Matching Items (63)
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Description
This dissertation develops a second order accurate approximation to the magnetic resonance (MR) signal model used in the PARSE (Parameter Assessment by Retrieval from Single Encoding) method to recover information about the reciprocal of the spin-spin relaxation time function (R2*) and frequency offset function (w) in addition to the typical

This dissertation develops a second order accurate approximation to the magnetic resonance (MR) signal model used in the PARSE (Parameter Assessment by Retrieval from Single Encoding) method to recover information about the reciprocal of the spin-spin relaxation time function (R2*) and frequency offset function (w) in addition to the typical steady-state transverse magnetization (M) from single-shot magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans. Sparse regularization on an approximation to the edge map is used to solve the associated inverse problem. Several studies are carried out for both one- and two-dimensional test problems, including comparisons to the first order approximation method, as well as the first order approximation method with joint sparsity across multiple time windows enforced. The second order accurate model provides increased accuracy while reducing the amount of data required to reconstruct an image when compared to piecewise constant in time models. A key component of the proposed technique is the use of fast transforms for the forward evaluation. It is determined that the second order model is capable of providing accurate single-shot MRI reconstructions, but requires an adequate coverage of k-space to do so. Alternative data sampling schemes are investigated in an attempt to improve reconstruction with single-shot data, as current trajectories do not provide ideal k-space coverage for the proposed method.
ContributorsJesse, Aaron Mitchel (Author) / Platte, Rodrigo (Thesis advisor) / Gelb, Anne (Committee member) / Kostelich, Eric (Committee member) / Mittelmann, Hans (Committee member) / Moustaoui, Mohamed (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
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Efforts to treat prostate cancer have seen an uptick, as the world’s most commoncancer in men continues to have increasing global incidence. Clinically, metastatic
prostate cancer is most commonly treated with hormonal therapy. The idea behind
hormonal therapy is to reduce androgen production, which prostate cancer cells
require for growth. Recently, the exploration

Efforts to treat prostate cancer have seen an uptick, as the world’s most commoncancer in men continues to have increasing global incidence. Clinically, metastatic
prostate cancer is most commonly treated with hormonal therapy. The idea behind
hormonal therapy is to reduce androgen production, which prostate cancer cells
require for growth. Recently, the exploration of the synergistic effects of the drugs
used in hormonal therapy has begun. The aim was to build off of these recent
advancements and further refine the synergistic drug model. The advancements I
implement come by addressing biological shortcomings and improving the model’s
internal mechanistic structure. The drug families being modeled, anti-androgens,
and gonadotropin-releasing hormone analogs, interact with androgen production in a
way that is not completely understood in the scientific community. Thus the models
representing the drugs show progress through their ability to capture their effect
on serum androgen. Prostate-specific antigen is the primary biomarker for prostate
cancer and is generally how population models on the subject are validated. Fitting
the model to clinical data and comparing it to other clinical models through the
ability to fit and forecast prostate-specific antigen and serum androgen is how this
improved model achieves validation. The improved model results further suggest that
the drugs’ dynamics should be considered in adaptive therapy for prostate cancer.
ContributorsReckell, Trevor (Author) / Kostelich, Eric (Thesis advisor) / Kuang, Yang (Committee member) / Mahalov, Alex (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
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Cancer is a disease involving abnormal growth of cells. Its growth dynamics is perplexing. Mathematical modeling is a way to shed light on this progress and its medical treatments. This dissertation is to study cancer invasion in time and space using a mathematical approach. Chapter 1 presents a detailed review

Cancer is a disease involving abnormal growth of cells. Its growth dynamics is perplexing. Mathematical modeling is a way to shed light on this progress and its medical treatments. This dissertation is to study cancer invasion in time and space using a mathematical approach. Chapter 1 presents a detailed review of literature on cancer modeling.

Chapter 2 focuses sorely on time where the escape of a generic cancer out of immune control is described by stochastic delayed differential equations (SDDEs). Without time delay and noise, this system demonstrates bistability. The effects of response time of the immune system and stochasticity in the tumor proliferation rate are studied by including delay and noise in the model. Stability, persistence and extinction of the tumor are analyzed. The result shows that both time delay and noise can induce the transition from low tumor burden equilibrium to high tumor equilibrium. The aforementioned work has been published (Han et al., 2019b).

In Chapter 3, Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is studied using a partial differential equation (PDE) model. GBM is an aggressive brain cancer with a grim prognosis. A mathematical model of GBM growth with explicit motility, birth, and death processes is proposed. A novel method is developed to approximate key characteristics of the wave profile, which can be compared with MRI data. Several test cases of MRI data of GBM patients are used to yield personalized parameterizations of the model. The aforementioned work has been published (Han et al., 2019a).

Chapter 4 presents an innovative way of forecasting spatial cancer invasion. Most mathematical models, including the ones described in previous chapters, are formulated based on strong assumptions, which are hard, if not impossible, to verify due to complexity of biological processes and lack of quality data. Instead, a nonparametric forecasting method using Gaussian processes is proposed. By exploiting the local nature of the spatio-temporal process, sparse (in terms of time) data is sufficient for forecasting. Desirable properties of Gaussian processes facilitate selection of the size of the local neighborhood and computationally efficient propagation of uncertainty. The method is tested on synthetic data and demonstrates promising results.
ContributorsHan, Lifeng (Author) / Kuang, Yang (Thesis advisor) / Fricks, John (Thesis advisor) / Kostelich, Eric (Committee member) / Baer, Steve (Committee member) / Gumel, Abba (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
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The analysis focuses on a two-population, three-dimensional model that attempts to accurately model the growth and diffusion of glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), a highly invasive brain cancer, throughout the brain. Analysis into the sensitivity of the model to

changes in the diffusion, growth, and death parameters was performed, in order to find

The analysis focuses on a two-population, three-dimensional model that attempts to accurately model the growth and diffusion of glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), a highly invasive brain cancer, throughout the brain. Analysis into the sensitivity of the model to

changes in the diffusion, growth, and death parameters was performed, in order to find a set of parameter values that accurately model observed tumor growth for a given patient. Additional changes were made to the diffusion parameters to account for the arrangement of nerve tracts in the brain, resulting in varying rates of diffusion. In general, small changes in the growth rates had a large impact on the outcome of the simulations, and for each patient there exists a set of parameters that allow the model to simulate a tumor that matches observed tumor growth in the patient over a period of two or three months. Furthermore, these results are more accurate with anisotropic diffusion, rather than isotropic diffusion. However, these parameters lead to inaccurate results for patients with tumors that undergo no observable growth over the given time interval. While it is possible to simulate long-term tumor growth, the simulation requires multiple comparisons to available MRI scans in order to find a set of parameters that provide an accurate prognosis.
ContributorsTrent, Austin Lee (Author) / Kostelich, Eric (Thesis advisor) / Gumel, Abba (Committee member) / Kuang, Yang (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
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Large amplitude westward propagating long waves in midlatitudes of Northern Hemisphere occasionally sustain coherent phase propagation over multiple weeks. Owing to the large amplitude and the life cycle of these waves previous studies have speculated their influence on extended-range weather forecasts but have not quantified them. The primary aim of

Large amplitude westward propagating long waves in midlatitudes of Northern Hemisphere occasionally sustain coherent phase propagation over multiple weeks. Owing to the large amplitude and the life cycle of these waves previous studies have speculated their influence on extended-range weather forecasts but have not quantified them. The primary aim of this study is to establish an updated long-term catalog of Retrograde events which can then be used to investigate the statistics and structure of these waves. Guided by the newly created catalog the dynamics of these waves are further explored. A preliminary look into the dynamics of these waves reveal a sequence of poleward extrusion, westward migration and vortex shedding occurring frequently during certain strong Retrograde wave events. A strong connection between the westward moving low PV structures and the East Asian cold air outbreak is uncovered. Also, the initiation of the sequence of low PV extrusion and vortex shedding is found to be linked with the phase of propagating Wave-1 zonal component. Enhanced predictability of global midlatitude Geopotential Height at 500mb is noted during active period of strong Retrograde wave activity in comparison to inactive period. Skilled forecasts were produced almost (on an average) 12 days in advance during the active period of one of the winters (1995/96) as compared to 9 days during the inactive period of the season.
ContributorsRaghunathan, Girish Nigamanth (Author) / Huang, Huei-Ping (Thesis advisor) / Chen, Kangping (Committee member) / Calhoun, Ronald (Committee member) / Herrmann, Marcus (Committee member) / Kostelich, Eric (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
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Synthetic biology (SB) has become an important field of science focusing on designing and engineering new biological parts and systems, or re-designing existing biological systems for useful purposes. The dramatic growth of SB throughout the past two decades has not only provided us numerous achievements, but also brought us more

Synthetic biology (SB) has become an important field of science focusing on designing and engineering new biological parts and systems, or re-designing existing biological systems for useful purposes. The dramatic growth of SB throughout the past two decades has not only provided us numerous achievements, but also brought us more timely and underexplored problems. In SB's entire history, mathematical modeling has always been an indispensable approach to predict the experimental outcomes, improve experimental design and obtain mechanism-understanding of the biological systems. \textit{Escherichia coli} (\textit{E. coli}) is one of the most important experimental platforms, its growth dynamics is the major research objective in this dissertation. Chapter 2 employs a reaction-diffusion model to predict the \textit{E. coli} colony growth on a semi-solid agar plate under multiple controls. In that chapter, a density-dependent diffusion model with non-monotonic growth to capture the colony's non-linear growth profile is introduced. Findings of the new model to experimental data are compared and contrasted with those from other proposed models. In addition, the cross-sectional profile of the colony are computed and compared with experimental data. \textit{E. coli} colony is also used to perform spatial patterns driven by designed gene circuits. In Chapter 3, a gene circuit (MINPAC) and its corresponding pattern formation results are presented. Specifically, a series of partial differential equation (PDE) models are developed to describe the pattern formation driven by the MINPAC circuit. Model simulations of the patterns based on different experimental conditions and numerical analysis of the models to obtain a deeper understanding of the mechanisms are performed and discussed. Mathematical analysis of the simplified models, including traveling wave analysis and local stability analysis, is also presented and used to explore the control strategies of the pattern formation. The interaction between the gene circuit and the host \textit{E. coli} may be crucial and even greatly affect the experimental outcomes. Chapter 4 focuses on the growth feedback between the circuit and the host cell under different nutrient conditions. Two ordinary differential equation (ODE) models are developed to describe such feedback with nutrient variation. Preliminary results on data fitting using both two models and the model dynamical analysis are included.
ContributorsHe, Changhan (Author) / Kuang, Yang (Thesis advisor) / Wang, Xiao (Committee member) / Kostelich, Eric (Committee member) / Tian, Xiaojun (Committee member) / Gumel, Abba (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description

The effects of urbanization on ozone levels have been widely investigated over cities primarily located in temperate and/or humid regions. In this study, nested WRF-Chem simulations with a finest grid resolution of 1 km are conducted to investigate ozone concentrations O3 due to urbanization within cities in arid/semi-arid environments. First,

The effects of urbanization on ozone levels have been widely investigated over cities primarily located in temperate and/or humid regions. In this study, nested WRF-Chem simulations with a finest grid resolution of 1 km are conducted to investigate ozone concentrations O3 due to urbanization within cities in arid/semi-arid environments. First, a method based on a shape preserving Monotonic Cubic Interpolation (MCI) is developed and used to downscale anthropogenic emissions from the 4 km resolution 2005 National Emissions Inventory (NEI05) to the finest model resolution of 1 km. Using the rapidly expanding Phoenix metropolitan region as the area of focus, we demonstrate the proposed MCI method achieves ozone simulation results with appreciably improved correspondence to observations relative to the default interpolation method of the WRF-Chem system. Next, two additional sets of experiments are conducted, with the recommended MCI approach, to examine impacts of urbanization on ozone production: (1) the urban land cover is included (i.e., urbanization experiments) and, (2) the urban land cover is replaced with the region's native shrubland. Impacts due to the presence of the built environment on O3 are highly heterogeneous across the metropolitan area. Increased near surface O3 due to urbanization of 10–20 ppb is predominantly a nighttime phenomenon while simulated impacts during daytime are negligible. Urbanization narrows the daily O3 range (by virtue of increasing nighttime minima), an impact largely due to the region's urban heat island. Our results demonstrate the importance of the MCI method for accurate representation of the diurnal profile of ozone, and highlight its utility for high-resolution air quality simulations for urban areas.

ContributorsLi, Jialun (Author) / Georgescu, Matei (Author) / Hyde, Peter (Author) / Mahalov, Alex (Author) / Moustaoui, Mohamed (Author) / Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability (Contributor)
Created2014-11-01
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The physics of waves control most of the world, in multiple forms, such as electromagnetic waves. Mathematicians and physicists have developed equations which describe the patterns in which waves evolve over time, while moving through space. Due to their partial differential form, solutions to these equations must be approximated. This

The physics of waves control most of the world, in multiple forms, such as electromagnetic waves. Mathematicians and physicists have developed equations which describe the patterns in which waves evolve over time, while moving through space. Due to their partial differential form, solutions to these equations must be approximated. This study introduces a new numerical scheme to perform the approximation which is highly stable and computationally efficient. This numerical scheme is formulated with respect to Maxwell’s equations, employing spatial and temporal staggering to implement a fourth-order phase accuracy. It is then compared to the traditional Yee scheme and the Runge-Kutta 3 scheme in one-dimensional applications, revealing a similar accuracy to the Runge-Kutta 3 scheme while requiring less computations per time step. Simulations are then performed in the two-dimensional case. First, no boundary conditions are implemented, causing reflection at the edge of the spatial domain. Next, the simulation is conducted while employing absorbing boundary conditions, simulating wave propagation over an infinite spatial domain. These results are compared to the results of a large domain simulation, in which the wave propagation does not reach the boundaries. Comparing the simulations, it is concluded that the numerical scheme is stable and highly accurate when employing absorbing boundary conditions. Finally, the scheme is tested in two dimensions with wave propagation through nonlinear media, as opposed to the prior simulations which were performed as if in a vacuum. After performing spectral analysis on the resulting waves after a long-time domain simulation, the resulting angular frequencies match those expected from theory. Therefore, the scheme is concluded to be powerful in one-dimensional, two-dimensional, and nonlinear simulations, all while being computationally efficient.
ContributorsKirvan, Alex Ander (Author) / Moustaoui, Mohamed (Thesis director) / Kostelich, Eric (Committee member) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
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Climate change is one of the most pressing issues affecting the world today. One of the impacts of climate change is on the transmission of mosquito-borne diseases (MBDs), such as West Nile Virus (WNV). Climate is known to influence vector and host demography as well as MBD transmission. This dissertation

Climate change is one of the most pressing issues affecting the world today. One of the impacts of climate change is on the transmission of mosquito-borne diseases (MBDs), such as West Nile Virus (WNV). Climate is known to influence vector and host demography as well as MBD transmission. This dissertation addresses the questions of how vector and host demography impact WNV dynamics, and how expected and likely climate change scenarios will affect demographic and epidemiological processes of WNV transmission. First, a data fusion method is developed that connects non-autonomous logistic model parameters to mosquito time series data. This method captures the inter-annual and intra-seasonal variation of mosquito populations within a geographical location. Next, a three-population WNV model between mosquito vectors, bird hosts, and human hosts with infection-age structure for the vector and bird host populations is introduced. A sensitivity analysis uncovers which parameters have the most influence on WNV outbreaks. Finally, the WNV model is extended to include the non-autonomous population model and temperature-dependent processes. Model parameterization using historical temperature and human WNV case data from the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) is conducted. Parameter fitting results are then used to analyze possible future WNV dynamics under two climate change scenarios. These results suggest that WNV risk for the GTA will substantially increase as temperature increases from climate change, even under the most conservative assumptions. This demonstrates the importance of ensuring that the warming of the planet is limited as much as possible.
ContributorsMancuso, Marina (Author) / Milner, Fabio A (Thesis advisor) / Kuang, Yang (Committee member) / Kostelich, Eric (Committee member) / Eikenberry, Steffen (Committee member) / Manore, Carrie (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
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An interesting occurrence of a Rossby wave breaking event observed during the VORCORE experiment is presented and explained. Twenty-seven balloons were launched inside the Antarctic polar vortex. Almost all of these balloons evolved in the stratosphere around 500K within the vortex, except the one launched on 28 October 2005. In

An interesting occurrence of a Rossby wave breaking event observed during the VORCORE experiment is presented and explained. Twenty-seven balloons were launched inside the Antarctic polar vortex. Almost all of these balloons evolved in the stratosphere around 500K within the vortex, except the one launched on 28 October 2005. In this case, the balloon was caught within a tongue of high potential vorticity (PV), and was ejected from the polar vortex. The evolution of this event is studied for the period between 19 and 25 November 2005. It is found that at the beginning of this period, the polar vortex experienced distortions due to the presence of Rossby waves. Then, these waves break and a tongue of high PV develops. On 25 November, the tongue became separated from the vortex and the balloon was ejected into the surf zone. Lagrangian simulations demonstrate that the air masses surrounding the balloon after its ejection were originating from the vortex edge. The wave breaking and the development of the tongue are confined within a region where a planetary Quasi-Stationary Wave 1 (QSW1) induces wind speeds with weaker values. The QSW1 causes asymmetry in the wind speed and the horizontal PV gradient along the edge of the polar vortex, resulting in a localized jet. Rossby waves with smaller scales propagating on top of this jet amplify as they enter the jet exit region and then break. The role of the QSW1 on the formation of the weak flow conditions that caused the non-linear wave breaking observed near the vortex edge is confirmed by three-dimensional numerical simulations using forcing with and without the contribution of the QSW1.

ContributorsMoustaoui, Mohamed (Author) / Teitelbaum, H. (Author) / Mahalov, Alex (Author) / College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Contributor)
Created2013-04-16