Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Wild Red Deer Benefit The Conservation Of European Semi-Natural Open Habitats, F. Riesch, Bettina Tonn, Marcus Meißner, Sven Herzog, Niko Balkenhol, J. Isselstein

IGC Proceedings (1977-2023)

Traditional land use practices have shaped European landscapes for millennia. Agricultural intensification and declining popularity of pastoral farming in the past century have resulted in a tremendous loss of extensively used open landscapes and associated biodiversity. Today, conservation management needs to prevent secondary succession of many open habitats. Large or inaccessible target areas unsuitable for conventional conservation measures might benefit from grazing by wild herbivores, which do not require fencing nor regular welfare monitoring. In a military training area in Germany, we studied the quantitative and qualitative effects of wild red deer in two protected open habitat types (lowland hay …

Session 13: On Statistical Estimates Of The Inverted Kumaraswamy Distribution Under Adaptive Type-I Progressive Hybrid Censoring, Qingqing Li, Yuhlong Lio

SDSU Data Science Symposium

The probability distribution modeling is investigated via maximum likelihood estimation method based on adaptive type-I progressively hybrid censored samples from the inverted Kumaraswamy distribution. The point estimates of model parameters, reliability, hazard rate and quantile are obtained and confidence intervals are also developed by using asymptotic distribution as well as bootstrap method. Monte Carlo simulation has been performed to evaluate the accuracy of estimations. Finally, a real data set is given for the application illustration.

An Alpha-Based Prescreening Methodology For A Common But Unknown Source Likelihood Ratio With Different Subpopulation Structures, Dylan Borchert, Semhar Michael, Christopher Saunders, Andrew Simpson

SDSU Data Science Symposium

Prescreening is a commonly used methodology in which the forensic examiner includes sources from the background population that meet a certain degree of similarity to the given piece of evidence. The goal of prescreening is to find the sources closest to the given piece of evidence in an alternative source population for further analysis. This paper discusses the behavior of an $\alpha-$based prescreening methodology in the form of a Hotelling $T^2$ test on the background population for a common but unknown source likelihood ratio. An extensive simulation study with synthetic and real data were conducted. We find that prescreening helps …

Identifying Subpopulations Of A Hierarchical Structured Data Using A Semi-Supervised Mixture Modeling Approach, Andrew Simpson, Semhar Michael, Christopher Saunders, Dylan Borchert

SDSU Data Science Symposium

The field of forensic statistics offers a unique hierarchical data structure in which a population is composed of several subpopulations of sources and a sample is collected from each source. This subpopulation structure creates a hierarchical layer. We propose using a semi-supervised mixture modeling approach to model the subpopulation structure which leverages the fact that we know the collection of samples came from the same, yet unknown, source. A simulation study based on a famous glass data was conducted and shows this method performs better than other unsupervised approaches which have been previously used in practice.

Session 5: Equipment Finance Credit Risk Modeling - A Case Study In Creative Model Development & Nimble Data Engineering, Edward Krueger, Landon Thompson, Josh Moore

SDSU Data Science Symposium

This presentation will focus first on providing an overview of Channel and the Risk Analytics team that performed this case study. Given that context, we’ll then dive into our approach for building the modeling development data set, techniques and tools used to develop and implement the model into a production environment, and some of the challenges faced upon launch. Then, the presentation will pivot to the data engineering pipeline. During this portion, we will explore the application process and what happens to the data we collect. This will include how we extract & store the data along with how it …

Editorial Board

Karbala International Journal of Modern Science

No abstract provided.

Causal Factors Of Breeding Success And Frequency In Threatened Grassland Birds On The Ingula Nature Reserve, South Africa, R. B. Colyn, C. Pienaar, H. Smit-Robinson, K. Chetty

IGC Proceedings (1977-2023)

The high-altitude grasslands covering the eastern escarpment of South Africa is one of the country’s most valuable habitats for biodiversity, livestock and water production. The habitat hosts several threatened bird species including endangered species such as the Rudd's Lark (Heteromirafra ruddi) and Grey Crowned Crane (Balearica regulorum), and vulnerable species such as the Blue Crane (Grus paradisea), Wattled Crane (Bugeranus carunculatus), Southern Bald Ibis (Geronticus calvus), and Yellow-breasted Pipit (Anthus chloris). Avian research and monitoring have been ongoing within the recently declared Ingula Nature Reserve for more than …

Animal Performance In Signalgrass Monoculture Or In Silvopastoral Systems, I. A. Gomes Da Silva, José C. B. Dubeux Jr., A. C. L. De Melo, Márcio V. Da Cunha, Mércia V. F. Dos Santos, V. X. O. Apolinário, Erinaldo Viana De Freitas, S. B. M. Costa

IGC Proceedings (1977-2023)

Silvopastoral systems (SPS) can increase overall productivity and long-term income due to the simultaneous production of trees, forage, and livestock. This 2-yr study evaluated animal performance and herbage responses in C4-grass monoculture or in SPS in the sub-humid tropical region of Brazil. The experimental design was randomized complete block with three replications. Treatments were: Urochloa decumbens (Stapf.) R. Webster (Signalgrass) + Mimosa caesalpiniifolia Benth (SPS-Mimosa); Signalgrass + Gliricidia sepium (Jacq.) Kunth ex Walp (SPS-Gliricidia); and Signalgrass monoculture (SM). Response variables included herbage and livestock responses. Cattle were managed under continuous stocking with variable stocking rate. There was interaction between treatment …

Legume And Nitrogen Fertilization Affect Animal Performance And Enteric Methane Emission Of Nellore Heifers, B. G. C. Homem, I. B. G. Lima, P. P. Spasiani, José C. B. Dubeux Jr., A. Berndt, D. R. Casagrande

IGC Proceedings (1977-2023)

Methane emission from livestock operation is an important source of greenhouse gas and contributes to global warming. Forage legume secondary compounds may mitigate methane emissions by reducing methanogenic population in the rumen. This study evaluated animal performance and methane emission from beef cattle grazing either a mixed pasture [Brachiaria brizantha cv. Marandu (palisadegrass) and Arachis pintoi (forage peanut) cv. BRS Mandobi] or a palisadegrass monoculture with or without nitrogen (N) fertilisation. A 2.5-yr continuous stocking experiment was carried out in southeast Brazil, on a randomized complete block design with three treatments and four replicates. Two Nellore heifers were used …

People-Environment Trade-Offs In Managing Communal Rangelands Of South Africa, J. E. Bennett, S. Lemke, T. Marandure

IGC Proceedings (1977-2023)

Communal rangelands in South Africa support a range of ecosystem services including water provision, carbon sequestration and livestock production for different stakeholders. Delivering these in a sustainable and socially appropriate manner necessarily requires trade-offs to be made between the different environmental and social outcomes required. We draw on empirical fieldwork and a two-day participatory stakeholder workshop to report on the early stages of a project evaluating these trade-offs in communal rangelands of the uMzimvubu catchment in Eastern Cape Province. Our findings suggest that trade-offs will be necessary at a variety of different levels within this system. For example, a key …

Transformnet: Self-Supervised Representation Learning Through Predicting Geometric Transformations, Hashim Sayed, Muhammad Ali

Student Publications

Deep neural networks need a big amount of training data, while in the real world there is a scarcity of data available for training purposes. To resolve this issue unsupervised methods are used for training with limited data. In this report, we describe the unsupervised semantic feature learning approach for recognition of the geometric transformation applied to the input data. The basic concept of our approach is that if someone is unaware of the objects in the images, he/she would not be able to quantitatively predict the geometric transformation that was applied to them. This self supervised scheme is based …

Connecting The Dots: Transmission Of Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease From The Marquesas To The Dry Tortugas, Thomas Dobbelaere, Daniel M. Holstein, Erinn M. Muller, Lewis J. Gramer, Lucas Mceachron, Sara D. Williams, Emmanuel Hanert

Faculty Publications

For the last 7 years, Florida's Coral Reef (FCR) has suffered from widespread and severe coral loss caused by stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD). First observed off the coast of Miami-Dade county in 2014, the outbreak has since spread throughout the entirety of FCR and some areas of the Caribbean. However, the propagation of the disease through FCR seemed to slow down when it reached the western end of the Marquesas in August 2020. Despite being present about 30 km (similar to 20 miles) from the Dry Tortugas (DRTO), SCTLD was not reported in this area before May 2021. …

Spring Migration Behavior And Summer Habitat Associations Of Female Indiana Bats (Myotis Sodalis) In Arkansas, Heather N. Custer

Student Theses and Dissertations

Since 1967, the Indiana bat (Myotis sodalis) has been federally listed. Range-wide research continues to expand our understanding of the behaviors of the species, but knowledge gaps still remain. Specifically, information regarding spring migration behavior and associated summer habitat of female Indiana bats that overwinter in Arkansas is lacking. Accordingly, objectives of this research included determining direction and distance of migrating female Indiana bats, locating maternity colonies and roosts, estimating maternity colony size, home ranges, and core areas. Migration directions and distances varied among bats, and a maternity colony was located in Arkansas in 2019 that subsequently used artificial roosts …

Predicting Seismic Site Coefficients For Northeast Arkansas (Nea) By Performing Site Specific Ground Motion Response Analysis (Ssgmra), Md Radiue Islam

Student Theses and Dissertations

Northeast Arkansas (NEA) has a deep deposition of soil overlying the bedrock. The code-based design approach e.g., the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) does not account for deep deposition of soil overlying the bedrock. As a result, structures with short-period spectral accelerations are overdesigned at significant cost, and structures with long-period spectral accelerations are under-designed at significant risk. The purpose of this study is to perform SSGMRA for areas in NEA and predict seismic site factors. Seismic hazard analyses have been carried out, and one dimensional (1D) site response analysis has been performed for seven different …

Jamming Detection And Classification In Ofdm-Based Uavs Via Feature- And Spectrogram-Tailored Machine Learning, Y. Li, J. Pawlak, J. Price, K. Al Shamaileh, Q. Niyaz, S. Paheding, V. Devabhaktuni

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

In this paper, a machine learning (ML) approach is proposed to detect and classify jamming attacks against orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) receivers with applications to unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Using software-defined radio (SDR), four types of jamming attacks; namely, barrage, protocol-aware, single-tone, and successive-pulse are launched and investigated. Each type is qualitatively evaluated considering jamming range, launch complexity, and attack severity. Then, a systematic testing procedure is established by placing an SDR in the vicinity of a UAV (i.e., drone) to extract radiometric features before and after a jamming attack is launched. Numeric features that include signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), …

Elemental And Oxidized Mercury In The Atmosphere At Horsepool, Utah, January-July 2019, Seth Lyman

Browse all Datasets

This is a dataset of elemental and oxidized mercury in the ambient atmosphere at latitude 40.143° N and longitude 109.469° W. This is the location of the Horsepool monitoring station in the Uinta Basin, Utah. We collected these measurements using a dual-channel atmospheric mercury speciation instrument, which is described by Lyman, S. N., Gratz, L. E., Dunham-Cheatham, S. M., Gustin, M. S., & Luippold, A. (2020). Improvements to the accuracy of atmospheric oxidized mercury measurements. Environmental Science & Technology, 54(21), 13379-13388.

Multi-Walled Carbon Nanotube Supported Manganese Selenide As A Highly Active Bifunctional Oer And Orr Electrocatalyst, Harish Singh, Mckenzie Marley-Hines, Shatadru Chakravarty, Manashi Nath

Chemistry Faculty Research & Creative Works

Transition metal selenides have attracted intensive interest as cost-effective electrocatalysts for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) because of the continuous thrust in sustainable energy conversion. In this article a Mn-based bifunctional electrocatalyst, MnSe, has been identified which shows efficient OER and ORR activity in alkaline medium. The catalytic activity could be further enhanced by using multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) which increases the charge transfer and electronic conductivity of the catalyst composite. This MnSe@MWCNT catalyst composite exhibits a very low overpotential of 290 mV at 10 mA cm⁻², which outperforms state-of-the-art RuO₂ as …

A Cysteine Variant At An Allosteric Site Alters Mif Dynamics And Biological Function In Homo- And Heterotrimeric Assemblies, Erin Skeens, Georgios Pantouris, Dilip Shah, Ramu Manjula, Michael J. Ombrello, N. Karl Maluf, Vineet Bhandari, George P. Lisi, Elias J. Lolis

Pacific Faculty Work

Macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF) is an inflammatory protein with various non-overlapping functions. It is not only conserved in mammals, but it is found in parasites, fish, and plants. Human MIF is a homotrimer with an enzymatic cavity between two subunits with Pro1 as a catalytic base, activates the receptors CD74, CXCR2, and CXCR4, has functional interactions in the cytosol, and is reported to be a nuclease. There is a solvent channel down its 3-fold axis with a recently identified gating residue as an allosteric site important for regulating, to different extents, the enzymatic activity and CD74 binding and signaling. …

Hippocampal Ensembles Represent Sequential Relationships Among An Extended Sequence Of Nonspatial Events, Babak Shahbaba, Lingge Li, Forest Agostinelli, Mansi Saraf, Keiland W. Cooper, Derenik Haghverdian, Gabriel A. Elias, Pierre Baldi, Norbert J. Fortin

Faculty Publications

The hippocampus is critical to the temporal organization of our experiences. Although this fundamental capacity is conserved across modalities and species, its underlying neuronal mechanisms remain unclear. Here we recorded hippocampal activity as rats remembered an extended sequence of nonspatial events unfolding over several seconds, as in daily life episodes in humans. We then developed statistical machine learning methods to analyze the ensemble activity and discovered forms of sequential organization and coding important for order memory judgments. Specifically, we found that hippocampal ensembles provide significant temporal coding throughout nonspatial event sequences, differentiate distinct types of task-critical information sequentially within events, …

Comparing Online Surveys For Cybersecurity: Sona And Mturk, Anne Wagner, Anna Bakas, Shelia Kennison, Eric Chan-Tin

Computer Science: Faculty Publications and Other Works

People have many accounts and usually need to create a password for each. They tend to create insecure passwords and re-use passwords, which can lead to compromised data. This research examines if there is a link between personality type and password security among a variety of participants in two groups of participants: SONA and MTurk. Each participant in both surveys answered questions based on password security and their personality type. Our results show that participants in the MTurk survey were more likely to choose a strong password and to exhibit better security behaviors and knowledge than participants in the SONA …

Intelligent Fault-Tolerant Mechanism For Data Centers Of Cloud Infrastructure, Satish Kumar T, Madhusudhan H S, S. M. F. D. Syed Mustapha, Punit Gupta, Rajan Prasad Tripathi

All Works

Fault tolerance in cloud computing is considered as one of the most vital issues to deliver reliable services. Checkpoint/restart is one of the methods used to enhance the reliability of the cloud services. However, many existing methods do not focus on virtual machine (VM) failure that occurs due to the higher response time of a node, byzantine fault, and performance fault, and existing methods also ignore the optimization during the recovery phase. This paper proposes a checkpoint/restart mechanism to enhance reliability of cloud services. Our work is threefold: (1) we design an algorithm to identify virtual machine failure due to …

Decomposition Of Organic Peroxides And Hydrogen Peroxide By The Iron Thiolates And Related Complexes, Patrick H. Dussault, Andrew Olson

Department of Chemistry: Faculty Publications

Disclosed herein is a method of reducing or disproportionating peroxide, comprising combining an organic chalcogenide, an iron salt, and the peroxide in the presence of an additional reductant, which can be the organic chalcogenide. The method can be used to, e.g., prepare alcohols from peroxides and to disproportionate hydrogen peroxide into water and oxygen.

Epitaxial Electrodeposition Of Hole Transport Cuscn Nanorods On Au(111) At The Wafer Scale And Lift-Off To Produce Flexible And Transparent Foils, Bin Luo, Avishek Banik, Eric W. Bohannan, Jay A. Switzer

Chemistry Faculty Research & Creative Works

The wide bandgap p-type metal pseudohalide semiconductor copper(I) thiocyanate (CuSCN) can serve as a transparent hole transport layer in various opto-electronic applications such as perovsksite and organic solar cells and light-emitting diodes. The material deposits as one-dimensional CuSCN nanorod arrays, which are advantageous due to their high surface area and good charge transport properties. However, the growth of high-quality epitaxial CuSCN nanorods has remained a challenge. Here, we introduce a low cost and highly scalable room temperature procedure for producing epitaxial CuSCN nanorods on Au(111) by an electrochemical method. Epitaxial CuSCN grows on Au(111) with a high degree of in-plane …

The Effect Of Using The Gamification Strategy On Academic Achievement And Motivation Towards Learning Problem-Solving Skills In Computer And Information Technology Course Among Tenth Grade Female Students, Mazyunah Almutairi, Prof. Ahmad Almassaad

International Journal for Research in Education

Abstract

This study aimed to identify the effect of using the gamification strategy on academic achievement and motivation towards learning problem-solving skills in computer and information technology course. A quasi-experimental method was adopted. The study population included tenth-grade female students in Al-Badi’ah schools in Riyadh. The sample consisted of 54 students divided into two equal groups: control group and experimental group. The study tools comprised an achievement test and the motivation scale. The results showed that there were statistically significant differences between the two groups in the academic achievement test in favor of the experimental group, with a large effect …

Sustainable Land System Transformations In Shifting Cultivation Landscapes, Dominic Martin

Sustainability Seminar Series

During my talk, I will give a broad introduction on shifting cultivation, associated sustainability challenges, and the case of north‐eastern Madagascar. Thereafter I will focus on land system transformations in shifting cultivation landscapes – both in Madagascar and elsewhere – showing that their drivers and consequences are highly diverse and context‐dependent. This is calling for a critical and contextualized appraisal of the continuation of, as well as the transition away from shifting cultivation when designing land system

Experimental Study To Assess The Impact Of Timers On User Susceptibility To Phishing Attacks, Amy E. Antonucci, Yair Levy, Laurie P. Dringus, Martha Snyder

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

Social engineering costs organizations billions of dollars. It exploits the weakest link of information systems security, the users. It is well-documented in literature that users continue to click on phishing emails costing them and their employers significant monetary resources and data loss. Training does not appear to mitigate the effects of phishing much; other solutions are warranted. Kahneman introduced the concepts of System-One and System-Two thinking. System-One is a quick, instinctual decision-making process, while System-Two is a process by which humans use a slow, logical, and is easily disrupted. The key aim of our experimental field study was to investigate …

Faculty And Advisor Advice For Cybersecurity Students: Liberal Arts, Interdisciplinarity, Experience, Lifelong Learning, Technical Skills, And Hard Work, Brian K. Payne, Bria Cross, Tancy Vandecar-Burdin

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

The value of academic advising has been increasingly emphasized in higher education. In this study, attention is given to the most significant types of advice that a sample of cybersecurity faculty and advisors from the Commonwealth of Virginia recommend giving to cybersecurity students. The results show that faculty and advisors recommended that students be aware of six different aspects of cybersecurity education including the value of experience, the need for lifelong learning, the importance of hard work, the need to develop technical skills, the interdisciplinary nature of cybersecurity, and the need to develop liberal arts or professional/soft skills. Implications of …

Subject Matter Experts’ Feedback On Experimental Procedures To Measure User’S Judgment Errors In Social Engineering Attacks, Tommy Pollock, Yair Levy, Wei Li, Ajoy Kumar

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

Distracted users can fail to correctly distinguish the differences between legitimate and malicious emails or search engine results. Mobile phone users can have a more challenging time identifying malicious content due to the smaller screen size and the limited security features in mobile phone applications. Thus, the main goal of this research study was to design, develop, and validate a set of field experiments to assess user’s judgment when exposed to two types of simulated social engineering attacks: phishing and Potentially Malicious Search Engine Results (PMSER), based on the interaction of the environment (distracting vs. non-distracting) and type of device …

A Taxonomy Of Cyberattacks Against Critical Infrastructure, Miloslava Plachkinova, Ace Vo

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

The current study proposes a taxonomy to organize existing knowledge on cybercrimes against critical infrastructure such as power plants, water treatment facilities, dams, and nuclear facilities. Routine Activity Theory is used to inform a three-dimensional taxonomy with the following dimensions: hacker motivation (likely offender), cyber, physical, and cyber-physical components of any cyber-physical system (suitable target), and security (capable guardian). The focus of the study is to develop and evaluate the classification tool using Design Science Research (DSR) methodology. Publicly available data was used to evaluate the utility and usability of the proposed artifact by exploring three possible scenarios – Stuxnet, …

The 2020 Twitter Hack – So Many Lessons To Be Learned, Paul D. Witman, Scott Mackelprang

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

In mid-July 2020, the social media site Twitter had over 100 of its most prominent user accounts start to tweet requests to send Bitcoin to specified Bitcoin wallets. The requests promised that the Bitcoin senders would receive their money back doubled, as a gesture of charity amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. The attack appears to have been carried out by a small group of hackers, leveraging social engineering to get access to internal Twitter support tools. These tools allowed the hackers to gain full control of the high-profile user accounts and post messages on their behalf. The attack provides many paths …