Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Water Quality Assessment For San Luis Obispo Creek And Stenner Creek, Jesse Stewart

Master of Science in Environmental Sciences and Management Projects

Water quality was assessed in five stream segments in San Luis Obispo Creek and its tributary Stenner Creek in spring 2022. Two sites were selected along the San Luis Obispo Creek, and three sites along Stenner Creek. The stream segments were evaluated using the Surface Water Ambient Monitoring Program’s procedures for bioassessment of California streams. This procedure describes the collection of physical, chemical, and biological parameters including streamflow, substrate, flow habitat, and benthic macroinvertebrates toward a quantification of a California Stream Condition Index (CSCI). The California Polytechnic State University: San Luis Obispo, Stream Measurements and Water Quality course provided student …

Labeling Microplastics With Fluorescent Dyes For Detection, Recovery, And Degradation Experiments, Zhiqiang Gao, Kendall Wontor, James V. Cizdziel

Faculty and Student Publications

Staining microplastics (MPs) for fluorescence detection has been widely applied in MP analyses. However, there is a lack of standardized staining procedures and conditions, with different researchers using different dye concentrations, solvents, incubation times, and staining temperatures. Moreover, with the limited types and morphologies of commercially available MPs, a simple and optimized approach to making fluorescent MPs is needed. In this study, 4 different textile dyes, along with Nile red dye for comparison, are used to stain 17 different polymers under various conditions to optimize the staining procedure. The MPs included both virgin and naturally weathered polymers with different sizes …

How To Get The Most Accurate Measurement-Based Estimates, Salvador Robles, Martine Ceberio, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In many practical situations, we want to estimate a quantity y that is difficult -- or even impossible -- to measure directly. In such cases, often, there are easier-to-measure quantities x₁, ..., x_n that are related to y by a known dependence y = f(x₁,...,x_n). So, to estimate y, we can measure these quantities x_i and use the measurement results to estimate y. The two natural questions are: (1) within limited resources, what is the best accuracy with which we can estimate y, and (2) to reach a given accuracy, what amount …

Dialogs Re-Enacted Across Languages, Nigel Ward, Jonathan E. Avila, Emilia Rivas

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

To support machine learning of cross-language prosodic mappings and other ways to improve speech-to-speech translation, we present a protocol for collecting closely matched pairs of utterances across languages, a description of the resulting data collection, and some observations and musings. This report is intended for 1) people using this corpus, 2) people extending this corpus, and 3) people designing similar collections of bilingual dialog data.

Anomaly Detection In Crowdsourcing: Why Midpoints In Interval-Valued Approach, Alejandra De La Pena, Damian L. Gallegos Espinoza, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In many practical situations -- e.g., when preparing examples for a machine learning algorithm -- we need to label a large number of images or speech recordings. One way to do it is to pay people around the world to perform this labeling; this is known as crowdsourcing. In many cases, crowd-workers generate not only answers, but also their degrees of confidence that the answer is correct. Some crowd-workers cheat: they produce almost random answers without bothering to spend time analyzing the corresponding image. Algorithms have been developed to detect such cheaters. The problem is that many crowd-workers cannot describe …

Dielectric Barrier Discharge (Dbd) Thrusters -- Aerospace Engines Of The Future: Invariance-Based Analysis, Alexis Lupo, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

One of the most prospective aerospace engines is a Dielectric Barrier Discharge (DBD) thruster -- an effective electric engine without moving parts. Originally designed by NASA for flights over other planets, it has been shown to be very promising for Earth-based flights as well. The efficiency of this engine depends on the proper selection of the corresponding electric field. To make this selection, we need to know, in particular, how its thrust depends on the atmospheric pressure. At present, for this dependence, we only know an approximate semi-empirical formula. In this paper, we use natural invariance requirements to come up …

Hunting Habits Of Predatory Birds: Theoretical Explanation Of An Empirical Formula, Adilene Alaniz, Jiovani Hernandez, Andres D. Munoz, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Predatory birds play an important role in an ecosystem. It is therefore important to study their hunting behavior, in particular, the distribution of their waiting time. A recent empirical study showed that the waiting time is distributed according to the power law. In this paper, we use natural invariance ideas to come up with a theoretical explanation for this empirical dependence.

Aquatic Ecotoxicology: Theoretical Explanation Of Empirical Formulas, Demetrius R. Hernandez, George M. Molina Holguin, Francisco Parra, Vivian Sanchez, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

To analyze the effect of pollution on marine life, it is important to know how exactly the concentration of toxic substances decreases with time. There are several semi-empirical formulas that describe this decrease. In this paper, we provide a theoretical explanation for these empirical formulas.

Math 57: Applied Differential Equations I, John Mayberry

Pacific Open Texts

This book is designed for the fourth semester, “capstone” course in a calculus sequence with an emphasis on modeling with linear differential equations. Students will learn to translate verbal descriptions of physical problems into differential equation models, solve and visualize solutions to differential equations using MATLAB, calculate and investigate the behavior of analytic solutions to linear differential equations, discuss how solutions to differential equations depend on parameters, and interpret solutions to differential equations in the context of applications.

Effects Of Volatile Compounds On Breakdown Field Strength Measurements Of Polymers, Megan Loveland Dewaal, Jr Dennison

Journal Articles

This study investigates the effects of absorbed water and volatile compounds on measurements of the electrostatic breakdown field strength. Comparisons are made between sets of pristine samples, ones that underwent a thorough vacuum bake out, and ones subsequently exposed to humid conditions to determine how quickly the samples reverted to an unbaked state. Specifically, we compared signatures related to an electrostatic breakdown (electrostatic breakdown field strength, frequency of pre-breakdown arcing, and flashover) and images of the arc damage sites. The work reports results for three prototypical polymeric dielectric materials: low density polyethylene (LDPE), polyether-etherketone (PEEK), and Nylon 66, listed in …

Conservative Unconditionally Stable Decoupled Numerical Schemes For The Cahn–Hilliard–Navier–Stokes–Darcy–Boussinesq System, Wenbin Chen, Daozhi Han, Xiaoming Wang, Yichao Zhang

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Research & Creative Works

We propose two mass and heat energy conservative, unconditionally stable, decoupled numerical algorithms for solving the Cahn–Hilliard–Navier–Stokes–Darcy–Boussinesq system that models thermal convection of two-phase flows in superposed free flow and porous media. The schemes totally decouple the computation of the Cahn–Hilliard equation, the Darcy equations, the heat equation, the Navier–Stokes equations at each time step, and thus significantly reducing the computational cost. We rigorously show that the schemes are conservative and energy-law preserving. Numerical results are presented to demonstrate the accuracy and stability of the algorithms.

Covariance Matrices And Applications In Nuclear Data (Nuclear Data Physics), K. Manjunatha Prasad

Interdisciplinary Collection

The neutron-induced nuclear reaction cross sections are essential inputs in nuclear engineering applications, especially in fission and fusion reactors, medical and industrial applications, personnel dosimetry in addition to fundamental research in nuclear physics and astrophysics. Nuclear reaction cross-section is one of the most important measurable quantities in the field of nuclear and particle physics. Neutron cross section plays an important role in nuclear transmutation, nuclear reactions, radiation damage, and other phenomena. A few works done by our team related to this topic are listed below.

1. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10967-020-07303-5
2. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10967-020-07292-5
3. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/342242617_Measurement_of_92Mona89Zr_and_97Monp97Nb_reactions_at_the_neutron_energy_1352_MeV_with_covariance_analysis
4. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328106603_Measurement_and_covariance_analysis_of_232Thn_2n231Th_reaction_cross_sections_at_the_effective_neutron_energies_of_897_and_1652_MeV
5. https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/ract-2018-2937/html

Graphs And Matrices, K. Manjunatha Prasad

Interdisciplinary Collection

Network Science is an emerging area of Mathematics & Statistics with applications in various branches of science. One of the important concepts used in the analysis of the network is the centrality measure, which is mainly used to identify the significance of the nodes or edges of the network. Depending on different concepts, several centrality measures can be seen in the literature. Recently our group is working on a few parameters associated with the network. The author has also worked on research problems related to graphs and the matrices associated with graphs.

Further reading:

1. http://comb-opt.azaruniv.ac.ir/article_14282.html
2. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40009-022-01149-z
3. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309877127_ALGORITHM_FOR_IDENTIFYING_2_2-BIPARTITE_GRAPHS
4. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/290172535_SOME_MATRIX_EQUATIONS_OF_GRAPHS
5. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235980644_Partition_of_a_graph_with_its_complete_subgraphs

Testing Research Software: A Survey, Nasir U. Eisty, Jeffrey C. Carver

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Background Research software plays an important role in solving real-life problems, empowering scientific innovations, and handling emergency situations. Therefore, the correctness and trustworthiness of research software are of absolute importance. Software testing is an important activity for identifying problematic code and helping to produce high-quality software. However, testing of research software is difficult due to the complexity of the underlying science, relatively unknown results from scientific algorithms, and the culture of the research software community.

Aims The goal of this paper is to better understand current testing practices, identify challenges, and provide recommendations on how to improve the testing process …

Utah Growing Water Smart: The Water-Land Use Integration Guidebook, Kelly Kopp, Joanna Endter-Wada

Utah Growing Water Smart

The Utah Growing Water Smart workshops bring together teams of key community staff and water and land use planning decision makers to help build a more resilient and sustainable water future. The workshops use a range of public engagement, planning, communication, and policy implementation tools to help community teams realize their water efficiency, smart growth, watershed health, and water resiliency goals.

This 1^st edition of the Utah Growing Water Smart curriculum guidebook was prepared for the inaugural Utah workshop focused on Wasatch Front communities and held at the Wheeler Historical Farm in Murray, Utah on November 15-17, 2022. This …

Getting Started Analyzing Data In Spss, Kristi Thompson

Western Libraries Presentations

SPSS is a popular package for analyzing data. This session will discuss how to get started on a simple quantitative analysis project using SPSS. Topics covered will include getting summary statistics, creating and modifying variables, creating graphs, running simple analyses, and interpreting SPSS output.

Resource Allocation For Multi-Tasking Optimization: Explanation Of An Empirical Formula, Alan Gamez, Antonio Aguirre, Christian Cordova, Alberto Miranda, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

For multi-tasking optimization problems, it has been empirically shown that the most effective resource allocation is attained when we assume that the gain of each task logarithmically depends on the computation time allocated to this task. In this paper, we provide a theoretical explanation for this empirical fact.

Why Color Optical Computing, Victor L. Timchenko, Yury P. Kondratenko, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In this paper, we show that requirements that computations be fast and noise-resistant naturally lead to what we call color-based optical computing.

How To Reach A Joint Decision With The Smallest Need For Compromise, Sofia Holguin, Olga Kosheleva

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Usually, people's interests do not match perfectly. So when several people need to make a joint decision, they need to compromise. The more people one has to coordinate the decision with, the fewer chances that each person's preferences will be properly taken into account. Therefore, when a large group of people need to make a decision, it is desirable to make sure that this decision can be reached by dividing all the people into small-size groups so that this decision can reach a compromise between the members of each group. In this paper, we use a recent mathematical result to …

Word Representation: Theoretical Explanation Of An Empirical Fact, Leonel Escapita, Diana Licon, Madison Anderson, Diego Pedraza, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

There is a reasonably accurate empirical formula that predicts, for two words i and j, the number Xij of times when the word i will appear in the vicinity of the word j. The parameters of this formula are determined by using the weighted least square approach. Empirically, the predictions are the most accurate if we use the weights proportional to a power of Xij. In this paper, we provide a theoretical explanation for this empirical fact.

Need For Optimal Distributed Measurement Of Cumulative Quantities Explains The Ubiquity Of Absolute And Relative Error Components, Hector A. Reyes, Aaron D. Brown, Jeffrey Escamilla, Ethan D. Kish, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In many practical situations, we need to measure the value of a cumulative quantity, i.e., a quantity that is obtained by adding measurement results corresponding to different spatial locations. How can we select the measuring instruments so that the resulting cumulative quantity can be determined with known accuracy -- and, to avoid unnecessary expenses, not more accurately than needed? It turns out that the only case where such an optimal arrangement is possible is when the required accuracy means selecting the upper bounds on absolute and relative error components. This results provides a possible explanation for the ubiquity of such …

Matrix Tree Theorem For The Net Laplacian Matrix Of A Signed Graph, Sudipta Mallik

Mathematics Faculty Research

For a simple signed graph G with the adjacency matrix A and net degree matrix D±, the net Laplacian matrix is L± = D±−A. We introduce a new oriented incidence matrix N± which can keep track of the sign as well as the orientation of each edge of G. Also L± = N±(N±)T. Using this decomposition, we find the number of both positive and negative spanning trees of G in terms of the principal minors of L± generalizing the Matrix Tree Theorem for an unsigned graph. …

Nucleobase-Modified Nucleosides And Nucleotides: Applications In Biochemistry, Synthetic Biology, And Drug Discovery, Anthony J. Berdis

Chemistry Faculty Publications

DNA is often referred to as the "molecule of life " since it contains the genetic blueprint for all forms of life on this planet. The core building blocks composing DNA are deoxynucleotides. While the deoxyribose sugar and phosphate group are ubiquitous, it is the composition and spatial arrangement of the four natural nucleobases, adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G), and thymine (T), that provide diversity in the coding information present in DNA. The ability of DNA to function as the genetic blueprint has historically been attributed to the formation of proper hydrogen bonding interactions made between complementary nucleobases. However, …

Lstm-Sdm: An Integrated Framework Of Lstm Implementation For Sequential Data Modeling[Formula Presented], Hum Nath Bhandari, Binod Rimal, Nawa Raj Pokhrel, Ramchandra Rimal, Keshab R. Dahal

Arts & Sciences Faculty Publications

LSTM-SDM is a python-based integrated computational framework built on the top of Tensorflow/Keras and written in the Jupyter notebook. It provides several object-oriented functionalities for implementing single layer and multilayer LSTM models for sequential data modeling and time series forecasting. Multiple subroutines are blended to create a conducive user-friendly environment that facilitates data exploration and visualization, normalization and input preparation, hyperparameter tuning, performance evaluations, visualization of results, and statistical analysis. We utilized the LSTM-SDM framework in predicting the stock market index and observed impressive results. The framework can be generalized to solve several other real-world time series problems.

Changing Climates And Extreme Weather For Minnesota, Patrick A. Tebbe

Mechanical and Civil Engineering Department Publications

Climate change is impacting the design, prediction, and operation of HVAC systems for the built environment, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. This presentation reviews climate predictions for the upper Midwest and how they will affect the HVAC industry. Topics such as changing design conditions, extreme weather impact, and increased electrification will be addressed.

Iowa Waste Reduction Center Newsletter, November 2022, University Of Northern Iowa. Iowa Waste Reduction Center.

Iowa Waste Reduction Center Newsletter

Contents:

--- Thank You
--- Iowa Strategic Goals Workshop
--- Your guide to Small Business Assistance: Air Permit Applications & Emissions Reporting
--- Welcome Paige and Nikayla!
--- Free Energy Assessments
--- Industry News

Applications Of Blockchain In Business Processes: A Comprehensive Review, Wattana Viriyasitavat, Li Xu, Dusit Niyato, Zhuming Bi, Danupol Hoonsopon

Information Technology & Decision Sciences Faculty Publications

Blockchain (BC), as an emerging technology, is revolutionizing Business Process Management (BPM) in multiple ways. The main adoption is to serve as a trusted infrastructure to guarantee the trust of collaborations among multiple partners in trustless environments. Especially, BC enables trust of information by using Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT). With the power of smart contracts, BC enforces the obligations of counterparties that transact in a business process (BP) by programming the contracts as transactions. This paper aims to study the state-of-the-art of BC technologies by (1) exploring its applications in BPM with the focus on how BC provides the trust …

2022 November - Tennessee Monthly Climate Report, Tennessee Climate Office, East Tennessee State University

Tennessee Climate Office Monthly Reports

No abstract provided.

Mgrre_Thinsections_05_A_68, Mgrre

Thin Sections

No abstract provided.

A Quantitative Application Of Diffusion Of Innovations For Modeling The Spread Of Conservation Behaviors, Matt Clark, Jeffrey Andrews, Vicken Hillis

Human-Environment Systems Research Center Faculty Publications and Presentations

The study of community-based conservation is challenged by a large number of important variables and nonlinear dynamics. This complexity has made quantitative and comparative analyses notoriously difficult. Here, we argue that analyzing the emergence and persistence of community-based conservation institutions as an emergent phenomenon of individual decision-making can yield important quantitative insights. We first review diffusion of innovations theory (DOI) and the broader field of cultural evolution. We then simulate data on community adoption of a conservation institution, contingent on feedbacks between individual behavior and environmental processes. We demonstrate that fitting these data to differential models of disease transmission, on …