Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Mis-Specification Of Functional Forms In Growth Mixture Modeling: A Monte Carlo Simulation, Richa Ghevarghese

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Growth mixture modeling (GMM) is a methodological tool used to represent heterogeneity in longitudinal datasets through the identification of unobserved subgroups following qualitatively and quantitatively distinct trajectories in a population. These growth trajectories or functional forms are informed by the underlying developmental theory, are distinct to each subgroup, and form the core assumptions of the model. Therefore, the accuracy of the assumed functional forms of growth strongly influences substantive research and theories of growth. While there is evidence of mis-specified functional forms of growth in GMM literature, the weight of this violation has been largely overlooked. Current solutions to circumvent …

Measurements Of Atmospheric Radicals, Heather L. Runberg

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Atmospheric particulate matter (PM) is a global health concern. PM_2.5 is formed primarily through combustion processes such as automobile use and industrial activity. Natural sources of PM_2.5 result from events like volcanos and wildfires. Upon inhalation, PM_2.5 is small enough to travel deep into the lungs where it can form reactive oxygen species (ROS), such as hydroxyl radical (OH), causing oxidative damage to pulmonary tissues. PM_2.5 has been linked to cardiopulmonary diseases such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and high blood pressure.

PM_2.5 is small enough to remain aloft and travel many hundreds …

Esipt-Enabled Alkyne Migration Provides Rapid Access To Benzoxazinones, Andrés G. Muñoz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Benozoxazinones have long been of interest to agrochemical scientists and medicinal chemists because of their widespread biological activity. These scaffolds are also of interest to synthetic chemists, who recognize the utility of benzoxazinones for accessing functionalized heterocycles. The use of efavirenz, a benzoxazinone-based reverse transcriptase inhibitor used in the treatment of HIV-1, has brought increased attention to this privileged pharmacophore. While there exist numerous strategies for synthesizing benzoxazinones, methods that do not require the use of acutely toxic and environmentally hazardous reagents are lacking. Consequently, there is a need to develop new methods for constructing this valuable scaffold. Herein, we …

Dynamics And Turnover Of Lipid And Protein Domains In Cells And Supported Bilayers, Alan Weisgerber

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Protein and lipid clustering is an important mechanism for cell processes such as exo- and endo-cytosis and creating functional signaling complexes. It has been seen that both lipids and proteins are involved with the formation of cluster domains on cell membranes, yet little is known about the interplay between the two. In this work I began with visualizing lipid sorting to artificially induced curvature in supported lipid bilayers, with lipid tails affecting the sorting differently to curvature. These results demonstrate that lipids sort to curvature on curved, supported lipid bilayers. The sorting depends on the number of lipids in the …

Cooperative-Led Green Value Chain Development For Selected Highland Vegetables In Buguias, Benguet, Paul Kenneth B. Maghirang

Journal of Economics, Management and Agricultural Development

This study proposes a cooperative-led green value chain model for selected highland vegetables in Buguias, Benguet. Primary and secondary data were used in the study. Primary data were gathered through KII, FGD, and survey interviews among 30 farmer-members of LIFMPC. Descriptive, cost and returns, and value chain analysis were conducted. The proposed model of cooperative-led green value chain for selected highland vegetables was developed based on current practices of the farmer respondents. The greening opportunities were identified in different segments of the chain, from input sourcing to consumption, as well as the actors and their activities. Performing these green practices …

Guide To The Dr. L.S. Dederick Papers, 1908-1956, Undated, Orson Kingsley, Patrick Koetsch

Archives & Special Collections Finding Aids

Louis Serle (L.S.) Dederick was born in Chicago in 1883. He received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Harvard University in 1909. From 1909 – 1917 he was a professor at Princeton University. From 1917 – 1924 he was professor at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. In 1926 Dederick began working for the U.S. Army, Ordnance. During his time there he was the Associate Director of the Ballistic Research Laboratory at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Aberdeen, Maryland where he focused on ballistics research.

While Dederick worked as a mathematician at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds, he was involved with …

Thin Liquid Films On A Rotary Bell Atomizer In Surface-Following Coordinates, Mark Doerre, Nelson Akafuah

Institute of Research for Technology Development Faculty Publications

This article analyzes a published formulation of the Navier–Stokes equations cast into surface-following coordinates and provides some additional mathematical background to follow the article. Ubiquitous in the paint shops of automotive plants around the world, a high-speed rotary bell is succinctly described as a rapidly spinning concave axisymmetric surface with liquid paint supplied from a port coinciding with the center of rotation. The spinning surface transfers momentum to the paint film causing it to flow outward. Upon reaching the bell periphery, it is flung off, subsequently forming an atomized spray transferred to an automotive body through advection and electrostatics. Common …

Protonation And Non-Innocent Ligand Behavior In Pyranopterin Dithiolene Molybdenum Complexes, Cassandra Gates, Haley Varnum, Catherine Getty, Natalie Loui, Ju Chen, Martin L. Kirk, Jing Yang, Sharon J. Nieter Burgmayer

Chemistry Faculty Research and Scholarship

The complex [TEA][Tp*MoIV(O)(S2BMOPP)] (1) [TEA = tetraethylammonium, Tp* = tris(3,5-dimethylpyrazolyl)hydroborate, and BMOPP = 6-(3-butynyl-2-methyl-2-ol)-2-pivaloyl pterin] is a structural analogue of the molybdenum cofactor common to all pyranopterin molybdenum enzymes because it possesses a pyranopterin-ene-1,2-dithiolate ligand (S2BMOPP) that exists primarily in the ring-closed pyrano structure as a resonance hybrid of ene-dithiolate and thione-thiolate forms. Compound 1, the protonated [Tp*MoIV(O)(S2BMOPP-H)] (1-H) and one-electron-oxidized [Tp*MoV(O)(S2BMOPP)] [1-Mo(5+)] species have been studied using a combination of electrochemistry, electronic absorption, and electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy. Additional insight into the nature of these molecules has been derived from electronic structure computations. Differences in dithiolene C–S bond …

Ferrihydrite Enrichment In The Rhizosphere Of Unsaturated Soil Improves Nutrient Retention While Limiting Arsenic And Uranium Plant Uptake, Arindam Malakar, Daniel D. Snow, Michael Kaiser, Jordan Shields, Bijesh Maharjan, Harkamal Walia, Daran Rudnick, Chittaranjan Ray

Nebraska Water Center: Faculty Publications

Improvement of nutrient use efficiency and limiting trace elements such as arsenic and uranium bioavailability is critical for sustainable agriculture and food safety. Arsenic and uranium possess different properties and mobility in soils, which complicates the effort to reduce their uptake by plants. Here, we postulate that unsaturated soil amended with ferrihydrite nanominerals leads to improved nutrient retention and helps reduce uptake of these geogenic contaminants. Unsaturated soil is primarily oxic and can provide a stable environment for ferrihydrite nanominerals. To demonstrate the utility of ferrihydrite soil amendment, maize was grown in an unsaturated agricultural soil that is known to …

Mafic Explosive Volcanism At Llaima Volcano: 3d X-Ray Microtomography Reconstruction Of Pyroclasts To Constrain Shallow Conduit Processes, Pedro Valdivia, Aaron A. Marshall, Brittany D. Brand, Michael Manga, Christian Huber

Geosciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

Mafic volcanic activity is dominated by effusive to mildly explosive eruptions. Plinian and ignimbrite-forming mafic eruptions, while rare, are also possible; however, the conditions that promote such explosivity are still being explored. Eruption style is determined by the ability of gas to escape as magma ascends, which tends to be easier in low-viscosity, mafic magmas. If magma permeability is sufficiently high to reduce bubble overpressure during ascent, volatiles may escape from the magma, inhibiting violent explosive activity. In contrast, if the permeability is sufficiently low to retain the gas phase within the magma during ascent, bubble overpressure may drive magma …

Laying The Groundwork For Equity-First Climate Adaptation, San Diego Regional Climate Collaborative, Michelle Robidas, Darbi Berry

San Diego Regional Climate Collaborative

SDRCC is excited to share the first post of our 2-part Climate Adaptation Blog Series "Laying the Groundwork for Equity-First Climate Adaptation." This blog post gives a high-level introduction to SDRCC and SANDAG's Equity-First Approach to Climate Adaptation guidance document. Readers will learn strategies to identify social equity communities, build community capacity, and link adaptation planning efforts to the four dimensions of equity.

Sustainability & (Em)Powering Community Based Action In Chula Vista, San Diego Regional Climate Collaborative, Gabriella Medina, Darbi Berry

San Diego Regional Climate Collaborative

The City of Chula Vista (Chula Vista / the City) has already begun to experience the localized impacts of climate change through record-breaking heat waves, droughts, and wildfires. In response to the impacts of climate change posing a threat to Chula Vista residents’ quality of life, the City declared a climate emergency in March 2022. This declaration advanced the City’s commitment to update its Greenhouse Gas (GHG) reduction goals, strengthen existing efforts like the City Operations Sustainability Plan, and encourage new City-wide and voluntary actions by residents and businesses. The Chula Vista DIY Sustainable Home Toolkit (Toolkit) is a best …

Understanding California's 2022 Energy Code: Blog 1, San Diego Regional Climate Collaborative, Gabriella Medina, Darbi Berry

San Diego Regional Climate Collaborative

When thinking about the built environment, it is easy to overlook the influence structures have on our communities' quality of life. Buildings are relics of the past or symbols of modernity. They are tangible evidence of our society's investment in people's health, the environment and a resilient economy. Buildings play a crucial role over energy usage, urban heat impacts, and overall greenhouse gas emissions.

Electrifying Encinitas, San Diego Regional Climate Collaborative, Gabriella Medina, Darbi Berry

San Diego Regional Climate Collaborative

Advancing the San Diego region’s resilience to climate change impacts within the nexus of social, environmental, and economic prosperity is a top priority for local planning and efforts. As the region continues to face impacts on quality of life from climate change, the City of Encinitas is taking action to respond by leading efforts of energy resilience with their recently passed Green Building Ordinance (Ordinance). The Ordinance requires all new residential and non-residential buildings constructed in Encinitas to be “all-electric” unless an exception applies. As the San Diego region moves towards decarbonizing, Encinitas is the first city to mandate building …

Approaches And Strategies To Integrate Equity Into Adaptation Planning, San Diego Regional Climate Collaborative, Michelle Robidas, Darbi Berry

San Diego Regional Climate Collaborative

SDRCC is excited to share the second post of our 2-part Climate Adaptation Blog Series "Approaches and Strategies to Integrate Equity into Adaptation Planning." Building off of our first adaptation blog, readers will learn about equitable stakeholder engagement, identifying starting point vulnerabilities, how to conduct a vulnerability assessment, and opportunities to integrate equity into all phases of climate adaptation projects.

Quick Guide To The 2022 Energy Code: Blog 2, San Diego Regional Climate Collaborative, Gabriella Medina, Darbi Berry

San Diego Regional Climate Collaborative

There are a wide range of updates to the 2022 Energy Code; however, there are four categories of top priority for industry professionals and end-use stakeholders as California strengthens compliance standards: electric heat pump technology, electric-ready requirements, solar photovoltaic systems and battery storage standards, and strong ventilation standards.

Revolutionizing The Integration Of Sustainability & Zero Net Energy In The San Diego Region, San Diego Regional Climate Collaborative, Gabriella Medina, Darbi Berry

San Diego Regional Climate Collaborative

The San Diego County Regional Airport Airport Authority (Airport Authority) manages the day-to-day operations of the San Diego International Airport (SAN) and addresses the region’s long-term air transportation needs. SAN is also the busiest single-run commercial airport in the United States. To lessen SAN’s greenhouse gas emissions impact on local climate change vulnerabilities from the airport’s operations (i.e. minimizing energy usage), the Airport Authority has integrated sustainability across its social, environmental, and economic functions. In their commitment to sustainability, the Airport Authority is using the New Terminal 1 (New T1) project and zero-net energy (ZNE) Airline Support Facilities (ASF) as …

Understanding The Inflation Reduction Act, San Diego Regional Climate Collaborative, Michelle Robidas, Darbi Berry

San Diego Regional Climate Collaborative

In this blog, readers will learn what the Inflation Reduction Act is, the major categories of its climate funding, and why its passing into law was a historical moment for the U.S.

Understanding The Intersections Of The Lgbtq+ Community & Climate Change, San Diego Regional Climate Collaborative, A-Bel Gong, Darbi Berry

San Diego Regional Climate Collaborative

In this blog, we will explore these LGBTQ+ community relationships as they relate to environmental justice, relationships and access to the outdoors, and community representation in the environmental science field.

Modelling Quinones Using Density Functional Theory, David Ruiter, Madeleine Callan, Elijah Gruszecki, Maya Nambisan, Dr. K. V. Lakshmi

Summer Research

We modelled benzoquinone (BQ), dichlorobenzoquinone (DCBQ), and dimethylbenzoquinone (DMBQ) using the ORCA quantum chemistry computation suite. We obtained singlepoint energies, electron and spin densities, and the hyperfine coupling values for each molecule suspended in dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) and isopropyl alcohol (IPA). In most cases, we find close agreement with published literature values.

Cysteine-Tyrosine Crosslink Synthesis In Bf4112 From B. Fragilis, Alex Van Uffelen, Sophie Hruska, David Benson

Summer Research

Redox-active crosslinked amino acids are a class of post-translational modifications that extend protein chemistry. These cofactors occur in fifteen known proteins with high resolution Xray crystallography as the primary method for confirmation. One of those proteins is cytochrome c oxidase (complex IV), where HisTyr (figure 1) is responsible for the high-valent oxidative intermediate in O2 reduction to 2H2O. Cys-Tyr was the first of these cofactors to be identified and is characterized in galactose oxidase (coordinated to a Cu ion) and cysteine dioxygenase (distal to a mononuclear non-heme iron ion).

An Approach To The Synthesis Of 3-Quinazolinedione Carboxylic Acids: Putative Antibiotics, Colton J. Stonehouse, Michael Barbachyn

Summer Research

Bacterial resistance to antibiotics is a growing public health threat. Each year, more than 2.8 million antibioticresistant infections occur in the United States and 35,000 people die as a consequence. Fluoroquinolone (FQ) agents targeting the essential bacterial type II topoisomerases DNA gyrase and topoisomerase IV, exemplified by ciprofloxacin, have been in clinical use since the 1980’s and shown to be useful antibiotics. Unfortunately, heavy use of the FQs has inevitably led to the development of FQ-resistant pathogens

Cardiovascular Applications Of Artificial Intelligence In Research, Diagnosis, And Disease Management, Viswanathan Rajagopalan, Houwei Cao

Center for No Boundary Thinking

Despite significant advancements in diagnosis and disease management, cardiovascular (CV) disorders remain the No. 1 killer both in the United States and across the world, and innovative and transformative technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) are increasingly employed in CV medicine. In this chapter, the authors introduce different AI and machine learning (ML) tools including support vector machine (SVM), gradient boosting machine (GBM), and deep learning models (DL), and their applicability to advance CV diagnosis and disease classification, and risk prediction and patient management. The applications include, but are not limited to, electrocardiogram, imaging, genomics, and drug research in different …

A New Non-Inheriting Homogeneous Solution Of The Einstein-Maxwell Equations With Cosmological Term, Charles G. Torre

Research Vignettes

No abstract provided.

Examining The Optical Properties Of Monosodium Urate For The Detection Of Gout Using A Magneto-Optical Device (Mod), Victoria Marino

Senior Honors Projects

Currently, there is a need for a cost-effective and more efficient option for gout diagnosis. Traditionally, gout is diagnosed by the presence of monosodium urate in blood or synovial fluid. The purpose of this research is to quantify the magneto-optical properties of monosodium urate crystals using a magneto-optical device (MOD). Characterization of these magnetic and optical properties is achieved through measuring the initial light intensity and the transmitted light intensity of a laser shone through a sample of monosodium urate with or without a static magnetic field. The comparison of the transmitted intensity through a solution of MSU crystals with …

Purification And Evaluation Of Manganese Superoxide Dismutase, Madison Detullio

Senior Honors Projects

The goal of this research is to evaluate the mechanism by which p53 and SOD2 interact • Develop purification protocols for both p53 and SOD2 • Evaluate DNA binding affinity of SOD2 and p53 • Conduct a series of assays to evaluate aggregation state of p53 and SOD2 under various conditions.

3-D Printed Arduino Powered Drone, Michael Floccare

Senior Honors Projects

With the 3D technology available today creating something in a lab has never been easier. Using 3D printers, the body of a drone is created and printed using a combination of programs. With a body created using PLA filament the drone is durable and light weight. The drone’s flight system and controller are programmed with the built-in software from Arduino. Adding the Arduino nano to the drone body then gives the drone capabilities to fly.

Provenance Of The Northern Range, Trinidad Using Detrital Zircon U-Pb Geochronology: Implications For Northern South American River System Paleogeography, Cheyenne Bartelt

Geology: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

The Northern Range of Trinidad is located in a key area for evaluating the Mesozoic-Cenozoic evolution of the Caribbean and South American plates. Here, we present detrital zircon U-Pb geochronology for 2391 grains from ten samples collected from metasedimentary rocks of the Northern Range. These data are used to bracket the maximum depositional age of the fossil-poor metasedimentary rocks from the Northern Range and to investigate the provenance of their sedimentary protoliths. Detrital zircon ages range between 3136.5 ± 22.9 Ma and 139.0 ± 5.4 Ma, reflecting apparent contribution from a variety of crustal affinities; however, since the youngest ages …

Reductions Of 2 -Dimensional Semistable Representations With Large L -Invariant, John Bergdall, Brandon Levin, Tong Liu

Mathematics Faculty Research and Scholarship

We determine reductions of 2 -dimensional, irreducible, semistable, and non-crystalline representations of Gal(ℚ𝑝/ℚ𝑝) with Hodge–Tate weights 0<𝑘−1 and with L -invariant whose p-adic norm is sufficiently large, depending on k. Our main result provides the first systematic examples of the reductions for 𝑘≥𝑝 .

Micro-Rna And Proteomic Profiles Of Plasma-Derived Exosomes From Irradiated Mice Reveal Molecular Changes Preventing Apoptosis In Neonatal Cerebellum, Simonetta Pazzaglia, Barbara Tanno, Ilaria De Stefano, Paola Giardullo, Simona Leonardi, Caterina Merla, Gabriele Babini, Seda Tuncay Cagatay, Ammar Mayah, Munira Kadhim, Fiona Lyng, Christine Von Toerne, Zohaib N. Khan, Prabal Subedi, Soile Tapio, Anna Saran, Mariateresa Mancuso

Articles

Cell communication via exosomes is capable of influencing cell fate in stress situations such as exposure to ionizing radiation. In vitro and in vivo studies have shown that exosomes might play a role in out-of-target radiation effects by carrying molecular signaling mediators of radiation damage, as well as opposite protective functions resulting in resistance to radiotherapy. However, a global understanding of exosomes and their radiation-induced regulation, especially within the context of an intact mammalian organism, has been lacking. In this in vivo study, we demonstrate that, compared to sham-irradiated (SI) mice, a distinct pattern of proteins and miRNAs is found …