bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Cyber fantasy: exploring image culture, obsolescence, and the digital realm through photography, digital collage, and installation
Authors:   , Calhoun Savannah
Published: September 2022

The exhibition and concepts of Cyber Fantasy challenge the borders of both the frame and the screen by digitizing and manipulating the traditional still life to further investigate photography's place in such a cyber world. The title derives from contextualizing the definitions: "cyber" meaning of or relating to computers, typically to one of the technology domains named with the combining form cyber-, as cyberterrorism, cyberwarfare, or cyberattack: and "fantasy" meaning imagination, especially when extravagant and unrestrained. I think of myself as optimistic about technological progress, curious about an ever changing physical and digital world of images, despite an inevitable anxiety caused by it. According to the philosophical writings of Vilem Flusser, as our current image culture becomes increasingly saturated, images have come to serve the same purpose as linear texts: that is, to distribute information, record history, and express language1. There now exists a repeated, infinite feedback loop between image makers and image consumers. This rise in media consumption as well as the rise of digital technology leaves us with a mental and emotional phenomenon that feels very human despite lacking the same intimacy as verbal communication. Subsequently, the internet has developed itself as both a place of permanence and ever-flowing, abundant information. All of this accounted for, this series questions where photography stands and how an image maker can quantify meaning within a space where images exist so abundantly. By combining themes of mortality with themes of excess and referencing the symbolism and iconography of Vanitas and Dutch still life, this series explores the overlaps between the obsolescence of technology, and the consequential state of photography in a highly saturated image culture. This cross-examination establishes the relationship between the digital and the temporary. Despite the almost universal use of digital tools as cosmetic tools for photographs, this series asks how those digital tools can be used as an extension of the hand to be used as a means to make art. By including my own hands as the artist to interact with my arrangements, I aim to reference myself as a creator of photographs while solving my relationship with the impermanence of photography and the internet.
Through the looking-glass: how scientists view journalists and science news
Authors:   , Cawdrey Kathryn N.
Published: September 2022

This research aims to better understand the relationship between scientists and journalists from a scientist's point of view, how scientists view science news, and how this view has changed or stayed the same over twenty years. Surveys were sent to scientists to ask their opinions about the role of the media and journalism, their opinions concerning scientist-journalist interactions, and their opinions about the role of scientists. The participants responded with "agree," "disagree," or "I don't know," and were prompted to offer written, long-form explanations as to why they chose their answer. Scientists largely agreed that journalists play an important role in disseminating science news, emphasizing the importance of staying informed and reporting in a matter-of-fact way. This group, all of whom were quoted in The New York Times, trusted journalists and outlets on a case-by-case basis. Lastly, scientists feel that, while it is important to do so, they may not always be the most equipped to discuss their own research with the public. This research allowed an untarnished view through the looking-glass and into scientists' thoughts on the role journalists play in disseminating science news. Although surveyed scientists weigh the pros and cons of journalists' science reporting, there are commonalities on which they all agree: It is critical for both journalists and scientists to accurately and effectively report on research in order to enhance the public understanding of science.
A study of type-2 fuzzy clustering
Authors:   , Chantapakul Watchanan
Published: September 2022

Fuzzy C-means (FCM) has been a prominent clustering algorithm for a long time. It was extended to a type-2 framework by the linguistic fuzzy C-means (LFCM) algorithm that operates on vectors of fuzzy numbers utilizing the extension principle, the decomposition theorem, and interval analyses. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the iterative type-2 fuzzy clustering algorithms. The LFCM incorporates uncertainty through type-2 fuzzy sets, but it is prone to membership spread, i.e., the uncertainty in a membership function can become too large or broad during the iterative alternating optimization procedure. We devise three dampening approaches to mitigate this problem. Vertical cut dampening, linear dampening, and reflection dampening are defined along with the experiments conducted on a synthetic dataset named the butterfly dataset. We also illustrate the updated memberships (fuzzy numbers) and the resulting cluster prototypes (fuzzy vectors) from visual standpoints. Applying any of these dampening approaches will result in thinner membership functions and helps us control the uncertainty, and in fact, aid in convergence. The linguistic possibilistic C-means (LPCM), which is a type-2 version of the possibilistic C-means (PCM) algorithm, is also studied, and compared to LFCM. We also address some practical guidelines for putting the type-2 fuzzy clustering algorithms into action.
A textual analysis of feminist journalism coverage of the #MeToo movevment in Ms. and Jezebel
Authors:   , Gallant Hannah
Published: September 2022

Since October 2017, many people have shared their experiences as sexual assault survivors on social media using #MeToo, and the #MeToo movement has been covered extensively by media outlets. The purpose of this qualitative study is to use textual analysis to examine the coverage of the #MeToo movement in two feminist journalism publications Ms. and Jezebel in order to explore how that coverage is intersectional in its depictions of the movement and the thematic narratives that it promotes about sexual assault survivors and perpetrators. The results of the study indicate that both outlets' coverage of the movement and narratives about survivors and perpetrators were, at times, very intersectional in how attention was given to expanding the movement well beyond Hollywood and challenging the broader systems and societal beliefs that perpetuate the prevalence of sexual violence. However, by detailing how the coverage was distributed across the first four years of the movement, this study reveals that there were gaps in both outlets' coverage where the reporting did not critically evaluate #MeToo regarding who was involved in the movement, what the movement has accomplished and how it needs to continue to grow in order to bring about lasting change. This research informs scholarly understanding about feminist journalism's depiction of the movement and the feminist and intersectional values included or omitted by this coverage.
Death's cold grip or helping hand: the effects of mortality salience on goal choice
Authors:   , Goffredi Ryan
Published: September 2022

Humans live with the knowledge that one day they will die. This understanding, at various levels of conscious awareness, induces a variety of reactive cognitive processes which may lead individuals to choose more meaningful and personally valued goals to pursue. The purpose of this thesis research was to discover whether a mortality salience (MS) induction leads participants to strive for goals that are more self-concordant across three experimental conditions (MS, MS with delay, or control group). In addition, the contents of those goals were analyzed so that both the "what" (goal contents) and the "why" (motivations) of personal goals could be compared across conditions. It was found that the extent to which participants chose self-concordant goals differed by gender such that females chose self-concordant goals regardless of condition while males in the mortality salience with delay condition selected more self-concordant goals to pursue than the other two conditions. Controlling for these gender differences yielded a significant effect of condition such that those in the mortality salience with delay group scored higher on the self-concordance of their goals than both of the other groups. In terms of goal contents, marginally significant differences were found between conditions such that participants in the mortality salience with no delay group reported goals with higher relative intrinsic content, on average than the other two conditions. Further analyses and explorations of these constructs are discussed in the context of relevant theories.
Sense of place and the redesignation of the Gateway Arch National Park
Authors:   , Kannarr Seth T.
Published: September 2022

The redesignation of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial to the Gateway Arch National Park in 2018 by the Trump administration spurred debate about the distinct naming designations utilized by the National Park Service (NPS) in the United States. Place naming is a significant factor in shaping the 'sense of place' that people experience with these protected areas. In this study, I seek to better understand how 'sense of place' with the Gateway Arch has been affected by the contentious redesignation to a 'National Park'. To assess 'sense of place', I gathered data on values and characteristics people associate with 'National Parks' and the Gateway Arch. Primary data was collected from an online Qualtrics survey of adult U.S. residents in the "National Park Service (Fan Page)" group on the social network Facebook and secondary data pulled from published Yelp reviews. Together, these qualitative data were used for a two-part coding analysis with NVivo software that provided statistics for three main themes: environmental characteristics, intrinsic values, and visitor experience. Results showed that people associate environmental characteristics the most with 'National Parks' at large, while the Gateway Arch is most associated with intrinsic values. These results, in addition to the historical background of the NPS system and the Gateway Arch, is crucial in understanding the critical disconnect between how 'National Parks' are broadly perceived and the current designation of Gateway Arch National Park.
Untangling the knot: the theory generation, irony, and neoliberalism
Authors:   , Kearns Payton
Published: September 2022

Significant typological work has been done in cataloging forms of life, literature, and culture in the alleged aftermath of the epoch of postmodernism, but recent critical works invite deeper considerations of the political valences of formal interventions made by authors writing at a specific mid-aughts moment of potential torch-passing. These works help not to strike down this or that form as complicit nor make sweeping claims as to the features of the current moment, but to critique more deeply the relationships these novels have to the proliferating discourses of postmodernity, irony, and an economic order that ostensibly began as an elitist, revanchist endeavor but transformed into what Mitchum Huehls and Rachel Greenwald Smith dub its "ontological phase," from which they emerged. Reconsidering a sample of novels diverse in their approaches to fiction in the light of equally diverse critical interventions united in their attention to politics and aesthetics seems a necessary counter-hegemonic project allowing for unique insights at a time when the discourses surrounding these novels and critical interventions have only become more complex.
Never again must the real be produced
Authors:   , Lofton Sean
Published: September 2022

From the 1930's to the present day, a house situated in the hills of Los Angeles, California has acted as background for a tremendous number of films. The "Ennis House," designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in the 1920's for a Hollywood businessman, exuded all the trappings of high Modernism. But in spite of all of its sleek lines and faux futuristic aesthetics, it has slipped into obscurity. It has become a building lost in the American architectural canon. This thesis questions what the real Ennis house is and who may lay claim to it. I am not interested in the structure of the building but in how the decoration of the Ennis house can be simulated and then contextualized within the gallery setting. I use the most recognizable component, from its numerous appearances in film, to create an active tableau into which the viewer to cast themselves into. By recreating the textile block decorations of the Ennis house, I have taken ownership of their future. This essay demonstrates the strategies used to guide the contextual awakening of the tile block as a gateway to a multiplicity of realities. By presenting the tile in conjunction with its film appearances in the gallery space, I can collapse the numerous fictive realities associated with the Ennis house into a discreet installation, or into a singular handheld tile block. By considering the installation as a collection of miniatures, I am able to give the viewer a transcendent viewpoint. From this point of view, the work is allusive and creates a stage that we can project, by association, a deliberate set of contexts. This animation of the objects initiates a variety of worlds for the viewer to explore. In this way, the decoration of the Ennis house, a thing that has lived in the periphery of architectural history and in service to the creation of film is made central. The essence of the building has been distilled into miniature along with all the potential realities it has come to represent. In this way, I justify that my simulated ceramic Ennis house is in fact the rightful Ennis house.
Design and analysis of origami-inspired structures
Authors:   , Muench Nolan
Published: September 2022

This work focuses on creating novel structures by combining elements of common origami patterns. Multiple different types of physical and computer models are implemented to represent and analyze the structures. These structures have a broad range of potential applications, such as architecture, soft robotics, and aerospace. A combined Miura and EggBox pattern is presented. The combined unit cell for the sheet is parameterized, the Poisson ratio is calculated, and the sheets are 3D modeled using Solid Edge. Tubes constructed from the combined pattern are computer modeled and a static analysis is performed using the MERLIN2 software package in GNU Octave. These tubes can then be woven into cellular structures, some examples of which are 3D modeled and discussed. Also presented are many different combinations of the Miura and Resch unit cells. Crease patterns were drawn in Inkscape and computer folded using Origami Simulator. Some of these tessellations were found in literature but others were not. In addition to traditional origami paper folding, other fabrication methods for folded structures are presented, such as selective laser sintering (SLS) 3D printing and laser cutting of plastic sheets. Some software tools were developed and implemented to aid design.
Experimental investigation of liquid metal emulsion effect on the heat transfer performance of an oscillating heat pipe
Authors:   , Owoola Mark
Published: September 2022

This thesis introduces an oscillating heat pipe (OHP) charged with a hybrid fluid of gallium and ethanol. The hybrid fluid is fabricated using an ultrasonication technique to produce an emulsion-based mixture of liquid metal gallium microdroplets suspended in an ethanol solution. The hybrid fluid OHP is modelled and numerically simulated in ANSYS Fluent using the volume of fluid (VOF) technique to analyze its startup behavior, steadystate oscillatory flow, and heat transfer performance. The heat transfer performance of the OHP is investigated experimentally with different mass concentrations of gallium at a 50 percent filling ratio. The OHP is fabricated from a copper plate and contains a six-turn channel with a 3 x 3 mm2 cross-section. Steady-state oscillating motion is achieved with weight concentrations of gallium up to 20 percent. The experimental results show that using gallium-inethanol hybrid fluid emulsion as the working fluid can increase the heat transfer of the OHP by up to 7.8 percent over pure ethanol at 300 W.
Methods for improved kinematic measurements of the lower extremities
Authors:   , Schauffler Rose
Published: September 2022

An understanding of knee dynamics is vital to treat neurological and musculoskeletal conditions that affect the lower extremities and achieve peak performance from athletes. To obtain and analyze kinematics and kinetics of the knee, clinicians and athletic trainers require accurate, accessible measurement devices. To assess the functionality of one such device, the Mizzou Knee Arthrometer Testing System (MKATS), dynamic motion studies were carried out on healthy, ACL deficient, and patellofemoral pain populations. To assess the validity of the MKATS, the device output was compared to data collected using a SimVitro robotic manipulator. Through this process, discussions with clinicians, technicians, and participants resulted in modifications to both the software and hardware of the device to improve fit and usability. The following thesis summarizes the findings of the dynamic and cadaver motion studies, and the modifications to the device. We found decreased flexion and internal rotation at specific points (p [less than] 0.05) of the cycle for all dynamic activities for both clinical groups compared to the healthy control group. Due to unperceived amounts of skin artifact and joint laxity, the results of the cadaver study were inconclusive. The MKATS was able to accurately detect kinematic differences in the live study groups and has promise as a useful tool for orthopedic surgeons, physical therapists, and athletic trainers to screen for abnormal dynamics and track treatment success. Further studies utilizing computed tomography on live participants will be needed to further validate the MKATS. The development of such devices is crucial to improve the quality of advice from healthcare and athletic performance specialists.
Human-assisted self-supervised labeling of large data sets
Authors:   , Schulz Jeffrey
Published: September 2022

There is a severe demand for, and shortage of, large accurately labeled datasets to train supervised computational intelligence (CI) algorithms in domains like unmanned aerial systems (UAS) and autonomous vehicles. This has hindered our ability to develop and deploy various computer vision algorithms in/across environments and niche domains for tasks like detection, localization, and tracking. Herein, I propose a new human-in-the-loop (HITL) based growing neural gas (GNG) algorithm to minimize human intervention during labeling large UAS data collections over a shared geospatial area. Specifically, I address human driven events like new class identification and mistake correction. I also address algorithm-centric operations like new pattern discovery and self-supervised labeling. Pattern discovery and identification through self-supervised labeling is made possible through open set recognition (OSR). Herein, I propose a classifier with the ability to say "I don't know" to identify outliers in the data and bootstrap deep learning (DL) models, specifically convolutional neural networks (CNNs), with the ability to classify on N+1 classes. The effectiveness of the algorithms are demonstrated using simulated realistic ray-traced low altitude UAS data from the Unreal Engine. The results show that it is possible to increase speed and reduce mental fatigue over hand labeling large image datasets.
Reply
Authors:   , Simms Lisa
Published: September 2022

The 'Manosphere' is a term used to describe the vast and growing realms of the internet that are dedicated to misogyny. That misogyny is motivated by varying factors, but all participants on its forums, websites, and online journals subscribe to one central idea: women have ruined their world. These online users tout harmful, sexist and absurd ideas as fact. These spaces serve as a breeding ground for violent escalation and encourage its participants to threaten women. These sites are growing in quantity and ubiquity. The underpinning of hatred toward women anywhere online is so insidious that it exists as a backdrop to our regularly visited sites and apps. Even in spaces we assume are our own, misogyny seeps in. Men's hatred of women is clear and abundant on social media under photos of old prom pictures, restaurant reviews of women owned businesses and comments under female-led YouTube tutorials. My thesis exhibition is my girly, syrupy response to the manosphere. Misogyny and hatred do, and will always, exist as a part of the internet, but instead of the female public's internet archive facing constant misogynistic abuse, my work threatens the manosphere archive. My work takes the manosphere content out of its context and places it into an uncomfortable, cloying, messy realm. Violently photoshopped Lolita characters, frenzied claims that women prefer to be raped, and dozens of threads dedicated to the intricate plotting of mass femicide are transformed into stickers and icing. They stick, intertwined with the oft-ignored remains of an insidiously gendered American childhood. Rainbow stickers, little plastic green guns, Barbie shoes, sour candies, plastic knives and long, soggy pink lollipops. All of these elements are centered around a piece of text that was carefully plucked out of a baggie of pony beads to spell out the top incel.is post of the day. The digital misogynist archive meets the physical hot pink archive, and is overrun. My thesis exhibition asks, what if the content of the online world was the same, but the context shifted? What if the level of violence and absurdity with which women are subject to online is met with a fever pitch of feminized absurdity that surpasses the intensity of any manosphere forum? What if this female amalgam the manosphere users have built up in their minds -- the obsessive, sex crazed, pink clad, infantilized deaf and dumb girl -- regurgitated their misogynistic rhetoric in a big scrapbook-esque pastel mess? My work pulls from the feminist art historical canon, and the artists that exist at the cross section of text-based art and feminism that often utilize satire and humor. Specifically artists like Barbara Kruger, Ann Hirsch and the Guerilla Girls. Like my predecessors, my art uses humor as an entry point and as a way to inform. This thesis writing considers the virtual and physical consequences of the Manosphere, materiality and appropriation, and the function of satire in art. This writing examines these issues through the context of an increasingly online environment and through the lived experiences of myself and my peers.
Augmenting biological pathway extraction with synthetic data and active learning
Authors:   , Thompson Joshua Lee
Published: September 2022

The corpus of biomedical literature is growing rapidly as many papers are recorded in PubMed every day. These papers often contain high-quality biological pathways in their figures/text, which are great resources for studying biological mechanisms and precision medicine. However, it can take a long time for many of these works to be put into practical use as each paper's contributions need to be curated by experts. This, often lengthy, process causes professional practice to lag behind research. To speed up this process, I helped develop a pipeline that integrates NLP and object detection processing to extract gene relationships reported in articles' figures and text. This pipeline was able to extract such relationships with high precision and recall on a small, annotated set. However, extending this pipeline for improved generalization and new settings was limited by the number of high-quality annotations available. Such labeled data is very time consuming to collect and traditional augmentations were observed to generate diminishing returns. To address this shortcoming, I developed an approach for generating purely synthetic data for object detection on biological pathway diagrams based on a set of rules and domain knowledge. Our method iteratively generates each pathway relationship uniquely and is demonstrated to improve the generalization of our object detection model significantly across a variety of settings. Additionally, with the capability to generate unique and informative samples, we integrated our synthetic generation methodology into an active learning setting. While traditional active learning relies on a pool of unlabeled data to draw from with an acquisition function, our method is pool-less and does not require any acquisition function. Instead, we generate each batch of data uniquely based on the training losses from the previous batch. Pool-less Active Learning (PAL) via synthetic data generation is demonstrated to reduce the number of iterations required for model convergence during training on pathway figures.
Genomics of heifer pregnancy, days open, and days to conception in Red Angus heifers
Authors:   , Tuyishimire Esdras
Published: September 2022

Although it is challenging to collect information on reproductive traits, fertility traits are believed to play a significant role in the growth of the beef industry and bring revenue to the producers. It has been challenging to make genetic improvement of fertility traits because of scarce records and their low heritability. The joint analyses of economic and indicator traits provided much information for the analysis of other production traits, resulting in favorable improvement. The same method can be applied to reproductive traits to increase prediction accuracy. Furthermore, the ubiquity of high-throughput genotypes and the development of advanced computational methods give hope that there is a possibility of determining the genetic influence on fertility traits. The advancement in phenotypic collection technology eases the keeping of records on both economic and indicator fertility traits. Also, it allows the development of new traits to be analyzed while reducing the cost of data availability. Heifer Pregnancy (HP) - the ability for a heifer to conceive by the end of the breeding season; Days Open (DO) - days of breeding season a heifer remained open; and Days to Conception (DC) -- the number of days it took for a heifer to get pregnant, are easy to measure fertility traits with enough information to make beef reproductive genetic improvement in the industry. The objective of the current study is to identify DNA markers tagging genes influencing HP, DC, and DC among 18,039 Red Angus heifers, find the genetic relationship among those traits, and creating the genomic predictions of days to conception and days open. The results show a small heritability of 0.119 to 0.131, 0.10 to 0.102, and 0.0749 to 0.112 for HP, DO, and DC, respectively. The DC model resulted in higher accuracy than other models. There was a high correlation between HP and DO (r = - 0.61 and 0.85 from the linear model and the liability scale model, respectively). The de-regressed estimated breeding value (EBV) genomewide association (GWAS) yielded 58 and 2 significant SNPs at suggestive significant level (pvalue [less than] 1.0e-05) for HP and DC, respectively. This study found GRID2 and ZMIZ1 genes to be associated with heifer pregnancy, and it has been speculated that the central nervous system related genes ontology and the hormones it controls might suggest the physiology behind some of the reproductive differences. The present study confirms the low heritability status of fertility traits and shows the possibilities of genetic enhancement based on the obtained accuracies. The identified genes and gene terms will serve as starting points for future studies that might focus on different phenotypes while reducing the cost of phenotyping and improving the accuracy of fertility traits genomic predictions.
Beyond the trauma hero: the discourse of American war fiction from the Global War on Terror
Authors:   , Weiss Michael
Published: September 2022

The recent US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, the last major theatre of war for post 9/11 veterans, marks a turning point for the United States. This new period of relative warlessness allows the nation to reflect on its collective experiences of the last 20 years of war and think critically about our actions and policies that governed the Global War on Terror. An essential first step in understanding our nation's actions during the Global War on Terror is understanding the people who fought the war and the "others"1 we fight. One approach that may provide valuable insight into our national understanding of veterans and the people we go to war with is studying veterans' stories about their time in service. This paper examines the characterization of both American military service members and the characters portrayed as enemies, non-American, and generally, as other within war fiction written by American veterans who have served from 11 Sept. 2001 to the present day. I argue that the authors attempt to create a new narrative of what it means to be a veteran, what it means to go to war, and new ways to understand people categorized as the enemy. Specifically, I believe that these new narratives from veterans are attempting to, as Robert Young argues in Postcolonial Remains, deconstruct the category of the other and offer alternative approaches to the understanding of themselves and the enemy to create a "mutual understanding and universal equality" (39).
Combining analytic perspectives in Toru Takemitsu's Rain Tree Sketch II
Authors:   , Wiele Andrew
Published: September 2022

Utilizing multiple methodologies for analyzing music contributes to an informed performance. I have termed this approach collaborative music theory and believe it can be used for analysis in a wide variety of music. To illustrate the effectiveness of collaborative music theory, I have chosen a work composed by Toru Takemitsu, one of his later pieces for solo piano titled Rain Tree Sketch II, which was informed by multiple theories of composition. Takemitsu claimed that two books about music theory influenced his life and were among the best books of the twentieth century: The Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization by jazz artist George Russell, and The Technique of My Musical Language by composer Olivier Messiaen. Additionally, Takemitsu wrote many essays on music, the majority of which are in the book Confronting Silence and focus on philosophical aspects of art, music, and theatre. In this thesis, I take these works by Russell, Messiaen, and Takemitsu, as well as other scholarship into consideration while analyzing Rain Tree Sketch II. By drawing on Russell's, Messiaen's, and Takemitsu's perspectives, I provide a nuanced analysis of the piece and demonstrate how it can influence performance.
The political economy of corruption in Africa: urbanization, trust, and motivations
Authors:   , Adou Kouakou Donatien
Published: September 2022

The modernization paradigm has shaped development policies in African countries for decades since the 1960s. In this tradition, urbanization is presented by conventional wisdom as a strong correlate of development with mostly positive effects. However, this claim has been only tested in a restricted setting, primarily developed nations. Moreover, few studies have theoretically and empirically considered the drawbacks of urbanization on development outcomes, even when growing evidence suggest that African countries have urbanized at rapid rates in recent decades but achieved little to no economic development. This dissertation departs from conventional wisdom by arguing that urbanization--the most prominent sign of modernization--lowers the costs and raises the benefits of corruption in Africa such that it is a contributing factor to corruption. Unlike in most developed countries, the transition from the community-based life in the village to an individualistic lifestyle in the city decreases the costs and increases the benefits of being corrupt. Using a broad range of methodologies, including time-series cross-sectional data analysis, survey experiments, and interviews, the findings here show that contrary to conventional narratives, urbanization may pose a threat to development by encouraging corruption. This dissertation thus suggests that policymakers should be more cautious in approaching urbanization in development planning. Further, it brings empirical evidence that reveals that anti-corruption campaigns appealing to traditional African values such as collectivism and altruism may be a promising route.
Coulomb explosions dynamics
Authors:   , Alavi Seyedeh Tahereh
Published: September 2022

Chemical reaction dynamics studies emerged with the advent of quantum mechanical theories in 1920s which have the capability of predicting the atomic motions by calculating potential energy surfaces. Experimental studies in this field began to flourish with the advances in molecular beam generation and laser beam technologies many years later leading to the Nobel prize awarded to Herschbach, Lee, and Polanyi in 1986. Later in 1980s, advances in the production of frequency tunable ultrashort laser pulses with the temporal resolution of femtoseconds led to the birth of the field of femto-chemistry which is the study of molecular dynamics in real time. In the last few decades, various spectroscopic techniques exploiting ultrashort laser pulses have been developed to study the non-adiabatic dynamics of molecules in real time and space. Laser-induced Coulomb Explosion Imaging (CEI) is a powerful probe technique now emerging in this field, to unravel the structural changes of molecular systems in real time. Extracting structural information from CEI requires imaging of multiple fragments at each experimental cycle which allows us to obtain their relative velocity distribution. In this work, we successfully coupled a three-dimensional multi-mass coincidence detection technique with CEI to study the dissociation dynamics of complicated polyatomic molecules. Covariance imaging, which is a statistical technique yielding correlated information, was used to find the related momenta of various pairs of ions and reveal different dissociation channels of the parent multi-cation. Using the combination of these techniques, the strong field dissociative ionization of chlorocarbonylsulfenyl chloride (CCSC) and methoxycarbonylsulfenyl chloride (MCSC) (belonging to thioester family) were studied. The ultrafast electron diffraction (UED) technique is a complementary method to ultrafast laser spectroscopy, capable of directly resolving the electronic and nuclear dynamics in real time and space due to sensitivity to the spatial atomic distribution in the system. MeV UED facility is a newly developed apparatus at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory offering femtosecond time resolution and sub-Angstrom spatial resolution in the study of gas phase molecular systems. Using this facility, we performed a time-resolved UED experiment to study the UV photodissociation of oxalyl chloride. Previous theoretical and experimental studies have suggested non-consistent results for the UV dissociation of this molecule which results in four fragments upon absorption a single photon. Here, with the initial analysis of diffraction images, and comparison with the theory, we confirmed a concerted four-body dissociation channel as the main mechanism.
Socio-cultural and school barriers that Latino Spanish-speaking and Mixteco-speaking families with a preschool child with autism experienced in the special education referral process in Santa Barbara County, California
Authors:   , Alvarez Ivan D.
Published: September 2022

According to multiple studies, a referral process bias exists in the early identification of autism for children of color, in particular Latino children. Sociocultural, economic, educational, and health care barriers have significantly impacted Latino children. For example, Latino children are less likely to receive access to early intervention services, are at increased risk for delays in the diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder, and are significantly older at the time of diagnosis. In addition, the delays in autism diagnosis for Latino children are poorly understood among medical and school personnel. The purpose of the study was to gather qualitative and quantitative data regarding the experiences of Spanish-speaking and Mixteco-speaking Latino families in Santa Barbara County, California, who have a child with autism. The study examined the school referral process for special education services and diagnosis of autism for students and families. The study examined how sociocultural, economic, educational, and health care barriers affected Latino students in preschool during the special education referral process while also investigating Latino families' experiences with their child who have received a clinical diagnosis of autism and/or eligibility of Autism for special education services. Ultimately, the intent of the study results is to propose possible changes for practitioners and school teams in the preschool special education referral process and for pediatricians in the diagnosis of autism from the parents' perspective in Santa Barbara County. Recommendations are also provided for test publishers for improving the assessments for Latino students with the identification of autism as well as for SBCSELPA, schools and community agencies for improving the support for parents.
To whom much is given: a study of Black female leadership within the context of spouses of historically Black college and university presidents
Authors:   , Baker Rome Stefanie
Published: September 2022

Black women have engaged in the uplift of the Black race, community and family since the Atlantic Slave Trade forced their arrival on the Eastern shores of the United States. This research project explored and recorded the uplift efforts of Black First Ladies who are married to presidents of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU's) and use platforms that they did not actively seek to engage in the uplift of others. Additionally, the purpose of this study was to understand the experiences that contributed to these Black First Ladies' involvement in racial and community uplift, and to identify strategies and practices these unique community leaders employ when engaging in uplift. The stories of Black First Ladies have been absent in the academic canon and are worthy of exploration. The data for this project was collected using the Three Interview Series. The three study participants were interviewed three times on three separate occasions for between 45 to 90 minutes each. To ensure safety, during the height of the Covid 19 pandemic, each interview was conducted virtually using the Zoom platform. Experiences that contributed to racial and community uplift discussed in this project include the internalization of messages communicated in the homes of study participants during their childhoods, encounters with adults in K-12 schooling, pivotal moments in higher education, and occurrences in professional settings. Strategies and practices employed by participants as they engage in uplift include discussed include conflict resolution, connecting and advocacy. Other themes include, having a strong sense of self, mediation, the ability to "see" oneself and others, acts of service, placing one's family first, and creating legacy. The findings indicate a need for professional learning for K-12 educators that targets identifying and nurturing leadership dispositions during this critical period of identity development.
Forecasting wind speeds at tall tower heights within Missouri
Authors:   , Balkissoon Sarah S.
Published: September 2022

Forecasting of wind speeds is necessary for the planning and operations of the wind power generating plants. This research investigates the short term forecasting of wind speeds at tall tower heights for stations within Missouri: Columbia, Neosho and Blanchard. The first objective was to characterize the chaotic nature of this parameter using mono and multi fractal analysis using the Rescale Range Analysis (R/S Analysis) and the Multifractal Detrended Fluctuation Analysis respectively (MF-DFA). It was determined that the system was fractal and there were no trends indicative of increasing fractality and complexity with increasing height. The second objective was the qualitative and quantitative chaotic characterization of the wind speeds using phase-space portraits and the Largest Lyapunov Exponent (LLE) respectively. The methods confirm the results of the fractal analyses. A simple non-linear prediction algorithm, Empirical Dynamical Modeling (EDM) was then used to forecast the wind speeds using a moving window. It was determined that the EDM was comparable to persistence. It beats this benchmark model in the very short term range of one time step or 10 minutes. The third objective was to cluster the data using Self-Organizing Maps (SOMs), having identified the optimum number of clusters as 4 using the Elbow and Silhouette Methods, among others. Three continuous intervals belonging to a particular cluster, which represented approximately 50 percent and over of the input vectors or rows from the data frame were identified. These intervals were then used as inputs into a Long Short-Term Memory Network (LSTM) with variables, pressure and wind speeds, as well as a lagged series LSTM with embedding dimension, d, and time delay (tau). These were compared to the Moving window Auto Regressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) and to persistence. It was determined that the lagged series LSTM improved on the LSTM with wind speed and pressure series inputs, and all models beat persistence. The lagged LSTM beats the Moving ARIMA for at least 2 of the forecasting times of 60 and 120 minutes for all intervals.
Communicating reform: apologies and policy implementation for policing's history
Authors:   , Benton Mark
Published: September 2022

Governments sometimes apologize for their mistakes but apologizing for mistakes does not always impart legitimacy on governments. Policing's history in the United States creates the context through which policing is understood today. Because people are socialized into understanding government throughout their lives, individuals come to an understanding of what police are like, how police act, and biases that police have. Policing's history is full of enforcing racial inequity which creates a context today that imparts illegitimacy, especially among African Americans, and legitimacy is crucial for government's effective operations. After conducting a literature review and exploratory qualitative research, this dissertation designed two experiments to test apology's effects on police legitimacy among African American respondents. The initial experiment showed little legitimizing effects on the police from a supplementary apology. The second experiment showed some legitimizing effect from a police chief apologizing for policing's history, especially compared to not responding to policing's history at all, but sustained policy reform implementation seems to be a stronger and more durable approach. While administrators like police have the ability to address the past through reconciliation, they also have the power to change the future through policy implementation.
Method development for the analysis of nuclear forensic signatures with ICP-MS
Authors:   , Bradley Veronica C.
Published: September 2022

Nuclear forensic analysis is a field of analytical chemistry that focuses specifically on analyzing signatures of nuclear material for criminal investigation. Promising nuclear forensic signatures include rare earths element pattern and uranium and plutonium isotopes ratios. Uranium isotope ratios that deviate from natural indicates enrichment activities. The presence of plutonium and the 239Pu/240Pu isotopic ratio indicate irradiation of uranium for weapons production purposes. Samples for nuclear forensic analysis are often urgent, and therefore must be analyzed quickly, with good accuracy and precision. Robust methodologies must be developed for analysis of samples from potential nuclear scenarios with suitable speed, accuracy, and precision. In this dissertation, a method was developed to analyze uranium isotope ratios from solid particles on the surface of environmental swipe samples for the purpose of quickly and accurately determining whether uranium enrichment was occurring in the facility. A method to quantify rare earth impurities in uranium ore concentrates using high performance ion chromatography (HPIC) and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) was tested, as was a method to rapidly dissolve inorganic material using ammonium bifluoride and subsequently quantify the rare earth concentration using a newly developed high performance ion chromatography method coupled with ICP-MS detection. The method was demonstrated by accurate measurement of rare earth elements in igneous USGS minerals. Finally, the method was used to separate fresh fission products from a uranium tracer with detection by gamma ray spectroscopy.
Spontaneous cluster formation in stoichiometric quantum critical systems
Authors:   , Bretana Alex
Published: September 2022

Metallic systems with magnetic ions embedded which have been prepared to undergo a second-order phase transition at zero Kelvin (called the quantum critical systems) historically appear to fall into two distinct categories: (chemically) heavilydoped systems in which the unusual properties can be attributed to a disorder-induced distribution of Kondo shielding temperatures, and (nearly) stoichiometric systems where the departures from Fermi-liquid theory have been attributed to intrinsic instabilities. We show that this distinction between doped and stoichiometric systems is no longer a clear-cut boundary and that magnetic clusters associated with a distribution of Kondo shielding temperatures found in the heavily doped quantum critical Ce(Fe0:755Ru0:245)2Ge2 are also present in CeRu2Si2, a stoichiometric system close to a quantum critical point. By revisiting published data on CeRu2Si2 and comparing them to the results of Ce(Fe0:755Ru0:245)2Ge2, we show that clusters consisting of Ce-ions with their moments aligned with their neighbors exist in both systems at low temperatures and dominate the macroscopic response of these systems. We show these clusters form from a distribution of Kondo shielding temperatures which naturally arises from a distribution in inter-ionic separations; the chemical doping of ruthenium in Ce(Fe0:755Ru0:245)2Ge2 and zero-point motion in stoichiometric CeRu2Si2. We show that the dominant physics which drives heavily-doped systems, namely spontaneous formation of mag netic clusters, also plays a leading role in the response of homogenous systems. We investigate the presence of these spontaneous clusters in the heavily studied YbRh2Si2 where neutron scattering data have not been published. We show that the specific heat and susceptibility are naturally interpreted when ordered magnetic clusters are taken into account. Thus, cluster formation appears to be ubiquitous at the quantum critical point. We end with potential implications of the findings (that small changes in interionic separations ends up dominating the macroscopic response) to another class of highly correlated electron systems: the cuprate high Tc superconductors. We speculate that ionic displacements associated with hole doping leads to a pathway for the formation of Cooper pairs. We show that this pathway leads to an explanation for the many experimental observations, such as the striped phase and the hourglass dispersion.