Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Rice Biomass Response To Various Phosphorus Fertilizers In A Phosphorus-Deficient Soil Under Simulated Furrow-Irrigation, Jonathan B. Brye

Crop, Soil and Environmental Sciences Undergraduate Honors Theses

Wastewater-recovered phosphorus (P), in the form of the mineral struvite (MgNH4PO4⋅6H2O), may provide a sustainable alternative to rapidly decreasing rock phosphate reserves. Struvite can be generated via chemical and/or electrochemical precipitation methods, potentially reducing the amount of P runoff to aquatic ecosystems. The objective of this greenhouse tub study was to evaluate the effects of chemically- and electrochemically precipitated struvite (CPST and ECST, respectively) on above- and belowground plant response in a hybrid rice cultivar (Gemini 214, RiceTec) grown using furrow-irrigation compared to other common fertilizer-P sources [i.e., triple super phosphate (TSP) and diammonium phosphate (DAP)] in a P-deficient silt …

Single Night Surveys Of Moth Communities Can Serve As Ultra-Rapid Biodiversity Assessments, Daniel P. Duran, Matthew Timar, Blaine Rothauser

School of Earth & Environment Faculty Scholarship

Biodiversity conservation decisions are typically based on limited data and resources. For this reason, there is great interest in surveying taxa that may allow for a rapid assessment of the biodiversity at a site. Numerous taxa have been proposed and utilized for rapid assessments that allow for such a survey in a matter of weeks or less. Herein, we test the idea that nocturnal moths have many of the characteristics that make them ideal for such surveys, such as relative ease of identification, strong ecological association with specific plant species and habitats, high alpha diversity, extended seasonal activity, and ease …

Constraining Silicate Weathering During The Middle Eocene Climatic Optimum (Meco) Using Radiolarian Ge/Si, Olivia R. Laub

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Silicate weathering has long been considered a fundamental component of the earth system and has been cited as one of, if not the primary stabilizing feedback for climate. However, recent work has shown that the role of silicate weathering in the climate system is more complicated and dynamic than previously assumed. In this study I examine the role of weathering in the enigmatic warming event, the Middle Eocene Climatic Optimum (MECO) that occurred approximately 40 Ma. This event works as a good case study as there are multiple features of the MECO that differentiate it from other warming events that …

Analyzing The Impacts Of Beaver Dam And Beaver Dam Analog Complexes To Stream Ecology Within The Intermountain West, J. Marshall Wolf

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Streams, rivers, and their floodplains throughout the world are impaired due to human modifications. Recent research has demonstrated that restoration projects prioritizing the proper functioning of ecosystems have better restoration outcomes than projects which focus on restoring form alone. Throughout North America, beaver-mediated restoration is becoming a leading method for improving the functioning of stream ecosystems that are in a degraded state. In areas where beaver are absent or the habitat is too degraded to currently permit their dam building, man-made beaver dam analogs (BDAs) are being used to restore stream habitat with an eye to future beaver recolonization. However, …

Multi-Objective Water Management In Idaho's Henrys Fork Watershed: Leveraging Reservoir Operation And Groundwater Pathways To Benefit Aquatic Habitat, Christina N. Morrisett

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Multi-user water management is a challenging arena further complicated by climate change. This research is based in the Henrys Fork, Snake River, Idaho—an agricultural watershed that exemplifies those throughout the semi-arid American West. This dissertation uses an integrated approach that considers groundwater-river relationships, farm-scale decisions and basin-scale outcomes, upstream reservoir operation for downstream aquatic habitat, water rights, and collaborative stakeholder management to identify drought adaptation strategies accordingly.

Chapter 2 uses an interdisciplinary approach to quantify how improvements to irrigation efficiency at the farm-scale (i.e., converting from flood to sprinkler irrigation) can add up to affect hydrology at the landscape-scale and …

A Bio-Tribocorrosion Comparison Between Additively Manufactured And Forged Ti6al4v Parts, Sina Matin, Sahar Toorandaz, Saman Nikpour, Hamidreza Abdolvand, Eshan Toyserkani, Yolanda S. Hedberg

Chemistry Publications

Ti6Al4V has been used widely as a biomedical alloy and is increasingly manufactured by additive manufacturing due to customized shapes. As implant material, it is frequently exposed to both friction and corrosive environments. This study investigates the effect of the fabrication process (laser powder bed fusion and forging) on the tribocorrosion behavior of Ti6Al4V in various environments including diluted hydrochloric acid to simulate the acidic environment in a crevice (HCl), phosphate-buffered saline (pH 7.3) with 10 g/L bovine serum albumin (PBS+BSA), and PBS+BSA with 30 mM H2O2. While the presence of BSA hindered the repassivation (reforming of the protective passive …

Enhanced Content-Based Fake News Detection Methods With Context-Labeled News Sources, Duncan Arnfield

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This work examined the relative effectiveness of multilayer perceptron, random forest, and multinomial naïve Bayes classifiers, trained using bag of words and term frequency-inverse dense frequency transformations of documents in the Fake News Corpus and Fake and Real News Dataset. The goal of this work was to help meet the formidable challenges posed by proliferation of fake news to society, including the erosion of public trust, disruption of social harmony, and endangerment of lives. This training included the use of context-categorized fake news in an effort to enhance the tools’ effectiveness. It was found that term frequency-inverse dense frequency provided …

Predicting New Crescent Moon Visibility Applying Machine Learning Algorithms, Murad Al-Rajab, Samia Loucif, Yazan Al Risheh

All Works

The world's population is projected to grow 32% in the coming years, and the number of Muslims is expected to grow by 70%—from 1.8 billion in 2015 to about 3 billion in 2060. Hijri is the Islamic calendar, also known as the lunar Hijri calendar, which consists of 12 lunar months, and it is tied to the Moon phases where a new crescent Moon marks the beginning of each month. Muslims use the Hijri calendar to determine important dates and religious events such as Ramadan, Haj, Muharram, etc. Till today, there is no consensus on deciding on the beginning of …

Software Jimenae Allows Efficient Dynamic Simulations Of Boolean Networks, Centrality And System State Analysis, Martin Kaltdorf, Tim Breitenbach, Stefan Karl, Maximilian Fuchs, David Komla Kessie, Eric Psota, Martina Prelog, Edita Sarukhanyan, Regina Ebert, Franz Jakob, Gudrun Dandekar, Muhammad Naseem, Chunguang Liang, Thomas Dandekar

All Works

The signal modelling framework JimenaE simulates dynamically Boolean networks. In contrast to SQUAD, there is systematic and not just heuristic calculation of all system states. These specific features are not present in CellNetAnalyzer and BoolNet. JimenaE is an expert extension of Jimena, with new optimized code, network conversion into different formats, rapid convergence both for system state calculation as well as for all three network centralities. It allows higher accuracy in determining network states and allows to dissect networks and identification of network control type and amount for each protein with high accuracy. Biological examples demonstrate this: (i) High plasticity …

Boosting The Item-Based Collaborative Filtering Model With Novel Similarity Measures, Hassan I. Abdalla, Ali A. Amer, Yasmeen A. Amer, Loc Nguyen, Basheer Al-Maqaleh

All Works

Collaborative filtering (CF), one of the most widely employed methodologies for recommender systems, has drawn undeniable attention due to its effectiveness and simplicity. Nevertheless, a few papers have been published on the CF-based item-based model using similarity measures than the user-based model due to the model's complexity and the time required to build it. Additionally, the substantial shortcomings in the user-based measurements when the item-based model is taken into account motivated us to create stronger models in this work. Not to mention that the common trickiest challenge is dealing with the cold-start problem, in which users' history of item-buying behavior …

Stereochemical Engineering Yields A Multifunctional Peptide Macrocycle Inhibitor Of Akt2 By Fine-Tuning Macrocycle-Cell Membrane Interactions, Arundhati Nag, Amirhossein Mafi, Samir Das, Mary Beth Yu, Belen Alvarez-Villalonga, Soo-Kyung Kim, Yapeng Su, William A. Goddard, James R. Heath

Chemistry

Macrocycle peptides are promising constructs for imaging and inhibiting extracellular, and cell membrane proteins, but their use for targeting intracellular proteins is typically limited by poor cell penetration. We report the development of a cell-penetrant high-affinity peptide ligand targeted to the phosphorylated Ser474 epitope of the (active) Akt2 kinase. This peptide can function as an allosteric inhibitor, an immunoprecipitation reagent, and a live cell immunohistochemical staining reagent. Two cell penetrant stereoisomers were prepared and shown to exhibit similar target binding affinities and hydrophobic character but 2-3-fold different rates of cell penetration. Experimental and computational studies resolved that the ligands’ difference …

Energy Extraction, Or Lack Thereof, Nishanth Gudapati

Mathematics

The problem of stability of rotating black holes is the subject of a long standing research program since the 1960s and remains an unresolved problem in general relativity. A major obstacle in the black hole stability problem is that the energy of waves propagating through rotating black holes spacetimes is not necessarily positive-definite, due to the so called ergo-region. This is a serious complication that limits the efficacy of most mathematical techniques. In this expository article, we report that, despite the ergo-region, there exists a positive-definite total energy for axisymmetric Maxwell, gravitational and electrovacuum perturbations of Kerr and Kerr–Newman black …

Stress-Sensing In Flexible Epoxy Adhesives, Christine Rukeyser

Honors Theses

In mechanochemistry, mechanical force causes a chemical change using small molecules, called mechanophores, by covalently connecting them into polymer materials. Stress-sensing mechanophores give a visual signal of mechanical force on the molecular level within a material. To our knowledge, stress-sensing mechanophores have never been incorporated into a commercially available epoxy kit. In this work, the characterization of two 3MTM Scotch-Weld TM Epoxy Adhesive kits: DP100 Plus Clear and DP190 Translucent have been completed through FT-IR Spectroscopy. The addition of the mechanophore spiropyran to the 3M kits will be discussed; as well as preparation and characterization of three dimerized anthracene derivatives. …

An Ensemble Approach For Mapping Snow Water Equivalent In Utah, Logan Schneider

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Mountain snowpack is an important resource for water management planning in Utah. Snow water equivalent (SWE) is the amount of water contained in a snowpack. A few organizations predict SWE throughout the United States but struggle making accurate predictions in mountainous regions. Weather stations provide accurate measurements of SWE but have limited spatial coverage that hinders the ability to make accurate estimates statewide. This thesis examines the accuracy of current models and proposes using local weather measurements to improve upon national level predictions. An R statistical software package named rsnodas implements this process while allowing the public access to a …

Characterization Of The Long-Distance Dispersal Kernel Of White-Tailed Deer And Evaluating Its Impact On Chronic Wasting Disease Spread In Wisconsin, Mennatallah Gouda

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) is a fatal, untreatable neurodegenerative disease that infects deer and related species. It is highly contagious and caused by abnormal malfunction and assembly of normal cellular proteins into aggregation-prone proteins. The Centers for Disease Control and prevention report that the prevalence of CWD in free-ranging deer in the US is still relatively low. However, in several states the infection rates exceed 1 deer in 10. Deer may uptake CWD from direct interaction with infected individuals or from the environment. Infected individuals shed CWD into the environment through feces, urine, saliva or carcasses, and long-distance dispersal of …

Durability Of Wireless Charging Systems Embedded Into Concrete Pavements For Electric Vehicles, Pravin Poudel

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Point clouds are widely used in various applications such as 3D modeling, geospatial analysis, robotics, and more. One of the key advantages of 3D point cloud data is that, unlike other data formats like texture, it is independent of viewing angle, surface type, and parameterization. Since each point in the point cloud is independent of the other, it makes it the most suitable source of data for tasks like object recognition, scene segmentation, and reconstruction. Point clouds are complex and verbose due to the numerous attributes they contain, many of which may not be always necessary for rendering, making retrieving …

The Psychological Science Accelerator's Covid-19 Rapid-Response Dataset, Erin M. Buchanan, Andree Hartanto, Et Al

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Psychological Science Accelerator coordinated three large-scale psychological studies to examine the effects of loss-gain framing, cognitive reappraisals, and autonomy framing manipulations on behavioral intentions and affective measures. The data collected (April to October 2020) included specific measures for each experimental study, a general questionnaire examining health prevention behaviors and COVID-19 experience, geographical and cultural context characterization, and demographic information for each participant. Each participant started the study with the same general questions and then was randomized to complete either one longer experiment or two shorter experiments. Data were provided by 73,223 participants with …

Isotopic Ecology Of Bison And Bootherium At Big Bone Lick, Kentucky, Frances Stephenson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Big Bone Lick (BBL) is a late Pleistocene and Holocene fossil locality in the Ohio River valley of Kentucky. This study utilized stable isotopes (δ¹³C, δ¹⁸O, and ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr) in tooth enamel to reconstruct mobility and diet in Bison, as well as diet in Bootherium bombifrons. Isotopic results from seven Bison and two B. bombifrons are reported. Results suggest Pleistocene Bison and Bootherium occupied different dietary niches. Although both had C3-dominated diets, Bison occupied more open environments than B. bombifrons. Two bison from the late Holocene deposit had diets that consisted …

Vegetated Coastal Ecosystems In The Southwestern Atlantic Ocean Are An Unexploited Opportunity For Climate Change Mitigation, Vanessa Hatje, Margareth Copertino, Vinicius F. Patire, Ximena Ovando, Josiah Ogbuka, Beverly J. Johnson, Hilary Kennedy, Pere Masque, Joel C. Creed

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Vegetated coastal ecosystems (mangroves, seagrasses, and saltmarshes, often called Blue Carbon ecosystems) store large carbon stocks. However, their regional carbon inventories, sequestration rates, and potential as natural climate change mitigation strategies are poorly constrained. Here, we systematically review organic carbon storage and accumulation rates in vegetated coastal ecosystems across the Central and Southwestern Atlantic, extending from Guyana (08.28°N) to Argentina (55.14°S). We estimate that 0.4 Pg organic carbon is stored in the region, which is approximately 2-5% of global carbon stores in coastal vegetated systems, and that they accumulate 0.5 to 3.9 Tg carbon annually. By ecosystem type, mangroves have …

Gut Microbial Communities Of Hybridising Pygmy Angelfishes Reflect Species Boundaries, Megan J. Huggett, Jean-Paul A. Hobbs, Federico Vitelli, Michael Stat, Tane H. Sinclair-Taylor, Michael Bunce, Joseph D. Dibattista

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Hybridisation and introgression of eukaryotic genomes can generate new species or subsume existing ones, with direct and indirect consequences for biodiversity. An understudied component of these evolutionary forces is their potentially rapid effect on host gut microbiomes, and whether these pliable microcosms may serve as early biological indicators of speciation. We address this hypothesis in a field study of angelfishes (genus Centropyge), which have one of the highest prevalence of hybridisation within coral reef fish. In our study region of the Eastern Indian Ocean, the parent fish species and their hybrids cohabit and display no differences in their diet, behaviour, …