Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

The Dynamic Relationship Between Permafrost And Landcover In Northwestern Canada’S Discontinuous Permafrost Zone, Olivia Carpino

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Northwestern Canada’s subarctic is among the most impacted regions in the world as it is experiencing rapid climatic and environmental change. As a result, northwestern Canada has been experiencing region-wide permafrost thaw and disappearance, both of which are also occurring at unprecedented rates. Permafrost temperatures in the Taiga Plains have been warming steadily over the last several decades, which has been particularly detrimental across its lower latitudes of the discontinuous permafrost zone where the permafrost is already relatively thin and warm. These factors indicate that permafrost in the southern Taiga Plains may be in a state of disequilibrium with the …

Mechanistic Studies Of Co2 Electrochemical Reduction (Co2er) On Cu And Cuo Nanoparticles With In-Situ Atr-Ftir Spectroscopy, Jason Hsu

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Global climate change is a major challenge facing the world in the 21st century. This environmental crisis originated from excess amounts of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) released from burning fossil fuels. One promising remediation method to decrease atmospheric CO2 levels is called carbon dioxide electrochemical reduction (CO2ER). In CO2ER, the CO2 gas undergoes chemical reduction to other hydrocarbon fuels. For CO2ER to take place, an energy source and a catalyst are needed. In this thesis, three aspects of CO2ER were investigated using attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectroscopy coupled with other surface sensitive characterization tools. First, we studied …

Properties Of (Claw, 4k₁, Bridge)-Free Graphs, Taite Lagrange

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Given a set H of graphs, a graph G is H-free if it does not contain any graph in H as an induced subgraph. The complexity of the colouring problem is known when H is a set of graphs on four vertices, with three exceptions. One of those exceptions is the case of {claw, 4K₁}-free graphs, for which our classes of {claw, 4K₁, bridge}-free and {claw, 4K₁, bridge,C₄-twin}-free graphs are subclasses.

The original goal of this work was to prove that {claw, 4K₁, …

A Machine Learning Approach To Classify Open Water And Ice Cover On Slave River Delta, Ida Moalemi

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Seasonal temperature trend and ice phenology in Great Slave lake (GSL), are strongly influenced by warmer inflow from Slave river. The Slave river flows to GSL through Slave river delta (SRD), bringing a rise in temperature that triggers the ice break-up process of the lake. Slave river discharge is subject to multiple stressors including climate warming and upstream water activities, which in turn, directly affects the GSL break-up process. Consequently, monitoring the break-up process at SRD, where the river connects to the lake, serves as an indicator to better understand the cascading effects on GSL ice break-up. This research aims …

Strengthening The Interpretation Of Glass And Paint Evidence Through The Study Of Random Frequency Of Occurrence And Analytical Information, Lauryn C. Alexander

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Glass and paint particles are frequently discovered at crime scenes as valuable trace evidence. Often, these fragments are transferred from a crime scene to a victim or person-of-interest, and can subsequently be evaluated, analyzed, and classified according to their physical and optical measurements, and chemical properties, each of which can provide important information to the analyst to assist in the determining if a recovered particle is distinguishable or indistinguishable from a known source. Moreover, these minute materials can provide information about how the events took place, leading to the reconstruction of crime scenes and the identification of valuable clues for …

Enantioselective Dearomatization Facilitated By Non-Covalent Interactions Of N-Heterocyclic Carbene Catalysts And Pyridinium Salts, Jack A. Patterson

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Dihydropyridines are a practical organic scaffold commonly used for their pharmaceutical properties. Nucleophilic dearomatization of pyridines has proven to be a useful method in obtaining dihydropyridines. By using N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC) organocatalysts, dihydropyridines can be synthesized with high regioselectivity of the 1,4 regioisomer over the 1,2- regioisomer but often with low enantioselectivity. By incorporating non-covalent interaction contact points, we hypothesize that enantioselectivity can be enhanced. By synthesizing numerous NHCs, each proposed to exhibit a different type of non-covalent interaction (i.e., hydrogen bonding or ion pairing), an understanding of the secondary interactions within this reaction system can be studied and …

Effects Of Invasive Species On Ohio River Zooplankton, Samuel John Johnston

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Invasive species have the potential to dramatically change both aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems with rates of introduction only expected to increase across the Globe. In the Mississippi River basin filter feeding silver (Hypophthalmichthys molitrix) and bighead carp (Hypophthalmichthys nobilis) collectively known as invasive carp were introduced into aquaculture ponds where they subsequently escaped and spread to interconnected basins. Invasive carp have not yet completely established throughout the entire Ohio River. Managers recognize three distinct phases of carp invasion: establishment front, invasion front and presence front. In the Illinois River invasive carp are very well established and …

Longest Path And Cycle Transversal And Gallai Families, James A. Long Jr

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

A longest path transversal in a graph G is a set of vertices S of G such that every longest path in G has a vertex in S. The longest path transversal number of a graph G is the size of a smallest longest path transversal in G and is denoted lpt(G). Similarly, a longest cycle transversal is a set of vertices S in a graph G such that every longest cycle in G has a vertex in S. The longest cycle transversal number of a graph G is the size of a smallest longest cycle transversal in G and …

A Study Of Accidental Daughter Crystals In Fluid Inclusions In Bedded Halite From The Permian Opeche Shale And Cedar Hills Sandstone Of The Midcontinental United States, Ryan James Prchlik

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Ancient acid-saline lakes of the midcontinental United States deposited bedded halite during Permian time. These deposits are not typically preserved at the surface, but drill cores of the Opeche Shale of North Dakota and Cedar Hills Sandstone of Kansas contain preserved beds of halite. Halite from these ancient lakes have primary fluid inclusions that contain Permian lake water. Also included are accidental daughter crystals that were trapped inside the fluid inclusions at time of halite precipitation. Both the fluid and daughter crystals inside bedded halite can tell us about the geochemistry of original lake waters of Pangea.

Petrography and laser …

Sequence Checking And Deduplication For Existing Fingerprint Databases, Tahsin Islam Sakif

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Biometric technology is a rapidly evolving field with applications that range from access to devices to border crossing and entry/exit processes. Large-scale applications to collect biometric data, such as border crossings result in multimodal biometric databases containing thousands of identities. However, due to human operator error, these databases often contain many instances of image labeling and classification; this is due to the lack of training and throughput pressure that comes with human error. Multiple entries from the same individual may be assigned to a different identity. Rolled fingerprints may be labeled as flat images, a face image entered into a …

Synthesis And Pharmacology Of Illudalic Acid And Analogous Chemical Structures, Robert Gaston Jr

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Natural products are the foundation of modern medicine and an inspiration for chemical innovation. Developing new synthetic strategies to complex natural products drives synthetic innovation and promotes pharmacological exploration. As bioactive secondary metabolites of fungi, illudalic acid and associated analogs have unrealized medicinal potential due to synthetic limitations. Illudalic acid is notably the first selective covalent inhibitor of the LAR-PTPs, a class of enzymes linked to many human illnesses, including stimulant addiction. The chemistry herein focuses on optimizing synthetic routes to illudalic acid and associated analogs toward exploring their pharmaceutical potential. We report a second-generation synthesis of illudinine (55% overall …

Machine Learning Prediction Of Dod Personal Property Shipment Costs, Tiffany Tucker, Torrey J. Wagner, Paul Auclair, Brent T. Langhals

Faculty Publications

U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) personal property moves account for 15% of all domestic and international moves - accurate prediction of their cost could draw attention to outlier shipments and improve budget planning. In this work 136,140 shipments between 13 personal property shipment hubs from April 2022 through March 2023 with a total cost of $1.6B were analyzed. Shipment cost was predicted using recursive feature elimination on linear regression and XGBoost algorithms, as well as through neural network hyperparameter sweeps. Modeling was repeated after removing 28 features related to shipment hub location and branch of service to examine their influence …

Ambient Ammonia Synthesis Via Microwave-Catalytic Materials And Plasma Chemistry, Siobhan Brown

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Ammonia is critical to supporting human life on earth because of its use as fertilizer. The Haber-Bosch process to produce ammonia has been practiced for over 100 years. This process operates at high pressure and temperature to overcome the thermodynamic and kinetic limitations of the ammonia synthesis reaction thus researchers have tried to overcome it for decades. At present this process represents 1% of global energy usage and 2.5% of global CO₂ emissions. The proposed chemical looping ammonia synthesis approach seeks to reduce the environmental impact of this critical process and to elucidate microwave-catalytic principles.

This research aims to …

Optimal Design And Operation Of Integrated Hydrogen Generation And Utilization Plants, Ijiwole Solomon Ijiyinka

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

There are considerable efforts worldwide for reducing the use of fossil fuel for energy production. While renewable energy sources are being increasingly used, fossil fuel still contribute about 80% of the energy used worldwide. As a result, the level of CO₂ is still increasing fast in the atmosphere currently exceeding about 410 parts per million (ppm). For reducing CO₂ build up in the atmosphere, various approaches are being investigated. For the electric power generation sector, two key approaches are post-combustion CO₂ capture and use of hydrogen as a fuel for power generation. These two solutions can also …

Generative Prior For Unsupervised Image Restoration, Ahmed Cheikh Sidiya

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The challenge of restoring real world low-quality images is due to a lack of appropriate training data and difficulty in determining how the image was degraded. Recently, generative models have demonstrated great potential for creating high- quality images by utilizing the rich and diverse information contained within the model’s trained weights and learned latent representations. One popular type of generative model is the generative adversarial network (GAN). Many new methods have been developed to harness the information found in GANs for image manipulation. Our proposed approach is to utilize generative models for both understanding the degradation of an image and …

To The Moon: Strategic Competition In The Cislunar Region, Shawn M. Willis

Faculty Publications

China’s advancing space capabilities, particularly in the cislunar region, call for increased cislunar space domain awareness on the part of the United States. US military and civilian decisionmakers must take into account the full scope of China’s cislunar plans and capabilities as the military builds space strategies and future force designs. The United States must also increase near-term investments that support more robust cislunar space domain awareness.

Introduction To Contemporary Mathematics Syllabus (Spring 2023), Heather Nunnally

Open Textbooks and Course Materials

This syllabus was used in the Spring of 2023 for MATH 131: Introduction to Contemporary Mathematics. There were no textbook costs for this course; instead, MyOpenMath was used for the textbook and homework.

Drone Images Afford More Detections Of Marine Wildlife Than Real-Time Observers During Simultaneous Large-Scale Surveys, Amanda J. Hodgson, Nat Kelly, David Peel

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

There are many advantages to transitioning from conducting marine wildlife surveys via human observers onboard light-aircraft, to capturing aerial imagery using drones. However, it is important to maintain the validity of long-term data series whilst transitioning from observer to imagery surveys. We need to understand how the detection rates of target species in images compare to those collected from observers in piloted aircraft, and the factors influencing detection rates from each platform. We conducted trial ScanEagle drone surveys of dugongs in Shark Bay, Western Australia, covering the full extent of the drone’s range (∼100 km), concurrently with observer surveys, with …

The Wacdt, A Modern Vigilance Task For Network Defense, Oliver A. Guidetti, Craig Speelman, Peter Bouhlas

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Vigilance decrement refers to a psychophysiological decline in the capacity to sustain attention to monotonous tasks after prolonged periods. A plethora of experimental tasks exist for researchers to study vigilance decrement in classic domains such as driving and air traffic control and baggage security; however, the only cyber vigilance tasks reported in the research literature exist in the possession of the United States Air Force (USAF). Moreover, existent cyber vigilance tasks have not kept up with advances in real-world cyber security and consequently no longer accurately reflect the cognitive load associated with modern network defense. The Western Australian Cyber Defense …

A Provable Secure And Efficient Authentication Framework For Smart Manufacturing Industry, Muhammad Hammad, Akhtar Badshah, Ghulam Abbas, Hisham Alasmary, Muhammad Waqas, Wasim A. Khan

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Smart manufacturing is transforming the manufacturing industry by enhancing productivity and quality, driving growth in the global economy. The Internet of Things (IoT) has played a crucial role in realizing Industry 4.0, where machines can communicate and interact in real-time. Despite these advancements, security remains a major challenge in developing and deploying smart manufacturing. As cyber-attacks become more prevalent, researchers are making security a top priority. Although IoT and Industrial IoT (IIoT) are used to establish smart industries, these systems remain vulnerable to various types of attacks. To address these security issues, numerous authentication methods have been proposed. However, many …

Modification Of Cellulose Ether With Organic Carbonate For Enhanced Thermal And Rheological Properties: Characterization And Analysis, Ghulam Abbas, Abdul H. Tunio, Khalil R. Memon, Aftab A. Mahesar, Faisal H. Memon, Ghazanfer R. Abbasi

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Reduction in viscosity at higher temperatures is the main limitation of utilizing cellulose ethers in high thermal reservoir conditions for petroleum industry applications. In this study, cellulose ether (hydroxyethyl methyl cellulose (HEMC)) is modified using organic carbonates, i.e., propylene carbonate (PC) and diethyl carbonate (DEC), to overcome the limitation of reduced viscosity at high temperatures. The polymer composites were characterized through various analytical techniques, including Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR), H-NMR, X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscope (SEM), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), -potential measurement, molecular weight determination, and rheology measurements. The experimental results of structural and morphological characterization confirm …

Microscale Pollen Release And Dispersal Patterns In Flowering Grass Populations, Carl A. Frisk, Godfrey P. Apangu, Geoffrey M. Petch, Simon Creer, Mary Hanson, Beverley Adams-Groom, Carsten A. Skjøth

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Characterizing pollen release and dispersion processes is fundamental for knowledge advancement in ecological, agricultural and public health disciplines. Understanding pollen dispersion from grass communities is especially relevant due to their high species-specific allergenicity and heterogeneously distributed source areas. Here, we aimed to address questions concerning fine level heterogeneity in grass pollen release and dispersion processes, with a focus on characterizing the taxonomic composition of airborne grass pollen over the grass flowering season using eDNA and molecular ecology methods. High resolution grass pollen concentrations were compared between three microscale sites ( < 300 m apart) in a rural area in Worcestershire, UK. The grass pollen was modelled with local meteorology in a MANOVA (Multivariate ANOVA) approach to investigate factors relevant to pollen release and dispersion. Simultaneously, airborne pollen was sequenced using Illumina MySeq for metabarcoding, analysed against a reference database with all UK grasses using the R packages DADA2 and phyloseq to calculate Shannon's Diversity Index ( -diversity). The flowering phenology of a local Festuca rubra population was observed. We found that grass pollen concentrations varied on a microscale level, likely attributed to local topography and the dispersion distance of pollen from flowering grasses in local source areas. Six genera (Agrostis, Alopecurus, Arrhenatherum, Holcus, Lolium and Poa) dominated the pollen season, comprising on average 77 % of the relative abundance of grass species reads. Temperature, solar radiation, relative humidity, turbulence and wind speeds were found to be relevant for grass pollen release and dispersion processes. An isolated flowering Festuca rubra population contributed almost 40 % of the relative pollen abundance adjacent to the nearby sampler, but only contributed 1 % to samplers situated 300 m away. This suggests that most emitted grass pollen has limited dispersion distance and our results show substantial variation in airborne grass species composition over short geographical scales.

Seagrass Posidonia Escarpments Support High Diversity And Biomass Of Rocky Reef Fishes, Oscar Serrano Gras, Karina Inostroza, Glenn Hyndes, Alan M. Friedlander, Eduard Serrano, Caitlin Rae, Enric Ballesteros

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Although seagrass meadows form a relatively homogenous habitat, escarpments, which form three-dimensional structures and originate from the erosion of seagrass peat, can provide important habitat for reef fishes. Here, we compare fish assemblages and habitat structural complexity among seagrass Posidonia australis escarpments and canopies, as well as limestone reef habitats, to understand the role of seagrass escarpments as reef fish habitat in Shark Bay, Western Australia. The total number of fish species, fish biomass, and top predator biomass were significantly higher in seagrass escarpments and reef habitats than in seagrass canopies due to lower habitat structural complexity and thus becoming …

Development Of A 3-D-Printable Device For Continuous Measuring Of Heavy Metal Ion Concentrations, Charl De Villiers, Magdalena Wajrak, Alex Lubansky

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Three-dimensional (3-D) printing offers the potential to create a range of tailored devices within many different industrial facilities. In this article, devices were designed and fabricated using 3-D printing to house electrodes for the testing of heavy metal concentration in hazardous fluids, particularly for biological samples such as urine or blood. The devices, connected to a syringe pump, were shown to be able to be operated without leaking. Proof of concept experiments were performed using Anodic Stripping Voltammetry (ASV) methods, demonstrating that the devices are able to be used for quick, cheap testing, showing the potential of the technique as …

Proteome Changes Resulting From Malting In Hordein-Reduced Barley Lines, Mahya Bahmani, Angéla Juhász, Utpal Bos, Mitchell G. Nye-Wood, Malcolm Blundell, Crispin A. Howitt, Michelle L. Colgrave

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Hordeum vulgare L., commonly known as barley, is primarily used for animal feed and malting. The major storage proteins in barley are hordeins, known triggers of celiac disease (CD). Here, sequential window acquisition of all theoretical mass spectra (SWATH)-MS proteomics was employed to investigate the proteome profile of grain and malt samples from the malting barley cultivar Sloop and single-, double-, and triple hordein-reduced lines bred in a Sloop background. Using a discovery proteomics approach, 2688 and 3034 proteins were detected from the grain and malt samples, respectively. By utilizing label-free relative quantitation through SWATH-MS, a total of 2654 proteins …

Blue Carbon Opportunities: Seagrass Carbon Storage And Accumulation Rates At Johor And Penang, Malaysia, Paul Lavery, Anna Lafratta, Dhivya Nair, Louisa Ponnampalam, Jol Ern Ng, Fairul Izmal Jamal Hisne, Oscar Serrano, Pere Masque´

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Report prepared as a contribution to the IKI Project “Conservation of biodiversity, seagrass ecosystems and their services – safeguarding food security and resilience in vulnerable coastal communities in a changing climate.

The IKI Seagrass Ecosystem Services Project is a partnership between the CMS, Edith Cowan University, Project Seagrass, Seagrass Watch, Murdoch University, MRS, Blue Ventures, SAN, C3, ZSL, MareCet and Yapeka. The collaboration enhances the understanding of seagrass ecosystem services and the capacity to develop and deliver science-based policy solutions in seagrass conservation. It brings together scientists, policy experts, business development experts and conservation NGOs across the globe to provide …

Artificial Intelligence And Precision Health Through Lenses Of Ethics And Social Determinants Of Health: Protocol For A State-Of-The-Art Literature Review, Sarah Wamala-Andersson, Matt X. Richardson, Sara Landerdahl Stridsberg, Jillian Ryan, Felix Sukums, Yong-Shian Goh

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Background: Precision health is a rapidly developing field, largely driven by the development of artificial intelligence (AI)–related solutions. AI facilitates complex analysis of numerous health data risk assessment, early detection of disease, and initiation of timely preventative health interventions that can be highly tailored to the individual. Despite such promise, ethical concerns arising from the rapid development and use of AI-related technologies have led to development of national and international frameworks to address responsible use of AI. Objective: We aimed to address research gaps and provide new knowledge regarding (1) examples of existing AI applications and what role they play …

Normal Redefined: Exploring Decontextualization Of Lorises (Nycticebus & Xanthonycticebus Spp.) On Social Media Platforms, Luke F. Quarles, Kim Feddema, Marco Campera, K. A.I. Nekaris

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Introduction: Decontextualization is a concept from psychology whereby new words are learned outside of the context of the here-and-now. Decontextualized language is used for discussing abstract concepts and is crucial to the development of academic language. When it comes to images, a dearth of context can lead to a lack of clarity, such as the use of ambiguous decontextualized images in environmental communication, leading to the promotion of greenwashing. Here we refer to decontextualization as the removal of wildlife from their wild ecological context. Images and videos of globally threatened species are increasingly popular on social media. Showing such taxa …

Closing The Shell: Gas-Phase Solvation Of Halides By 1,3-Butadiene, Peter D. Watson, Christian T. Haakansson, Hayden T. Robinson, Timothy R. Corkish, James Brookes, Allan J. Mckinley, Duncan A. Wild

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Gas-phase solvation of halides by 1,3-butadiene has been studied via a combination of photoelectron spectroscopy and density functional theory. Photoelectron spectra for X−⋯(C4H6)n (X=Cl, Br, I where n=1-3, 1–3 and 1–7 respectively) are presented. For all complexes, the calculated structures indicate that butadiene is bound in a bidentate fashion through hydrogen-bonding, with the chloride complex showing the greatest degree of stabilisation of the internal C−C rotation of cis-butadiene. In both Cl− and Br− complexes, the first solvation shell is shown to be at least n = 4 from the vertical detachment energies (VDEs), however for I−, increases in the …

Leveraging Machine Learning To Analyze Sentiment From Covid-19 Tweets: A Global Perspective, Md Mahbubar Rahman, Nafiz Imtiaz Khan, Iqbal H. Sarker, Mohiuddin Ahmed, Muhammad Nazrul Islam

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Since the advent of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, analyzing public sentiment has become one of the major concerns for policy and decision-makers. While the priority is to curb the spread of the virus, mass population (user) sentiment analysis is equally important. Though sentiment analysis using different state-of-the-art technologies has been focused on during the COVID-19 pandemic, the reasons behind the variations in public sentiment are yet to be explored. Moreover, how user sentiment varies due to the COVID-19 pandemic from a cross-country perspective has been less focused on. Therefore, the objectives of this study are: to identify the most effective …