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- Creators: School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences
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Description
Chebfun is a collection of algorithms and an open-source software system in object-oriented Matlab that extends familiar powerful methods of numerical computation involving numbers to continuous or piecewise-continuous functions. The success of this strategy is based on the mathematical fact that smooth functions can be represented very efficiently by polynomial interpolation at Chebyshev points or by trigonometric interpolation at equispaced points for periodic functions. More recently, the system has been extended to handle bivariate functions and vector fields. These two new classes of objects are called Chebfun2 and Chebfun2v, respectively. We will show that Chebfun2 and Chebfun2v, and can be used to accurately and efficiently perform various computations on parametric surfaces in two or three dimensions, including path trajectories and mean and Gaussian curvatures. More advanced surface computations such as mean curvature flows are also explored. This is also the first work to use the newly implemented trigonometric representation, namely Trigfun, for computations on surfaces.
ContributorsPage-Bottorff, Courtney Michelle (Author) / Platte, Rodrigo (Thesis director) / Kostelich, Eric (Committee member) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
Honey bees (Apis mellifera) are responsible for pollinating nearly 80\% of all pollinated plants, meaning humans depend on honey bees to pollinate many staple crops. The success or failure of a colony is vital to global food production. There are various complex factors that can contribute to a colony's failure, including pesticides. Neonicotoids are a popular pesticide that have been used in recent times. In this study we concern ourselves with pesticides and its impact on honey bee colonies. Previous investigations that we draw significant inspiration from include Khoury et Al's \emph{A Quantitative Model of Honey Bee Colony Population Dynamics}, Henry et Al's \emph{A Common Pesticide Decreases Foraging Success and Survival in Honey Bees}, and Brown's \emph{ Mathematical Models of Honey Bee Populations: Rapid Population Decline}. In this project we extend a mathematical model to investigate the impact of pesticides on a honey bee colony, with birth rates and death rates being dependent on pesticides, and we see how these death rates influence the growth of a colony. Our studies have found an equilibrium point that depends on pesticides. Trace amounts of pesticide are detrimental as they not only affect death rates, but birth rates as well.
ContributorsSalinas, Armando (Author) / Vaz, Paul (Thesis director) / Jones, Donald (Committee member) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
A Guide to Financial Mathematics is a comprehensive and easy-to-use study guide for students studying for the one of the first actuarial exams, Exam FM. While there are many resources available to students to study for these exams, this study is free to the students and offers an approach to the material similar to that of which is presented in class at ASU. The guide is available to students and professors in the new Actuarial Science degree program offered by ASU. There are twelve chapters, including financial calculator tips, detailed notes, examples, and practice exercises. Included at the end of the guide is a list of referenced material.
ContributorsDougher, Caroline Marie (Author) / Milovanovic, Jelena (Thesis director) / Boggess, May (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
Often learning new skills, such as how to throw a basketball or how to play the piano, are better accomplished practicing with another than from self-practice. Why? We propose that during joint action, partners learn to adjust their behavior to each other. For example, when dancing with a partner, we must adjust the timing, the force, and the spatial locations of movements to those of the partner. We call these adjustments a joint body schema (JBS). That is, the locations of our own effectors and our own movements are adapted by interaction with the partner. Furthermore, we propose that after a JBS is established, learning new motor skills can be enhanced by the learner's attunement to the specifics of the partner's actions. We test this proposal by having partners engage in a motor task requiring cooperation (to develop the JBS). Then we determined whether a) the JBS enhances the coordination on an unrelated task, and b) whether the JBS enhances the learning of a new motor skill. In fact, participants who established a JBS showed stronger coordination with a partner and better motor learning from the partner than did control participants. Several applications of this finding are discussed.
ContributorsMunion, Amanda Kathleen (Author) / Glenberg, Arthur (Thesis director) / Knight, George (Committee member) / McBeath, Michael (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
Microarthropods play important roles in the decomposition process of the detrital food web, where they break down organic matter and return nutrients to the soil. However, only a small percentage of the belowground microarthropod population has been studied or even discovered, leading to a decrease in the knowledge of all of the processes carried out by these organisms and their importance to the soil. This is because microarthropod extraction methods are not 100% effective at collecting specimens. This study aimed to find an ideal quantitative procedure to better record the number of microarthropods existing in the soil and to determine if a seasonal variation exists that effects the success of extraction. Two extraction methods, including dynamic extraction and heptane flotation extraction, were compared across two seasons, a dry season (June) and a wet season (September). Average biomasses and average richness were calculated for four different functional groups, including Prostigmata, Mesostigmata, Cryptostigmata, and Collembola, across the two seasons, and statistical analysis was performed to determine if any differences that existed were statistically significant. Results indicate that the dynamic extraction method was significantly more effective for the collection of microarthropods during the wet season, and the heptane extraction method was significantly more effective during the dry season. In addition, the heptane procedure recovered samples of higher average richness than the dynamic method during both seasons. The heptane procedure works best for extraction during the dry season because it is able to collect organisms that entered into an ametabolic anhydrobiotic state to escape desiccation. These organisms form a protective lipid layer around their exoskeletons to retain water, and the non-polar exoskeletons display a chemical affinity to the heptane fluid, allowing for collection out of the soil and into the heptane layer. Despite these results, no one method is entirely superior to the other, and the most efficacious procedure depends on the researcher's aim of study.
ContributorsAntol, Rachel Lynn (Author) / Sabo, John L. (Thesis director) / Hall, Sharon (Committee member) / Wyant, Karl A. (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor)
Created2014-12
Description
This paper explores how marginalist economics defines and inevitably constrains Victorian sensation fiction's content and composition. I argue that economic intuition implies that sensationalist heroes and antagonists, writers and readers all pursued a fundamental, "rational" aim: the attainment of pleasure. So although "sensationalism" took on connotations of moral impropriety in the Victorian age, sensation fiction primarily involves experiences of pain on the page that excite the reader's pleasure. As such, sensationalism as a whole can be seen as a conformist product, one which mirrors the effects of all commodities on the market, rather than as a rebellious one. Indeed, contrary to modern and contemporary critics' assumptions, sensation fiction may not be as scandalous as it seems.
ContributorsFischer, Brett Andrew (Author) / Bivona, Daniel (Thesis director) / Looser, Devoney (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Economics Program in CLAS (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor)
Created2014-12
DescriptionThis is a project to create an electric field sensing system which is fully portable. This system should provide accurate electric field readings from transmission lines allowing abstraction to find the voltage on the transmission line.
ContributorsScowen, Kegan (Co-author) / Vora, Sandeep (Co-author) / Ye, Weidong (Co-author) / Sciacca, Jacob (Co-author) / Allee, David (Thesis director) / Karady, George (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Electrical Engineering Program (Contributor)
Created2014-12
Description
In everyday life, mental fatigue can be detrimental across many domains including driving, learning, and working. Given the importance of understanding and accounting for the deleterious effects of mental fatigue on behavior, a growing body of literature has studied the role of executive control processes in mental fatigue. In a laboratory setup, participants complete a task that places demands on executive control processes and are later given a transfer task. Generally speaking, decrements to subsequent task performance are taken as evidence that the initial executive control task created mental fatigue through the continued engagement of executive control. Several hypotheses have been developed to account for negative transfer resulting from executive control depletion including cognitive resource depletion and task-switching. In the current study, we provide a brief literature review, specify current theoretical approaches to depletion, and provide a strong empirical test of theories for negative transfer from executive control depletion (i.e., does continued performance of an executive control task negatively transfer to that exact same task).
ContributorsLau, Kin Hang (Author) / Brewer, Gene (Thesis director) / Knight, George (Committee member) / Blais, Chris (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor)
Created2014-12
Description
Through collection of survey data on the characteristics of college debaters, disparities in participation and success for women and racial and ethnic minorities are measured. This study then uses econometric tools to assess whether there is an in-group judging bias in college debate that systematically disadvantages female and minority participants. Debate is used as a testing ground for competing economic theories of taste-based and statistical discrimination, applied to a higher education context. The study finds persistent disparities in participation and success for female participants. Judges are more likely to vote for debaters who share their gender. There is also a significant disparity in the participation of racial and ethnic minority debaters and judges, as well as female judges.
ContributorsVered, Michelle Nicole (Author) / Silverman, Daniel (Thesis director) / Symonds, Adam (Committee member) / Dillon, Eleanor (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Economics Program in CLAS (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor)
Created2014-12
Description
In fan fiction, fans utilize different elements in an original work and incorporate them into their fanfics; elements such as the characters and setting of an original work are frequently used in fan fiction. A different element is investigated: time travel. The physics behind time travel is not yet understood, so authors have to create their own time travel physics in their works to account for this lack of understanding. Therefore, for fan authors to incorporate time travel into their fanfic, they must study the time travel physics in the original work the same way that characters from an original work are studied. Three original works and three fanfics are examined: the television show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and its fanfic "The Fall and Rise of the Alicorn", the Harry Potter book series and its fanfic "Back to the Time of the Unknown", and the webcomic Homestuck and its fanfic "Like a Bug on a Windshield".
ContributorsClark, Michael Robert (Author) / Ingram-Waters, Mary (Thesis director) / Scott, Suzanne (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Department of Physics (Contributor)
Created2014-05