Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Clostridioides Difficile Spore Production In Response To Antibiotic And Immune Stress, Adenrele Oludiran, Erin B. Purcell

College of Sciences Posters

Clostridioides (Clostridium) difficile, an anaerobic, spore-forming Gram-positive pathogenic bacterium, is a major cause of hospital-acquired infections and can persist as surface-attached biofilms for protection from antibiotic and immune stress. C. difficile can form biofilms as a single species or with other anaerobic intestinal bacteria. The environmental signals that cause individual cells to secrete toxins, form biofilms, or develop into spores that can spread the infection to new patients are unknown. In these studies, we investigate bacterial responses to different stress. Antimicrobial host-defense peptides (HDPs) produced by animal immune systems are promising candidates to develop novel therapies for bacterial infection …

Sustaining Georgetown County, South Carolina: A Museum Approach, Jesse Morgan

Goal 4: Quality Education

No abstract provided.

Hyperbolic Quotients Of Projection Complexes, Matt Clay, Johanna Mangahas

Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper is a continuation of our previous work with Margalit where we studied group actions on projection complexes. In that paper, we demonstrated sufficient conditions so that the normal closure of a family of subgroups of vertex stabilizers is a free product of certain conjugates of these subgroups. In this paper, we study both the quotient of the projection complex by this normal subgroup and the action of the quotient group on the quotient of the projection complex. We show that under certain conditions the quotient complex is δ-hyperbolic. Additionally, under certain circumstances, we show that if the original …

Lattice Optics Optimization For Recirculatory Energy Recovery Linacs With Multi-Objective Optimization, Isurumali Neththikumara, Todd Satogata, Alex Bogacz, Ryan Bodenstein, Arthur Vandenhoeke

College of Sciences Posters

Beamline optics design for recirculatory linear accelerators requires special attention to suppress beam instabilities arising due to collective effects. The impact of these collective effects becomes more pronounced with the addition of energy recovery (ER) capability. Jefferson Lab’s multi-pass, multi-GeV ER proposal for the CEBAF accelerator, ER@CEBAF, is a 10- pass ER demonstration with low beam current. Tighter control of the beam parameters at lower energies is necessary to avoid beam break-up (BBU) instabilities, even with a small beam current. Optics optimizations require balancing both beta excursions at high-energy passes and overfocusing at low-energy passes. Here, we discuss an optics …

A Spatially And Temporally Second Order Method For Solving Parabolic Interface Problems, Kumudu Gamage, Yan Peng

College of Sciences Posters

Parabolic interface problems have many applications in physics and biology, such as hyperthermia treatment of cancer, underground water flow, and food engineering. Here we present an algorithm for solving two-dimensional parabolic interface problems where the coefficient and the forcing term have a discontinuity across the interface. The Crank-Nicolson scheme is used for time discretization, and the direct immersed interface method is used for spatial discretization. The proposed method is second order in both space and time for both solution and gradients in maximum norm.

Empirically Adjusted Weighted Ordered P-Values Method, Wimarsha Jayanetti, Sinjini Sikdar, N. Rao Chaganty

College of Sciences Posters

Recent advancements in high-throughput technologies have enabled simultaneous inference of thousands of genes. With the abundance of public databases, it is now possible to rapidly access the results of several genomic studies, each of which includes the significance testing results of a large number of genes. Researchers frequently aggregate genomic data from multiple studies in the form of a meta-analysis. Most traditional meta-analysis methods aim at combining summary results to find signals in at least one of the studies. However, often the goal is to identify genes that are differentially expressed in a consistent pattern across multiple studies. Recently, a …

Analysis Of An Existing Method In Refinement Of Protein Structure Predictions Using Cryo-Em Images, Maytha Alshammari, Jing He, Willy Wriggers, Jiangwen Sun

College of Sciences Posters

Protein structure prediction produces atomic models from its amino acid sequence. Three-dimensional structures are important for understanding the function mechanism of proteins. Knowing the structure of a given protein is crucial in drug development design of novel enzymes. AlphaFold2 is a protein structure prediction tool with good performance in recent CASP competitions. Phenix is a tool for determination of a protein structure from a high-resolution 3D molecular image. Recent development of Phenix shows that it is capable to refine predicted models from AlphaFold2, specifically the poorly predicted regions, by incorporating information from the 3D image of the protein. The goal …

Physics-Informed Neural Networks (Pinns) For Dvcs Cross Sections, Manal Almaeen, Jake Grigsby, Joshua Hoskins, Brandon Kriesten, Yaohang Li, Huey-Wen Lin, Simonetta Liuti, Sorawich Maichum

College of Sciences Posters

We present a physics informed deep learning technique for Deeply Virtual Compton Scattering (DVCS) cross sections from an unpolarized proton target using both an unpolarized and polarized electron beam. Training a deep learning model typically requires a large size of data that might not always be available or possible to obtain. Alternatively, a deep learning model can be trained using additional knowledge gained by enforcing some physics constraints such as angular symmetries for better accuracy and generalization. By incorporating physics knowledge to our deep learning model, our framework shows precise predictions on the DVCS cross sections and better extrapolation on …

Telomerase Activity Enhancement In Saccharomyces Cerevisiae, Mackenzie Neal, Hailey Rietz, Melissa Mefford

2022 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Poster Presentations

Telomeres are located at the ends of eukaryotic linear chromosomes and are composed of repeated nucleotide sequences. One of their main functions is to protect chromosomal ends from being damaged. Telomeres cannot be completely copied during DNA replication so they gradually shorten during each replication cycle in what is known as the “end replication problem”. To counteract this problem, the RNA dependent enzyme complex telomerase works to extend telomeres and help protect the ends of chromosomes. Telomeres and the telomerase enzyme are heavily involved in the aging process and cancer progression. Telomeres gradually shorten with age and eventually become so …

Development Of Anti-Cancer Small Molecules To Inhibit The Base Excision Repair (Ber) Pathway By Binding Apyrimidinic/Apurinic (Ap) Sites In Dna, Ellen S. Ledford, Robert M. Tackett, Elizabeth M. Thomas

2022 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Poster Presentations

Two of the main treatments available to patients with cancer are radiation and chemotherapy which both rely on the ability to induce DNA damage. One reason cancer deaths perpetrate is due to cancer resistance towards current cancer therapies. The Base Excision Repair (BER) pathway is involved in therapeutic resistance by utilizing DNA glycosylases that recognize and remove the damaged DNA base to leave the aldehyde. Apyrimidinic/Apurinic (AP) enzyme 1, APE1, then recognizes the aldehyde to trigger DNA repair. Alkoxyamines function to competitively covalently bind the aldehyde generated from the AP site. Once the aldehyde is covalently bonded with the alkoxyamine, …

Seasonal Abundance And Sex Ratio Of Earwigflies (Merope Tuber) In Eastern Kentucky, Abigal Fagan, Sean O'Keefe

2022 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Poster Presentations

The earwigfly is a rarely seen insect in the family of scorpionflies. There are three species total, one in Brazil, one in Australia, and the third (Merope tuber), widespread throughout the eastern United states. In a 1984 study, Chris Maier collected 69 earwigflies between 1977 and 1982 from New England. Most of these were collected in July using sticky traps. He collected 43 females and 26 males (sex ratio 2.4:1). In a 2014 study, Skvarla, Hartshorn, and Dowling collected 77 earwigflies from Arkansas, mostly in August using malaise traps, pan traps, Lindgren funnels, and pitfall traps. They collected 58 females …

Pressure Injuries In A Clinical Setting: A Quality Improvement Project, Colby Pugh, Kayla Blain, Chloe Patrick, Clarissa Baker, Mackenzie Hopkins, Jarrett Elam, Suzi White

2022 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Poster Presentations

The purpose of this quality improvement project is to develop a teaching tool aimed at decreasing the incidence rate of pressure injuries in the clinical setting specifically those in intensive care settings. Pressure injuries are a common preventable hospitalacquired complication. The occurrence of pressure injuries is higher in an ICU setting than in a non-ICU setting with 30% and 27.6% respectively during a one-year time period. The development of a teaching tool to be distributed to nurses' stations, staff workrooms, and nurse managers seeks to improve ICU staff nurses' education on the topic of pressure injures at a large urban …

What Majors Are Chosen By Undergraduate Students Leaving Accounting? A Review Of The Literature, Sarah E. Lager, Kimberly Fatten

2022 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Poster Presentations

Undergraduate accounting retention research has focused primarily on why students choose an accounting major, but less is known about what programs students go to when they exit an accounting major.

Data Quality Analysis Of 200 Gev Center Of Mass Energy P-Au Collisions From Star, Keaghan Knight, Kevin Adkins

2022 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Poster Presentations

In proton collisions, fragmentation functions describe the probability that a given parton in the initial state creates a particular hadron in the final state. Understanding fragmentation is essential for a theoretical description of measured asymmetries that provide a glimpse of the proton's spin structure. Proton-gold collisions from the STAR detector at Brookhaven National Laboratory will provide a complementary result, using reconstructed jets, to the global data which comes mostly from electron-positron annihilation experiments. A first step in extracting fragmentation functions is to perform a quality analysis (QA) of the data. This poster shows a look at the data and our …

Funding Achievement In Kentucky, Brett Blair, James Masterson

2022 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Poster Presentations

It is no surprise that the proper education of a population ranks high on the list of important accomplishments within a society. After all, a population’s education can affect its ability to perform at a high capacity. The education of Kentucky’s children is no different. Recent years have seen large disparities in the resources available to each school in Kentucky, which could have effects on the educational output of regions in the state. Though research has been conducted on concepts such as school funding, educational quality, and education reform, this research tends to be lacking in specificity and consistency. (DeYoung, …

Quantifying Ant Populations To Measure Biodiversity In Morehead, Ky, Alyssa Turner, Jude Hall, Tayla Lee, Charles Lydeard, Sean O'Keefe

2022 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Poster Presentations

To effectively conduct conservation efforts, we can use biodiversity to assess the condition of our environment. Biodiversity has been commonly defined as the variety and variability among living organisms within an area. When our ecosystems are at their best, they clean water, purify air, maintain soil, regulate climate, recycle nutrients, and provide food. Everything within an ecosystem is interdependent, so biodiversity is an important factor and indicator of environmental health. Indicators help us to measure and monitor pressures or threats in land and water use, habitat loss or invasive species, the state of species and ecosystems, the conservation response, and …

Economic Feasibility Of Rainwater Harvesting:A Case Study At Morehead State University, Riley Q. Williams, Vijay Subramaniam

2022 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Poster Presentations

Rainwater harvesting (RWH) was primarily considered as a source for freshwater supply or a conservation practice for over coming water shortages in drought prone areas. By retaining storm-water run-off for on site use, harvesting systems reduce the runoff volumes and pollutant masses entering waterways. Consequently, using roof-top RWH as a best management practice has been encouraged by many state and local governments. Some of the most interesting aspects of RWH are the methods of capture, storage, and the use of this natural resource at the place it occurs.

Combating Nursing Burnout: A Quality Improvement Project, Heather Randolph, Maddy Mcelfresh, Addie Short, Cailey Dahlquist, Jenna Bartley, Suzi White

2022 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Poster Presentations

Nursing burnout costs the health care industry roughly 14 billion dollars a year. The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically increased burnout rates. Many nurses feel overworked and underappreciated; this has caused a negative impact as it is influencing the rates of burnout among hospital staffing globally. Over half a million registered nurses have already left their profession nationwide due to stress and workload (Bruyneel, Smith, Tack, & Pirson, 2021). Burnout has diminished staff, depleted resources, and decreased quality of care.

Predicting Cryptocurrency Price Change Direction From Supply-Side Factors Via Machine Learning Methods, David Mayo, Heba Elgazzar

2022 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Poster Presentations

Cryptocurrency prices are highly variable. Predicting changes in cryptocurrency price is a hugely important topic to investors and researchers, with much existing research on demand-side factors. The goal of this research project is to design and implement machine learning models to predict future cryptocurrency price change direction based primarily on supply-side factors. Different unsupervised machine learning techniques are used to build the predictive models. These techniques include K Nearest Neighbors (KNN), Artificial Neural Networks (ANN), Support Vector Machines (SVM), Naïve Bayesian Classifier, and Random Forest Classifier. A dataset of 10 daily supply-side metrics for three prominent cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Ethereum, and …

Genes Repressed After Dna Damage In Acinetobacter Baumannii Are Co-Regulated By Umudab And Ddrr, Mollee Flannigan, Xiaohong Li, Eric Rouchka, Deborah Cook, Janeele Hare

2022 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Poster Presentations

UmuDAb and DdrR coregulate error-prone polymerases in the multi-drug resistant opportunistic pathogen, Acinetobacter baumannii, by repressing polymerase expression until after DNA damage. New evidence indicates that these proteins may also regulate other genes that are repressed following DNA damage. We performed an in silico analysis of RNA-Seq data from wild-type, ddrR, and umuDAb mutant strains to examine the expression levels of genes repressed after DNA damage. We used two different algorithms to analyze Cuffnorm- and HTSeq normalized gene counts. This analysis revealed nineteen (CuffDiff) or twenty-nine (DESeq2) genes repressed in wild-type cells that were derepressed after DNA damage in either …

Comfort Women: The Climax That Exposed Japanese Culture, Olivia Dale, James Masterson

2022 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Poster Presentations

When a nation attempts to erase the history of a marginalized group, the preservation of such narratives becomes critical. The genuine culture of a nation is exposed when that which officials attempted to hide is analyzed. The comfort women scheme conducted by the Imperial Japanese Government serves as an example of this phenomenon. The comfort women system was more than sex trafficking; it was the climax of a sexist society. Japan had a long history of organized prostitution before the Second World War, but during the conflict, the demeaning actions committed against women extended beyond the nation. The Japanese government …

Analytical Method Development For The Analysis Of E-Liquids, Calista Dean, Charlotte Gabbard, Emma Schmittzehe

2022 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Poster Presentations

Electronic cigarettes are one of the most commonly used methods of nicotine delivery, especially among the adolescent population. Due to the lack of regulation in manufacturer labeling of refillable nicotine solutions (e-liquids), the actual concentration of nicotine and other additives is variable as compared to the reported values. Misreporting of nicotine content is a contributor in the development of nicotine dependency and potentially tobacco product dependency. The objective of this research is to develop reliable analytical methods to study the variations in nicotine levels in e-liquids, and to identify and quantify other potentially harmful additives in e-liquids. In this research …

Medical Devices And Cybersecurity, Hilary Finch

School of Cybersecurity Posters

I begin by looking at the role of cybersecurity in the medical world. The healthcare industry adopted information technology quite quickly. While the advancement was obviously beneficial and necessary to keep up with an ever-growing demand, the healthcare industry did not place any kind of pointed focus on the security of their IT department, or the sensitive information housed therein.

When rapid advancements of technology outpaced the gradual advancement of hospital cybersecurity, security concerns became a difficult issue to control. There is a serious need for more advancements in hospital security. Each interconnected medical device has its own unique security …

Downscaling Of Physical Risks For Climate Scenario Design, Enrico Biffis, Shuai Wang

Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics

Southeast Asia is arguably one of the areas most vulnerable to natural disasters due to its dense population, coastal urbanization, and rainfall variability driven by the local monsoon systems. In this report, we focus on the impact of global warming in the region along four climate dimensions: temperature, precipitation, wind speed and coastal surge. The latter represents the surge of water from the ocean in excess of astronomical tides. Our objective is to downscale the outputs of global climate models to temporal and spatial resolutions of interest to market participants wishing to quantify climate risk vulnerability via climate stress testing …

B-Flavor Tagging At Belle Ii, F. Abudinén, N. Akopov, A. Aloisio, V. Babu, Sw Banerjee, M. Bauer, J. V. Bennett, F. U. Bernlochner, M. Bessner, S. Bettarini, T. Bilka, S. Bilokin, D. Biswas, D. Bodrov, J. Borah, M. Bračko, P. Branchini, A. Budano, M. Campajola

Faculty and Student Publications

We report on new flavor tagging algorithms developed to determine the quark-flavor content of bottom ([InlineMediaObject not available: see fulltext.]) mesons at Belle II. The algorithms provide essential inputs for measurements of quark-flavor mixing and charge-parity violation. We validate and evaluate the performance of the algorithms using hadronic [InlineMediaObject not available: see fulltext.] decays with flavor-specific final states reconstructed in a data set corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 62.8 fb- 1, collected at the [InlineEquation not available: see fulltext.] resonance with the Belle II detector at the SuperKEKB collider. We measure the total effective tagging efficiency to be εeff=(30.0±1.2(stat)±0.4(syst))%for …

Luminosity With Large Amplitude Pulses After The Initial Breakdown Stage In Intracloud Lightning Flashes, Maribeth Stolzenburg, Thomas C. Marshall, Sampath Bandara, Raymond Siedlecki

Faculty and Student Publications

Optical data are presented for two intracloud flashes in which there were five events having large amplitude, bipolar electric field change (E-change) pulses and strong VHF emissions. These bright events occurred 18.98–67.33 ms after the initiating event and 10–59 ms after the end of the initial breakdown stage. The three largest events were coincident with WorldWide Lightning Location Network detections of the sort previously associated with terrestrial gamma-ray flashes (TGFs); these pulses had range-normalized E-change amplitudes of 8.73, 8.33, and 3.81 V/m and estimated peak current magnitudes of 262, 250, and 114 kA. The other two events were 3.20 and …

Why Rectified Linear Unit Is Efficient In Machine Learning: One More Explanation, Barnabas Bede, Vladik Kreinovich, Uyen Pham

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In many applications, in particular, in econometric application, deep learning techniques are very effective. In this paper, we provide a new explanation for why rectified linear units -- the main units of deep learning -- are so effective. This explanation is similar to the usual explanation of why Gaussian (normal) distributions are ubiquitous -- namely, it is based on an appropriate limit theorem.

Hd 166620: Portrait Of A Star Entering A Grand Magnetic Minimum, Jacob K. Luhn, Jason T. Wright, Gregory W. Henry, Steven H. Saar, Anna C. Baum

Information Systems and Engineering Management Research Publications

HD 166620 was recently identified as a Maunder minimum candidate based on nearly 50 years of Ca II H and K activity data from Mount Wilson and Keck HIRES. These data showed clear cyclic behavior on a 17 yr timescale during the Mount Wilson survey that became flat when picked up later with Keck HIRES planet-search observations. Unfortunately, the transition between these two data sets—and therefore the transition into the candidate Maunder minimum phase—contained little to no data. Here, we present additional Mount Wilson data not present in Baum et al., along with photometry over a nearly 30 yr baseline …

A Robust Age Model For The Cryogenian Pocatello Formation Of Southeastern Idaho (Northwestern Usa) From Tandem In Situ And Isotope Dilution U-Pb Dating Of Volcanic Tuffs And Epiclastic Detrital Zircons, Vincent H. Isakson, Mark D. Schmitz, Carol M. Dehler, Francis A. Macdonald, W. Adolph Yonkee

Geosciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

Tandem in situ and isotope dilution U-Pb analysis of zircons from pyroclastic volcanic rocks and both glacial and non-glacial sedimentary strata of the Pocatello Formation (Idaho, northwestern USA) provides new age constraints on Cryogenian glaciation in the North American Cordillera. Two dacitic tuffs sampled within glacigenic strata of the lower diamictite interval of the Scout Mountain Member yield high-precision chemical abrasion isotope dilution U-Pb zircon eruption and depositional ages of 696.43 ± 0.21 and 695.17 ± 0.20 Ma. When supplemented by a new high-precision detrital zircon maximum depositional age of ≤ 670 Ma for shoreface and offshore sandstones unconformably overlying …

Semantic Completeness Of Intuitionistic Predicate Logic In A Fully Constructive Meta-Theory, Ian Ray

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

A constructive proof of the semantic completeness of intuitionistic predicate logic is explored using set-generated complete Heyting Algebra. We work in a constructive set theory that avoids impredicative axioms; for this reason the result is not only intuitionistic but fully constructive. We provide background that makes the thesis accessible to the uninitiated.