Matching Items (154)
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Description
Factory production is stochastic in nature with time varying input and output processes that are non-stationary stochastic processes. Hence, the principle quantities of interest are random variables. Typical modeling of such behavior involves numerical simulation and statistical analysis. A deterministic closure model leading to a second

Factory production is stochastic in nature with time varying input and output processes that are non-stationary stochastic processes. Hence, the principle quantities of interest are random variables. Typical modeling of such behavior involves numerical simulation and statistical analysis. A deterministic closure model leading to a second order model for the product density and product speed has previously been proposed. The resulting partial differential equations (PDE) are compared to discrete event simulations (DES) that simulate factory production as a time dependent M/M/1 queuing system. Three fundamental scenarios for the time dependent influx are studied: An instant step up/down of the mean arrival rate; an exponential step up/down of the mean arrival rate; and periodic variation of the mean arrival rate. It is shown that the second order model, in general, yields significant improvement over current first order models. Specifically, the agreement between the DES and the PDE for the step up and for periodic forcing that is not too rapid is very good. Adding diffusion to the PDE further improves the agreement. The analysis also points to fundamental open issues regarding the deterministic modeling of low signal-to-noise ratio for some stochastic processes and the possibility of resonance in deterministic models that is not present in the original stochastic process.
ContributorsWienke, Matthew (Author) / Armbruster, Dieter (Thesis advisor) / Jones, Donald (Committee member) / Platte, Rodrigo (Committee member) / Gardner, Carl (Committee member) / Ringhofer, Christian (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
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Description
Swarms of animals, fish, birds, locusts etc. are a common occurrence but their coherence and method of organization poses a major question for mathematics and biology.The Vicsek and the Attraction-Repulsion are two models that have been proposed to explain the emergence of collective motion. A major issue

Swarms of animals, fish, birds, locusts etc. are a common occurrence but their coherence and method of organization poses a major question for mathematics and biology.The Vicsek and the Attraction-Repulsion are two models that have been proposed to explain the emergence of collective motion. A major issue for the Vicsek Model is that its particles are not attracted to each other, leaving the swarm with alignment in velocity but without spatial coherence. Restricting the particles to a bounded domain generates global spatial coherence of swarms while maintaining velocity alignment. While individual particles are specularly reflected at the boundary, the swarm as a whole is not. As a result, new dynamical swarming solutions are found.

The Attraction-Repulsion Model set with a long-range attraction and short-range repulsion interaction potential typically stabilizes to a well-studied flock steady state solution. The particles for a flock remain spatially coherent but have no spatial bound and explore all space. A bounded domain with specularly reflecting walls traps the particles within a specific region. A fundamental refraction law for a swarm impacting on a planar boundary is derived. The swarm reflection varies from specular for a swarm dominated by

kinetic energy to inelastic for a swarm dominated by potential energy. Inelastic collisions lead to alignment with the wall and to damped pulsating oscillations of the swarm. The fundamental refraction law provides a one-dimensional iterative map that allows for a prediction and analysis of the trajectory of the center of mass of a flock in a channel and a square domain.

The extension of the wall collisions to a scattering experiment is conducted by setting two identical flocks to collide. The two particle dynamics is studied analytically and shows a transition from scattering: diverging flocks to bound states in the form of oscillations or parallel motions. Numerical studies of collisions of flocks show the same transition where the bound states become either a single translating flock or a rotating (mill).
ContributorsThatcher, Andrea (Author) / Armbruster, Hans (Thesis advisor) / Motsch, Sebastien (Committee member) / Ringhofer, Christian (Committee member) / Platte, Rodrigo (Committee member) / Gardner, Carl (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
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Description
The Mathematical and Theoretical Biology Institute (MTBI) is a summer research program for undergraduate students, largely from underrepresented minority groups. Founded in 1996, it serves as a 'life-long' mentorship program, providing continuous support for its students and alumni. This study investigates how MTBI supports student development in applied mathematical research.

The Mathematical and Theoretical Biology Institute (MTBI) is a summer research program for undergraduate students, largely from underrepresented minority groups. Founded in 1996, it serves as a 'life-long' mentorship program, providing continuous support for its students and alumni. This study investigates how MTBI supports student development in applied mathematical research. This includes identifying of motivational factors to pursue and develop capacity to complete higher education.

The theoretical lens of developmental psychologists Lev Vygotsky (1978, 1987) and Lois Holzman (2010) that sees learning and development as a social process is used. From this view student development in MTBI is attributed to the collaborative and creative way students co-create the process of becoming scientists. This results in building a continuing network of academic and professional relationships among peers and mentors, in which around three quarters of MTBI PhD graduates come from underrepresented groups.

The extent to which MTBI creates a Vygotskian learning environment is explored from the perspectives of participants who earned doctoral degrees. Previously hypothesized factors (Castillo-Garsow, Castillo-Chavez and Woodley, 2013) that affect participants’ educational and professional development are expanded on.

Factors identified by participants are a passion for the mathematical sciences; desire to grow; enriching collaborative and peer-like interactions; and discovering career options. The self-recognition that they had the ability to be successful, key element of the Vygotskian-Holzman theoretical framework, was a commonly identified theme for their educational development and professional growth.

Participants characterize the collaborative and creative aspects of MTBI. They reported that collaborative dynamics with peers were strengthened as they co-created a learning environment that facilitated and accelerated their understanding of the mathematics needed to address their research. The dynamics of collaboration allowed them to complete complex homework assignments, and helped them formulate and complete their projects. Participants identified the creative environments of their research projects as where creativity emerged in the dynamics of the program.

These data-driven findings characterize for the first time a summer program in the mathematical sciences as a Vygotskian-Holzman environment, that is, a `place’ where participants are seen as capable applied mathematicians, where the dynamics of collaboration and creativity are fundamental components.
ContributorsEvangelista, Arlene Morales (Author) / Castillo-Chavez, Carlos (Thesis advisor) / Holmes, Raquell M. (Committee member) / Mubayi, Anuj (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
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Description
Presented is a study on the chemotaxis reaction process and its relation with flow topology. The effect of coherent structures in turbulent flows is characterized by studying nutrient uptake and the advantage that is received from motile bacteria over other non-motile bacteria. Variability is found to be dependent on the

Presented is a study on the chemotaxis reaction process and its relation with flow topology. The effect of coherent structures in turbulent flows is characterized by studying nutrient uptake and the advantage that is received from motile bacteria over other non-motile bacteria. Variability is found to be dependent on the initial location of scalar impurity and can be tied to Lagrangian coherent structures through recent advances in the identification of finite-time transport barriers. Advantage is relatively small for initial nutrient found within high stretching regions of the flow, and nutrient within elliptic structures provide the greatest advantage for motile species. How the flow field and the relevant flow topology lead to such a relation is analyzed.
ContributorsJones, Kimberly (Author) / Tang, Wenbo (Thesis advisor) / Kang, Yun (Committee member) / Jones, Donald (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
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Description
The tools developed for the use of investigating dynamical systems have provided critical understanding to a wide range of physical phenomena. Here these tools are used to gain further insight into scalar transport, and how it is affected by mixing. The aim of this research is to investigate the efficiency

The tools developed for the use of investigating dynamical systems have provided critical understanding to a wide range of physical phenomena. Here these tools are used to gain further insight into scalar transport, and how it is affected by mixing. The aim of this research is to investigate the efficiency of several different partitioning methods which demarcate flow fields into dynamically distinct regions, and the correlation of finite-time statistics from the advection-diffusion equation to these regions.

For autonomous systems, invariant manifold theory can be used to separate the system into dynamically distinct regions. Despite there being no equivalent method for nonautonomous systems, a similar analysis can be done. Systems with general time dependencies must resort to using finite-time transport barriers for partitioning; these barriers are the edges of Lagrangian coherent structures (LCS), the analog to the stable and unstable manifolds of invariant manifold theory. Using the coherent structures of a flow to analyze the statistics of trapping, flight, and residence times, the signature of anomalous diffusion are obtained.

This research also investigates the use of linear models for approximating the elements of the covariance matrix of nonlinear flows, and then applying the covariance matrix approximation over coherent regions. The first and second-order moments can be used to fully describe an ensemble evolution in linear systems, however there is no direct method for nonlinear systems. The problem is only compounded by the fact that the moments for nonlinear flows typically don't have analytic representations, therefore direct numerical simulations would be needed to obtain the moments throughout the domain. To circumvent these many computations, the nonlinear system is approximated as many linear systems for which analytic expressions for the moments exist. The parameters introduced in the linear models are obtained locally from the nonlinear deformation tensor.
ContributorsWalker, Phillip (Author) / Tang, Wenbo (Thesis advisor) / Kostelich, Eric (Committee member) / Mahalov, Alex (Committee member) / Moustaoui, Mohamed (Committee member) / Platte, Rodrigo (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
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Description
Inverse problems model real world phenomena from data, where the data are often noisy and models contain errors. This leads to instabilities, multiple solution vectors and thus ill-posedness. To solve ill-posed inverse problems, regularization is typically used as a penalty function to induce stability and allow for the incorporation of

Inverse problems model real world phenomena from data, where the data are often noisy and models contain errors. This leads to instabilities, multiple solution vectors and thus ill-posedness. To solve ill-posed inverse problems, regularization is typically used as a penalty function to induce stability and allow for the incorporation of a priori information about the desired solution. In this thesis, high order regularization techniques are developed for image and function reconstruction from noisy or misleading data. Specifically the incorporation of the Polynomial Annihilation operator allows for the accurate exploitation of the sparse representation of each function in the edge domain.

This dissertation tackles three main problems through the development of novel reconstruction techniques: (i) reconstructing one and two dimensional functions from multiple measurement vectors using variance based joint sparsity when a subset of the measurements contain false and/or misleading information, (ii) approximating discontinuous solutions to hyperbolic partial differential equations by enhancing typical solvers with l1 regularization, and (iii) reducing model assumptions in synthetic aperture radar image formation, specifically for the purpose of speckle reduction and phase error correction. While the common thread tying these problems together is the use of high order regularization, the defining characteristics of each of these problems create unique challenges.

Fast and robust numerical algorithms are also developed so that these problems can be solved efficiently without requiring fine tuning of parameters. Indeed, the numerical experiments presented in this dissertation strongly suggest that the new methodology provides more accurate and robust solutions to a variety of ill-posed inverse problems.
ContributorsScarnati, Theresa (Author) / Gelb, Anne (Thesis advisor) / Platte, Rodrigo (Thesis advisor) / Cochran, Douglas (Committee member) / Gardner, Carl (Committee member) / Sanders, Toby (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
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Description
Predicting resistant prostate cancer is critical for lowering medical costs and improving the quality of life of advanced prostate cancer patients. I formulate, compare, and analyze two mathematical models that aim to forecast future levels of prostate-specific antigen (PSA). I accomplish these tasks by employing clinical data of locally advanced

Predicting resistant prostate cancer is critical for lowering medical costs and improving the quality of life of advanced prostate cancer patients. I formulate, compare, and analyze two mathematical models that aim to forecast future levels of prostate-specific antigen (PSA). I accomplish these tasks by employing clinical data of locally advanced prostate cancer patients undergoing androgen deprivation therapy (ADT). I demonstrate that the inverse problem of parameter estimation might be too complicated and simply relying on data fitting can give incorrect conclusions, since there is a large error in parameter values estimated and parameters might be unidentifiable. I provide confidence intervals to give estimate forecasts using data assimilation via an ensemble Kalman Filter. Using the ensemble Kalman Filter, I perform dual estimation of parameters and state variables to test the prediction accuracy of the models. Finally, I present a novel model with time delay and a delay-dependent parameter. I provide a geometric stability result to study the behavior of this model and show that the inclusion of time delay may improve the accuracy of predictions. Also, I demonstrate with clinical data that the inclusion of the delay-dependent parameter facilitates the identification and estimation of parameters.
ContributorsBaez, Javier (Author) / Kuang, Yang (Thesis advisor) / Kostelich, Eric (Committee member) / Crook, Sharon (Committee member) / Gardner, Carl (Committee member) / Nagy, John (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
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Description
Diabetes is a disease characterized by reduced insulin action and secretion, leading to elevated blood glucose. In the 1990s, studies showed that intravenous injection of fatty acids led to a sharp negative response in insulin action that subsided hours after the injection. The molecule associated with diminished insulin signalling response

Diabetes is a disease characterized by reduced insulin action and secretion, leading to elevated blood glucose. In the 1990s, studies showed that intravenous injection of fatty acids led to a sharp negative response in insulin action that subsided hours after the injection. The molecule associated with diminished insulin signalling response was a byproduct of fatty acids, diacylglycerol. This dissertation is focused on the formulation of a model built around the known mechanisms of glucose and fatty acid storage and metabolism within myocytes, as well as downstream effects of diacylglycerol on insulin action. Data from euglycemic-hyperinsulinemic clamp with fatty acid infusion studies are used to validate the qualitative behavior of the model and estimate parameters. The model closely matches clinical data and suggests a new metric to determine quantitative measurements of insulin action downregulation. Analysis and numerical simulation of the long term, piecewise smooth system of ordinary differential equations demonstrates a discontinuous bifurcation implicating nutrient excess as a driver of muscular insulin resistance.
ContributorsBurkow, Daniel Harrison (Author) / Li, Jiaxu (Thesis advisor) / Castillo-Chavez, Carlos (Thesis advisor) / Kuang, Yang (Committee member) / Holechek, Susan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
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Description
The Kuramoto model is an archetypal model for studying synchronization in groups

of nonidentical oscillators where oscillators are imbued with their own frequency and

coupled with other oscillators though a network of interactions. As the coupling

strength increases, there is a bifurcation to complete synchronization where all oscillators

move with the same frequency and

The Kuramoto model is an archetypal model for studying synchronization in groups

of nonidentical oscillators where oscillators are imbued with their own frequency and

coupled with other oscillators though a network of interactions. As the coupling

strength increases, there is a bifurcation to complete synchronization where all oscillators

move with the same frequency and show a collective rhythm. Kuramoto-like

dynamics are considered a relevant model for instabilities of the AC-power grid which

operates in synchrony under standard conditions but exhibits, in a state of failure,

segmentation of the grid into desynchronized clusters.

In this dissertation the minimum coupling strength required to ensure total frequency

synchronization in a Kuramoto system, called the critical coupling, is investigated.

For coupling strength below the critical coupling, clusters of oscillators form

where oscillators within a cluster are on average oscillating with the same long-term

frequency. A unified order parameter based approach is developed to create approximations

of the critical coupling. Some of the new approximations provide strict lower

bounds for the critical coupling. In addition, these approximations allow for predictions

of the partially synchronized clusters that emerge in the bifurcation from the

synchronized state.

Merging the order parameter approach with graph theoretical concepts leads to a

characterization of this bifurcation as a weighted graph partitioning problem on an

arbitrary networks which then leads to an optimization problem that can efficiently

estimate the partially synchronized clusters. Numerical experiments on random Kuramoto

systems show the high accuracy of these methods. An interpretation of the

methods in the context of power systems is provided.
ContributorsGilg, Brady (Author) / Armbruster, Dieter (Thesis advisor) / Mittelmann, Hans (Committee member) / Scaglione, Anna (Committee member) / Strogatz, Steven (Committee member) / Welfert, Bruno (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
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Description
Need-based transfers (NBTs) are a form of risk-pooling in which binary welfare exchanges

occur to preserve the viable participation of individuals in an economy, e.g. reciprocal gifting

of cattle among East African herders or food sharing among vampire bats. With the

broad goal of better understanding the mathematics of such binary welfare and

Need-based transfers (NBTs) are a form of risk-pooling in which binary welfare exchanges

occur to preserve the viable participation of individuals in an economy, e.g. reciprocal gifting

of cattle among East African herders or food sharing among vampire bats. With the

broad goal of better understanding the mathematics of such binary welfare and risk pooling,

agent-based simulations are conducted to explore socially optimal transfer policies

and sharing network structures, kinetic exchange models that utilize tools from the kinetic

theory of gas dynamics are utilized to characterize the wealth distribution of an NBT economy,

and a variant of repeated prisoner’s dilemma is analyzed to determine whether and

why individuals would participate in such a system of reciprocal altruism.

From agent-based simulation and kinetic exchange models, it is found that regressive

NBT wealth redistribution acts as a cutting stock optimization heuristic that most efficiently

matches deficits to surpluses to improve short-term survival; however, progressive

redistribution leads to a wealth distribution that is more stable in volatile environments and

therefore is optimal for long-term survival. Homogeneous sharing networks with low variance

in degree are found to be ideal for maintaining community viability as the burden and

benefit of NBTs is equally shared. Also, phrasing NBTs as a survivor’s dilemma reveals

parameter regions where the repeated game becomes equivalent to a stag hunt or harmony

game, and thus where cooperation is evolutionarily stable.
ContributorsKayser, Kirk (Author) / Armbruster, Dieter (Thesis advisor) / Lampert, Adam (Committee member) / Ringhofer, Christian (Committee member) / Motsch, Sebastien (Committee member) / Gardner, Carl (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018