecosystems, among other deep-sea environments, are lacking due to difficulty accessing them, inherent lag between data collection by an autonomous system and observation by a …

Quantification Of Hydraulic Trait Control On Plant Hydrodynamics And Risk Of Hydraulic Failure Within A Demographic Structured Vegetation Model In A Tropical Forest (Fates–Hydro V1.0), Chonggang Xu, Bradley O. Christoffersen, Zachary Robbins, Ryan G. Knox, Rosie A. Fisher, Rutuja Chitra-Tarak, Martijn Slot, Kurt C. Solander, Lara M. Kueppers, Charles D. Koven, Nate G. Mcdowell

School of Integrative Biological & Chemical Sciences Faculty Publications

Vegetation plays a key role in the global carbon cycle and thus is an important component within Earth system models (ESMs) that project future climate. Many ESMs are adopting methods to resolve plant size and ecosystem disturbance history, using vegetation demographic models. These models make it feasible to conduct more realistic simulation of processes that control vegetation dynamics. Meanwhile, increasing understanding of the processes governing plant water use, and ecosystem responses to drought in particular, has led to the adoption of dynamic plant water transport (i.e., hydrodynamic) schemes within ESMs. However, the extent to which variations in plant hydraulic traits …

Private Pete Fights Illiteracy At Fort Ontario: The Men In Charge, Christian Wright, Adrian Mandzy

2023 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Poster Presentations

From June of 1943 to February of 1944, the 1210th Special Training Unit at Fort Ontario in Oswego, New York taught pre-basic military training to thousands of illiterate, slow learning, and non-English-speaking soldiers in the United States Army. The training center at Fort Ontario conducted programs in disciplinary barracks, specialized military, technical, academic and vocational education.

Classification Of Road Objects Using Convolutional Neural Networks, Mann Patel, Heba Elgazzar

2023 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Poster Presentations

Driving is the primary means of transportation for many people around the world. Whether the use is to assist human drivers or create autonomous driving, the use of machine learning can create safer road conditions. Drivers must consider other objects on the road, most commonly other vehicles and pedestrians. These three components, road signs, pedestrians, and vehicles, make up a large majority of objects that a driver will encounter when on the road. This research applies machine learning algorithms, specifically Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN), to classify these road objects. The goal is to create a classification model that can reliably …

The U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System (Ioos): A Prototype User Valuation, Charles S. Colgan, Castelletto Anthony

Publications

The Integrated Ocean Observing System of the United States provides a large variety of oceanographic and related data at no charge through 11 Regional Associations. Since the data is distributed without price it is difficult to determine the economic value of the data. That value is useful in explaining and justifying the investment in ocean observing. This study applies discrete choice modeling to determine valuation of the data for users of data through the RA websites. The study found annual values of $190 to $220 million, and these estimates are considered highly conservative. A guide for replication of the valuation …

Error Analysis Of A Fully Discrete Projection Method For Magnetohydrodynamic System, Qianqian Ding, Xiaoming He, Xiaonian Long, Shipeng Mao

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this paper, we develop and analyze a finite element projection method for magnetohydrodynamics equations in Lipschitz domain. A fully discrete scheme based on Euler semi-implicit method is proposed, in which continuous elements are used to approximate the Navier–Stokes equations and H(curl) conforming Nédélec edge elements are used to approximate the magnetic equation. One key point of the projection method is to be compatible with two different spaces for calculating velocity, which leads one to obtain the pressure by solving a Poisson equation. The results show that the proposed projection scheme meets a discrete energy stability. In addition, with the …

Error Analysis Of A Fully Discrete Projection Method For Magnetohydrodynamic System, Qianqian Ding, Xiaoming He, Xiaonian Long, Shipeng Mao

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this paper, we develop and analyze a finite element projection method for magnetohydrodynamics equations in Lipschitz domain. A fully discrete scheme based on Euler semi-implicit method is proposed, in which continuous elements are used to approximate the Navier–Stokes equations and H(curl) conforming Nédélec edge elements are used to approximate the magnetic equation. One key point of the projection method is to be compatible with two different spaces for calculating velocity, which leads one to obtain the pressure by solving a Poisson equation. The results show that the proposed projection scheme meets a discrete energy stability. In addition, with the …

Pan-Arctic Soil Moisture Control On Tundra Carbon Sequestration And Plant Productivity, Donatella Zona, Peter M. Lafleur, Koen Hufkens, Beniamino Gioli, Barbara Bailey, George Burba, Eugénie S. Euskirchen, Jennifer D. Watts, Kyle A. Arndt, Mary Farina, John S. Kimball, Martin Heimann, Mathias Göckede, Martijn Pallandt, Torben R. Christensen, Mikhail Mastepanov, Efrén López-Blanco, Albertus J. Dolman, Roisin Commane, Charles E. Miller, Josh Hashemi, Lars Kutzbach, David Holl, Julia Boike, Christian Wille, Torsten Sachs, Aram Kalhori, Elyn R. Humphreys, Oliver Sonnentag, Gesa Meyer, Gabriel H. Gosselin, Philip Marsh, Walter C. Oechel

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

Long-term atmospheric CO₂ concentration records have suggested a reduction in the positive effect of warming on high-latitude carbon uptake since the 1990s. A variety of mechanisms have been proposed to explain the reduced net carbon sink of northern ecosystems with increased air temperature, including water stress on vegetation and increased respiration over recent decades. However, the lack of consistent long-term carbon flux and in situ soil moisture data has severely limited our ability to identify the mechanisms responsible for the recent reduced carbon sink strength. In this study, we used a record of nearly 100 site-years of eddy covariance …

Monarch Science Observer, Volume 16, College Of Sciences, Old Dominion University

College of Sciences Newsletter

Spring 2023, issue of Monarch Science Observer, ODU Colleges of Sciences Newsletter.