Applied Mathematics Commons^™

Selection Of Step Size For Total Variation Minimization In Ct, Anna N. Yeboah

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Medical image reconstruction by total variation minimization is a newly developed area in computed tomography (CT). In compressed sensing literature, it hasbeen shown that signals with sparse representations in an orthonormal basis may be reconstructed via l1-minimization. Furthermore, if an image can be approximately modeled to be piecewise constant, then its gradient is sparse. The application of l1-minimization to a sparse gradient, known as total variation minimization, may then be used to recover the image. In this paper, the steepest descent method is employed to update the approximation of the image. We propose a way to estimate an optimal step …

Adaptive State Feedback Control Of Lorenz Systems To Its Non-Trivial Equilibrium, Anh V. Tran

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

The complex Lorenz system is a simplified nonlinear dynamical system, which is derived from the Navier-Stokes equations that govern a closed thermal convection loop. The Lorenz system is chaotic for large Rayleigh number. In this chaotic regime, we implement a linear state feedback controller to stabilize the state trajectory at its original nontrivial equilibrium. The state variable for feedback is easily measurable. The system is proved to be globally asymptotically stable with a optimal feedback gain. The stability bound is improved over the previous result. We also established globally stability of the adaptively control system, where the system parameters are …

Material Tensors And Pseudotensors Of Weakly-Textured Polycrystals With Orientation Measure Defined On The Orthogonal Group, Wenwen Du

Theses and Dissertations--Mathematics

Material properties of polycrystalline aggregates should manifest the influence of crystallographic texture as defined by the orientation distribution function (ODF). A representation theorem on material tensors of weakly-textured polycrystals was established by Man and Huang (2012), by which a given material tensor can be expressed as a linear combination of an orthonormal set of irreducible basis tensors, with the components given explicitly in terms of texture coefficients and a number of undetermined material parameters. Man and Huang's theorem is based on the classical assumption in texture analysis that ODFs are defined on the rotation group SO(3), which strictly speaking makes …

Relative Equilibria Of Isosceles Triatomic Molecules In Classical Approximation, Damaris Miriam Mckinley

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

In this thesis we study relative equilibria of di-atomic and isosceles tri-atomic molecules in classical approximations with repulsive-attractive interaction. For di-atomic systems we retrieve well-known results. The main contribution consists of the study of the existence and stability of relative equilibria in a three-atom system formed by two identical atoms of mass $m$ and a third of mass $m_3$, constrained in an isosceles configuration at all times.

Given the shape of the binary potential only, we discuss the existence of equilibria and relative equilibria. We represent the results in the form of energy-momentum diagrams. We find that fixing the masses …

Downhill Domination In Graphs, Teresa W. Haynes, Stephen T. Hedetniemi, Jessie D. Jamieson, William B. Jamieson

Department of Mathematics: Faculty Publications

A path π = (v₁, v₂, . . . , v_k+1) iun a graph G = (V, E) is a downhill path if for every i, 1 ≤ i ≤ k, deg(v_i) ≥ deg(v_i+1), where deg(vi) denotes the degree of vertex v_i ∈ V. The downhill domination number equals the minimum cardinality of a set S ⊆ V having the property that every vertex v ∈ V lies on a downhill path originating from some vertex in S …

Two-Source Energy Balance Model To Calculate E, T, And Et: Comparison Of Priestley-Taylor And Penman-Monteith Formulations And Two Time Scaling Methods, Paul D. Colaizzi, Nurit Agam, Judy A. Tolk, Steven R. Evett, Terry A. Howell, Prasanna H. Gowda, Susan A. O'Shaughnessy, William P. Kustas, Martha C. Anderson

United States Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service / University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Faculty Publications

The two-source energy balance (TSEB) model calculates the energy balance of the soil-canopy-atmosphere continuum, where transpiration is initially determined by the Priestley-Taylor equation. The TSEB was revised recently using the Penman-Monteith equation to replace the Priestley-Taylor formulation, thus better accounting for the impact of large and varying vapor pressure deficits (VPD) typical of advective, semiarid climates. This study is a comparison of the Priestley- Taylor and Penman-Monteith versions of the TSEB (termed TSEB-PT and TSEB-PM, respectively). Evaporation (E), transpiration (T), and evapotranspiration (ET) calculated by the TSEB-PT and TSEB-PM versions were compared to measurements obtained with microlysimeters, sap flow gauges, …

On Matroid And Polymatroid Connectivity, Dennis Wayne Hall Ii

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Matroids were introduced in 1935 by Hassler Whitney to provide a way to abstractly capture the dependence properties common to graphs and matrices. One important class of matroids arises by taking as objects some finite collection of one-dimensional subspaces of a vector space. If, instead, one takes as objects some finite collection of subspaces of dimensions at most k in a vector space, one gets an example of a k-polymatroid.

Connectivity is a pivotal topic of study in the endeavor to understand the structure of matroids and polymatroids. In this dissertation, we study the notion of connectivity from several …

Obstructions To Embedding Genus-1 Tangles In Links, Susan Marie Abernathy

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Given a compact, oriented 3-manifold M in S3 with boundary, an (M,2n)-tangle T is a 1-manifold with 2n boundary components properly embedded in M. We say that T embeds in a link L in S3 if T can be completed to L by adding a 1-manifold with 2n boundary components exterior to M. The link L is called a closure of T. We focus on the case of (S_1 x D_2, 2)-tangles, also called genus-1 tangles, and consider the following question: given a genus-1 tangle G and a link L, how can we tell if L is a closure of …

Is Big Data Enough? A Reflection On The Changing Role Of Mathematics In Applications, Domenico Napoletani, Marco Panza, Daniele C. Struppa

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

The advent of computers, and especially high-performance computers, has had a dramatic impact on the way in which mathematics is done and even more on how mathematics is applied, as demonstrated by the growth of computational mathematics as well as what goes under the name of “experimental mathematics”, to which a journal is now devoted. More importantly, computers are now used to perform highly complex computations in order to apply mathematical models to a variety of empirical problems that could never be attacked otherwise.

Constructive Aspects Of Kochen's Theorem On P-Adic Closures, Evan Michael Eakins

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this work we begin with a brief survey of set theory and arithmetic to provide background for a logical procedure to `cleanse' the Axiom of Choice from a proof of a theorem of Kochen's. We accomplish this in the following chapters. We then discuss certain theorems involving definable Skolem functions. These theorems are used in Chapter 5 to give a construction of a p-adic closure of a p-valued field. Certain further considerations and open questions are addressed in the _x000C_final chapter.

Invariants Of Legendrian Products, Peter Lambert-Cole

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This thesis investigates a construction in contact topology of Legendrian submanifolds called the Legendrian product. We investigate and compute invariants for these Legendrian submanifolds, including the Thurston-Bennequin invariant and Maslov class; Legendrian contact homology for the product of two Legendrian knots; and generating family homology.

Selected Problems On Matroid Minors, Jesse Taylor

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation begins with an introduction to matroids and graphs. In the first chapter, we develop matroid and graph theory definitions and preliminary results sufficient to discuss the problems presented in the later chapters. These topics include duality, connectivity, matroid minors, and Cunningham and Edmonds's tree decomposition for connected matroids. One of the most well-known excluded-minor results in matroid theory is Tutte's characterization of binary matroids. The class of binary matroids is one of the most widely studied classes of matroids, and its members have many attractive qualities. This motivates the study of matroid classes that are close to being …

Structure Vs. Properties Using Chemical Graph Theory, Tabitha N. Williford

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Chemical graph theory began as a way for mathematicians to bring together the areas of the Physical Sciences and Mathematics. Through its use, mathematicians are able to model chemical systems, predict their properties as well as structure-property relationships. In this dissertation, we consider two questions involving chemical graph theory and its applications. We first look at tree-like polyphenyl systems, which form an important family of compounds in Chemistry, particularly in Material Science. The importance can be seen in LEDs, transmitters, and electronics. In recent years, many extremal results regarding such systems under specific constraints have been reported. More specifically are …

Robust Preconditioners For The High-Contrast Elliptic Partial Differential Equations, Zuhal Unlu

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this thesis, we discuss a robust preconditioner (the AGKS preconditioner) for solving linear systems arising from approximations of partial differential equations (PDEs) with high-contrast coefficients. The problems considered here include the standard second and higher order elliptic PDEs such as high-contrast diffusion equation, Stokes' equation and biharmonic-plate equation. The goal of this study is the development of robust and parallelizable preconditioners that can easily be integrated to treat large configurations. The construction of the preconditioner consists of two phases. The first one is an algebraic phase which partitions the degrees of freedom into high and low permeability regions which …

The Gaussian Radon Transform For Banach Spaces, Irina Holmes

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The classical Radon transform can be thought of as a way to obtain the density of an n-dimensional object from its (n-1)-dimensional sections in diff_x001B_erent directions. A generalization of this transform to infi_x001C_nite-dimensional spaces has the potential to allow one to obtain a function de_x001C_fined on an infi_x001C_nite-dimensional space from its conditional expectations. We work within a standard framework in in_x001C_finite-dimensional analysis, that of abstract Wiener spaces, developed by L. Gross. The main obstacle in infinite dimensions is the absence of a useful version of Lebesgue measure. To overcome this, we work with Gaussian measures. Specifically, we construct Gaussian measures …

Conical Representations For Direct Limits Of Riemannian Symmetric Spaces., Matthew Glenn Dawson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

We extend the definition of conical representations for Riemannian symmetric space to a certain class of infinite-dimensional Riemannian symmetric spaces. Using an infinite-dimensional version of Weyl's Unitary Trick, there is a correspondence between smooth representations of infinite-dimensional noncompact-type Riemannian symmetric spaces and smooth representations of infinite-dimensional compact-type symmetric spaces. We classify all smooth conical representations which are unitary on the compact-type side. Finally, a new class of non-smooth unitary conical representations appears on the compact-type side which has no analogue in the finite-dimensional case. We classify these representations and show how to decompose them into direct integrals of irreducible conical …

Reformulations For Control Systems And Optimization Problems With Impulses, Jacob Blanton

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation studies two different techniques for analyzing control systems whose dynamics include impulses, or more specifically, are measure-driven. In such systems, the state trajectories will have discontinuities corresponding to the atoms of the Borel measure driving the dynamics, and these discontinuities require further definition in order for the control system to be treated with the broad range of results available to non-impulsive systems. Both techniques considered involve a reparameterization of the system variables including state, time, and controls. The first method is that of the graph completion, which provides an explicit reparameterization of the time and state variables. The …

Problem Solving Strategies And Metacognitive Skills For Gifted Students In Middle School, Lorena Aguelo Java

LSU Master's Theses

This study is conducted to investigate if the designed four-step method strategy (GEAR strategy adapted from Polya, 1973) in solving math problems has improved students’ performance scores and enhanced the metacognitive skills of gifted students. The respondents of this study include middle school gifted students who took math eight course in the school year 2013-2014 at Westdale Middle School in East Baton Rouge Parish School System. There are four classes of math eight gifted students who participated in the study. The classes were chosen randomly for experimental and controlled group and were equalized on the basis of the pre-test results …

Extremal Problems In Matroid Connectivity, John Tyler Moss

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Matroid k-connectivity is typically defined in terms of a connectivity function. We can also say that a matroid is 2-connected if and only if for each pair of elements, there is a circuit containing both elements. Equivalently, a matroid is 2-connected if and only if each pair of elements is in a certain 2-element minor that is 2-connected. Similar results for higher connectivity had not been known. We determine a characterization of 3-connectivity that is based on the containment of small subsets in 3-connected minors from a given list of 3-connected matroids. Bixby’s Lemma is a well-known inductive tool in …

Local Conjugations Of Groups And Applications To Number Fields, Bir B. Kafle

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation studies pairs of subgroups H, H' of a finite group G together with a bijective map Φ H −> H' that is a local conjugation, meaning that each element h in H is conjugate in G to its image Φ(h). The map Φ is not required to take products to products. The motivation for studying such pairs comes from a paper of F. Gassmann in 1926, in which he formulated an equivalent but different-sounding condition now known as Gassmann’s condition. There are now at least ten equivalent reformulations of Gassmann’s condition, of which local conjugation is perhaps the …

Exponentially Convergent Generalized Finite Element Method For Multi-Scale Problems, Xu Huang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The overall approach I take in the thesis falls into the category of multiscale finite element methods(MsFEM). I work to identify a new class of local approximation spaces with good approximation properties. This is carried out for the equilibrium problem of linear elasticity. The choice of local approximation spaces is motivated by the kolmogorov n-width. Part of my thesis work develops an estimate to show that it is possible to achieve a local approximation error of ô with respect to the energy norm using at most ln^d+1 &frac1ô local basis functions. The global approximation error ôis controlled by the …

Combinatorial Minimal Free Resolutions Of Ideals With Monomial And Binomial Generators, Trevor Mcguire

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In recent years, the combinatorial properties of monomials ideals and binomial ideals have been widely studied. In particular, combinatorial interpretations of minimal free resolutions have been given in both cases. In this present work, we will generalize existing techniques to obtain two new results. If Lambda is an integer lattice in the n-dimensional integers satisfying some mild conditions, S is the polynomial ring with n variables and R is the group algebra of S[Lambda], then the first result is resolutions of Lambda-invariant submodules of the Laurent polynomial ring in n variables as R-modules. A consequence will be the ability to …

Generalist And Specialist Pollination Syndromes: When Are They Favoured? A Theoretical Approach To Predict The Conditions Under Which A Generalist Or Specialist Pollination Syndrome Is Favoured., Tyler L. Poppenwimer

Senior Independent Study Theses

No abstract provided.

A Pollination Network Of Cornus Florida, James H. Lee

Theses and Dissertations

From the agent-based, correlated random walk model presented, we observe the effects of varying the parameter values of maximum insect turning area, ��_max, density of trees, ω, maximum pollen carryover, ��_max, and probability of fertilization, P_��, on the distribution of pollen within a population of Cornus florida (flowering dogwood). We see that varying ��_max and ��_max changes the dispersal distance of pollen, which greatly affects many measures of connectivity. The clustering coefficient of fathers is maximized when ��_max is between 60° and 90°. Varying ω does not have a major …