Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

A Food-Themed Cross-Disciplinary Faculty-Staff Learning Community Enriches Place-Based Experiential Learning Curricula - (Instructor Resource), Julia L. Angstmann, Grant A. Fore, Francesca A. Williamson, Brandon H. Sorge

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

This document contains instructional resources to facilitate an 8-month Faculty-Staff Learning Community (FSLC) focused on learning and discussion to support the creation of campus farmsituated place-based experiential learning (PBEL) lessons that inspire place attachment, sustainability meaning making, environmental science literacy, and civic mindedness. The development of this professional development resource is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Nos. DUE-1609219 and DUE-1915313.

Quantization For Infinite Affine Transformations, Dogan Comez, Mrinal Kanti Roychowdhury

School of Mathematical & Statistical Sciences Faculty Publications

Quantization for a probability distribution refers to the idea of estimating a given probability by a discrete probability supported by a finite set. In this article, we consider a probability distribution generated by an infinite system of affine transformations {S-ij} on R-2 with associated probabilities {p(ij)} such that p(ij) > 0 for all i, j is an element of N and Sigma(infinity)(i,j=1) p(ij) = 1. For such a probability measure P, the optimal sets of n-means and the nth quantization error are calculated for every natural number n. It is shown that the distribution of such a probability measure is the …

A Study Of Semiprime Arithmetic Sequences, Sam C. Uselton

Honors Scholars Collaborative Projects

Semiprimes are positive integers of the form n = p*q where p and q are primes that are not necessarily distinct. Semiprimes can occur in arithmetic sequence, and the upper bound changes depending on the distance, d, between semiprimes in the sequence. The goal of this work is to present and prove theorems for different cases of semiprime arithmetic sequences, including d = 2k+1 where k is greater than or equal to 0 and d=2k where k is positive and not a multiple of 3, as well as a general case for finding upper bounds for varying distances. The building …

Tracking Academic Success And Its Relationship With Student Success Center Usage And Demographics, Samuel D. Johnson

Honors Capstone Projects and Theses

No abstract provided.

Design And Characterization Of Frequency Tripling Mirrors, Amir Khabbazi Oskouei

Optical Science and Engineering ETDs

Aperiodic stacks of dielectric low- and high-index films can be designed to enhance third-harmonic generation (THG) in reflection of near infrared laser pulses using computer optimization. Numerical and analytical results suggest that the TH energy increases rapidly with increasing number of films and the ratio of the high and low index.

Our optical matrix based THG model that takes into account the full pulse bandwidth predicts conversion efficiencies of about 7% for transform-limited Gaussian pulse bandwidths of 16 nm for mirrors with 45 layers, which exceed those expected from periodic designs. Stability against film thickness fluctuations expected from the deposition …

Phishing For Fun, Madeline Moran

Computer Science Research Seminars and Symposia

The process of a phishing experiment that will be used to investigate a possible correlation between a person thinking style and their susceptibility to phishing scams.

3d Flow Field Measurements Outside Nanopores, Jeffrey Mc Hugh, Alice L. Thorneywork, Kurt Andresen, Ulrich F. Keyser

Physics and Astronomy Faculty Publications

We demonstrate a non-stereoscopic, video-based particle tracking system with optical tweezers to study fluid flow in 3D in the vicinity of glass nanopores. In particular, we used the quadrant interpolation algorithm to extend our video-based particle tracking to displacements out of the trapping plane of the tweezers. This permitted the study of flow from nanopores oriented at an angle to the trapping plane, enabling the mounting of nanopores on a micromanipulator with which it was then possible to automate the mapping procedure. Mapping of the voltage driven flow in 3D volumes outside nanopores revealed polarity dependent flow fields. This is …

An Educator’S Perspective Of The Tidyverse, Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel, Johanna Hardin, Benjamin Baumer, Amelia Mcnamara, Nicholas J. Horton, Colin W. Rundel

Statistical and Data Sciences: Faculty Publications

Computing makes up a large and growing component of data science and statistics courses. Many of those courses, especially when taught by faculty who are statisticians by training, teach R as the programming language. A number of instructors have opted to build much of their teaching around use of the tidyverse. The tidyverse, in the words of its developers, “is a collection of R packages that share a high-level design philosophy and low-level grammar and data structures, so that learning one package makes it easier to learn the next” (Wickham et al. 2019). These shared principles have led to the …

A Novel Nonparametric Test For Heterogeneity Detection And Assessment Of Fluid Removal Among Crrt Patients In Icu, Shaowli Kabir

Theses and Dissertations--Epidemiology and Biostatistics

Over the past decade acute kidney injury (AKI) has been occurring among 20%-50% of patients admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) in United States. Continuous renal replacement therapy (CRRT) has become a popular treatment method among these critically ill patients. But there are multiple complications in implementing this treatment, including discrepancies in practiced and prescribed fluid removal, possibly related to the heterogeneity among these patients. With mixture modeling there have been several techniques in detecting heterogeneity with their specific limitations. In this dissertation a novel nonparametric ‘d test’ will be used to detect heterogeneity among CRRT patients in ICU. …

Random Variable Shape Parameter Strategy To Minimize Error In Oscillatory Radial Basis Function Approximation Method For Solving Partial Differential Equations., Quinnlan Paul Aiken

ONU Student Research Colloquium

Approximation of the functions which are the solutions of complex or difficult problems is a worthwhile endeavor. This has resulted in many ways to effectively approximate the solution of the partial differential equations. One such way to approximate the solution of the partial differential equation is Oscillatory radial basis function method. This method can approximate the solution of the partial differential equation well however relies heavily on a “shape parameter” to achieve acceptable error. Choosing this parameter was traditionally done through a trial-and-error method. Selecting shape parameters in a more analytical way has been desired. One such method is the …

A Novel Tcr Clustering Method For Sars-Cov-2 Epitopes, Naziba A. Nuha

Mathematics Colloquium Series

T-cell epitopes are peptides generated from antigens that are presented by MHC class I and class II molecules to T-cells. These epitopes are usually identified by T-cell receptors (TCRs) of CD4 T-cells which then causes transformation of CD4 T-cells to helper or regulatory T cells. Recently, there has been growing interest in the role of T cells and their involvement in various ailments including SARS-COV-2, cancer, autoimmune diseases and other infectious diseases. However, the mechanism of TCR epitope recognition by Tcell receptors (TCRs) of CD4 T-cells at a repertoire level is still not fully understood. In this project, we reviewed …

A Strange Attractor Of Primes, Alexander Hare

ONU Student Research Colloquium

The greatest prime factor sequences (GPF sequences), born at ONU in 2005, are integer sequences satisfying recursions in which every term is the greatest prime factor of a linear combination with positive integer coefficients of the preceding k terms (where k is the order of the sequence), possibly including a positive constant. The very first GPF sequence that was introduced satisfies the recursion x(n+1)=GPF(2*x(n)+1). In 2005 it was conjectured that no matter the seed, this particular GPF sequence enters the limit cycle (attractor) 3-7-5-11-23-47-19-13. In our current work, of a computational nature, we introduce the functions “depth” – where depth(n) …

Artsy Chaos: The Secret Life Of A Class Of Trigonometric Sums, Kaleb Swieringa, Joelena Brown, Rachael Harbaugh, Francis Nadolny

ONU Student Research Colloquium

We start from classical trigonometric sums (of terms such as k^n*cos(k), k^n*sin(k) - where n is a positive integer). These classical sums allow fairly straightforward closed form representations. In our work we considered changing the arguments of the trigonometric factors to powers (so that they get replaced by cos(k^a) and sin(k^a) - for a positive real exponent that may or may not be an integer), while also introducing in any term of such a sum a "rotational" factor of the form omega^k, where "omega" is a complex number of modulus 1 (that may or may not be a root of …

The Phosphorus Problem In The Pre-Biotic World, Erica Bronwyn Mobley

ONU Student Research Colloquium

The so-called “phosphorus problem” in prebiotic life has traditionally been framed in terms of phosphate solubility. Phosphates (PO₄^3-) are generally insoluble and therefore cannot supply adequate nutrients for protocellular metabolism. Phosphite (HPO₃^2-) is thought to solve this problem, but introduces a new obstacle, what might be termed the “phosphorus permeability problem”. Phosphate and phosphite are both charged at circumneutral pH and cannot cross a lipid membrane. No evolutionary pressure exists to drive formation of transporters prior to the existence of a membrane, and so the first protocells likely lacked transporters. We suggest that volatile …

Evaluating The Impact Of River Settlement On Phosphorus Uptake, Erica Bronwyn Mobley

ONU Student Research Colloquium

Phosphorus sorption to sediments is an important process that can buffer dissolved P concentrations. Both the amount of P and sediment as well as the mode of binding can influence transport of P in aquatic ecosystems. This study focused on determining sediment stocks in the Maumee River basin and quantifying reactive and total P extracted from sediment by a sequential multi-step process. Quantification of sediment stock will enable more accurate modeling of P retention and ultimately P loading into western Lake Erie.

How Student Attitudes Have Changed Toward Chemistry Due To The Implementation Of Hybrid Labs, Erica Bronwyn Mobley

ONU Student Research Colloquium

Hybrid chemistry labs in schools and universities have become much more common due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Previous research on student perceptions of chemistry has shown a correlation between their attitudes and performance in this subject that educators are still seeking to understand. This mixed methods study compared perceptions of students in traditional, in-person labs (pre-COVID, 2017) with students in a mixture of virtual and in-person labs (during COVID, 2020) over the course of a semester. The Attitude toward the Study of Chemistry Inventory (ASCI) survey was given to both cohorts of students and focused on five areas related to …

Connections Between Interglacial Variation And Lithological Variability Within Midland Basin Permian Shale Rocks In Martin County, Texas, Helen Rice Hammon

LSU Master's Theses

The Upper Pennsylvanian (323.2–289.9 Ma) and Lower Permian (289.9-251 Ma), (Wolfcamp and Spraberry formations) interval of the Midland Basin, West Texas, contains a mixed succession of shale, carbonate, and siltstone/sandstone lithofacies that accumulated in a deep-water marine environment under variable hydrographic restrictions. The heterogenous stratigraphy found in the Wolfcamp and Spraberry formation was formed in response to variations in sea level and a transition from a glacial to an interglacial climate during the Early Permian. These fluctuations left behind alternating beds of mudstone and carbonate, interwoven with thin sandstone beds. Because the Wolfcamp and Spraberry formations are highly heterolithic, it …

Efficient Low Dimensional Representation Of Vector Gaussian Distributions, Md Mahmudul Hasan

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation seeks to find optimal graphical tree model for low dimensional representation of vector Gaussian distributions. For a special case we assumed that the population co-variance matrix $\Sigma_x$ has an additional latent graphical constraint, namely, a latent star topology. We have found the Constrained Minimum Determinant Factor Analysis (CMDFA) and Constrained Minimum Trace Factor Analysis (CMTFA) decompositions of this special $\Sigma_x$ in connection with the operational meanings of the respective solutions. Characterizing the CMDFA solution of special $\Sigma_x$, according to the second interpretation of Wyner's common information, is equivalent to solving the source coding problem of finding the minimum …

Self-Supervised Video Object Segmentation Via Cutout Prediction And Tagging, Jyoti Kini, Fahad Shahbaz Khan, Salman Khan, Mubarak Shah

Computer Vision Faculty Publications

We propose a novel self-supervised Video Object Segmentation (VOS) approach that strives to achieve better object-background discriminability for accurate object segmentation. Distinct from previous self-supervised VOS methods, our approach is based on a discriminative learning loss formulation that takes into account both object and background information to ensure object-background discriminability, rather than using only object appearance. The discriminative learning loss comprises cutout-based reconstruction (cutout region represents part of a frame, whose pixels are replaced with some constant values) and tag prediction loss terms. The cutout-based reconstruction term utilizes a simple cutout scheme to learn the pixel-wise correspondence between the current …

Predicting Covid-19 Fake News, Nilanjana Nambiar

Honors Projects in Data Science

The aim of this project is to use a machine learning model to identify COVID-19 fake news on Twitter and perform additional analysis on the fake news tweets to distinguish any common trends. As misinformation is very common in the information found online, the purpose of the study is to see how machine learning can be used to discern what information can be classified as true versus what is false. Prior research regarding fake news detection, modeling, and analysis was conducted to familiarize on the current studies provided in predicting and analyzing COVID-19 fake news on Twitter. In this study, …

Cancel Culture: Who Or What Will Be Next?, Christine Trumper

Honors Projects in Data Science

This paper utilizes Data Science and Applied Statistic techniques, to perform an analytical dive into Cancel Culture as it is referenced and used on Twitter. The research focuses on analyzing how Cancel Culture has affected the sentiment of Twitter, specifically how it impacts prominent topics in the media that have occurred between February 2021 to September 2021. The development of a topic and sentiment analysis will be based on 1,302,844 Tweets collected using Twitter’s API. Cancel Culture became popularized on social media in the past few years and there is little concrete information regarding its process and the demographics it …

Identifying Factors That Lead To Injury In The Nfl, Matthew Toner

Honors Projects in Data Science

This study hypothesizes that injury-causing factors can be identified through training machine learning models with NFL injury data. The machine learning process entailed web scraping, pre-processing, cleaning, modeling, and analyzing NFL injury data to identify these factors. The features used to model injuries included the following: games played, games started, weight, height, age, year, years of experience, starting position, and team. The four models used to model NFL injuries were Logistic Regression, Decision Trees, Random Forests, and Gradient Boosted Trees. The model with the best performance was the Gradient Boosted Trees model, with an F1 score of 0.508. In addition, …

Twitter's Role In An Increasingly Polarized Political Climate; A Look Into The 2020 Us Elections, Leanne Kendall

Honors Projects in Data Science

Amidst politically strained times, one might wonder what has cause such an exaggerated gap between the views of democrats and republicans. For years, research has suggested the US’s voting population is becoming increasingly politically polarized, with one of the causes being social media. This study's purpose is to understand more about the role that social media plays in the polarization of parties in the US. The study is comprised of the analysis of over 3,000,000 tweets from 9/22/2020 through 11/10/2020 that mention or are written by senate and presidential candidates. Natural language processing, network graphing, and sentiment analyses were utilized …

Social Media Discussion On Covid-19 Impact On Mental Health In The Us, Uk, And India, Weixiao Sun

Honors Projects in Data Science

Discovered in December 2019, Coronavirus (Covid-19) is an infectious disease that has spread rapidly around the world. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared Covid-19 a pandemic in March 2020. The pandemic has increased the occurrence of mental health problems including depression, stress, and anxiety. This research used real-life Tweets collected related to Covid-19 from March 2020 until October 2021. The objective is to analyze Tweets from the US, UK, and India to discover what topics people are discussing about Covid-19's impact on mental health. The theme for the US was related to government and politics, some dominant users in the …

Vampires And Other Diseases: Stochastic Infection Dynamics Of Small Populations, Marijn Jaarsma

Honors Projects in Science and Technology

Mathematical models are powerful tools often applied in the field of epidemiology. The type and shape of the model will differ between different types of diseases. In this study, stochastic dynamical models are applied to the entertaining example of vampires, and the results of this analysis are compared to real-life diseases with small populations of infected. The data used comes from pop-culture depictions of vampires in literature, television shows, movies, and fan pages associated with these depictions. The aim of this study is to serve as an educational tool for modeling diseases with small populations to predict and control the …

Constructing Digital Elevation Models From Lake Michigan Dune Imagery, Blake Harlow, Jack Krebsbach

21st Annual Celebration of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity (2022)

Lake Michigan dune complexes evolve as winds and waves move the sand, causing major topographic changes over time. The Hope College Dune Group has been using remote sensing data from drone imagery to model various aspects of these dunes. In order to better understand the dune dynamics, a digital terrain model (DTM) is desired. A DTM is an elevation map of the dune’s bare ground surface which excludes ground obstructions such as trees and bushes. We have attempted to use traditional methods that have been developed for processing LIDAR data in order to construct these DTMs from our drone imagery, …

Carbon-Carbon Bond Activation: Optimization Of Decarbonylation-Exchange Reactions Of Diortho-Fluoro Pyridyl Ketone With Boronic Acids, Therese A. Joffre, Luke J. Shoemaker, Eric A. Salisbury, Erik J. Schoonover, Jacob P. Vanderroest

21st Annual Celebration of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity (2022)

Rhodium-catalyzed decarbonylation reactions have been shown to occur readily with a variety of substituted pyridyl ketones. However, the 2,6-diortho-fluoro pyridyl ketone does not undergo decarbonylation on its own. When testing the unreactive ketone, a reaction was found with boronic acids that leads to an aryl ring exchange and subsequent decarbonylation. This decarbonylation-exchange reaction was further optimized by evaluating three promising sets of experimental conditions. The 2,6-diortho-fluoro ketone was reacted with a series of boronic acids to assess the scope of this transformation using these sets of experimental conditions.

Algoraph But In C++, Adam James Czeranko, Andres Louis Solorzano

21st Annual Celebration of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity (2022)

Given a configuration of “pebbles” on a graph G, a pebbling move removes two pebbles from a source vertex and one pebble is added to an adjacent vertex. A vertex is reachable if there is a sequence of pebbling moves that places one pebble on that vertex; a graph is solvable if every vertex is reachable. The pebbling number of graph G is the smallest integer π(G), such that any configuration that uses π(G) pebbles is solvable. A graph satisfies the two-pebbling property if for any configuration of more than 2π(G) - q pebbles, where q is the number of …

Landscape Materials: Impact On Water Quality At Different Temperatures, Vignesh Tiruvannamalai '24

Distinguished Student Work

The purpose of this experiment is to analyze how commonly used landscaping materials (wood mulch, rubber mulch, and landscape stones) will affect the quality and chemical composition of runoff water they come into contact with, and how this will be impacted by different temperatures experienced in different climatic regions.

In order to conduct this experiment, always wear safety goggles and gloves when handling experiment materials. First, prepare the landscaping materials and rinse the containers and lids. Then, place the designated amount of landscaping materials in each container and fill each with 2.27 liters of filtered water, subsequently covering them and …

Population Genomic Dynamics Of Mesopelagic Lanternfishes Diaphus Dumerilii, Lepidophanes Guentheri, And Ceratoscopelus Warmingii (Family: Myctophidae) In The Gulf Of Mexico, Andrea Bernard, Kimberly A. Finnegan, Tracey Sutton, Ron Eytan, Max Weber, Mahmood Shivji

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

Assessing the impacts of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill (DWHOS) on deep-sea fish assemblages of the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) has been hindered by an absence of baseline (pre-spill) data concerning the population genetic dynamics of these fishes. The lanternfishes (Myctophidae) are a speciose, yet understudied, taxonomic group, that comprise a significant portion of the global deep-sea biomass, making them integral members of meso- and bathy-pelagic food webs. Herein, we used a genomic approach (double digest restriction site associated DNA sequencing) to investigate the temporal genetic dynamics of three species of lanternfishes within the northern GOM in the region of …