More than 270,000 km of rivers and streams are impaired due to fecal pathogens, creating an economic and public health burden. Fecal indicator organisms such as Escherichia coli are used to determine if surface waters are pathogen impaired, but they fail to identify human health risks, provide source information, or have unique fate and transport processes. Statistical and machine learning models can be used to overcome some of these weaknesses, including identifying ecological mechanisms influencing fecal pollution. In this study, canonical correlation analysis (CCorA) was performed to select parameters for the machine learning model, Maxent, to identify how chemical and microbial parameters can predict E. coli impairment and F+-somatic bacteriophage detections. Models were validated using a bootstrapping cross-validation. Three suites of models were developed; initial models using all parameters, models using parameters identified in CCorA, and optimized models after further sensitivity analysis. Canonical correlation analysis reduced the number of parameters needed to achieve the same degree of accuracy in the initial E. coli model (84.7%), and sensitivity analysis improved accuracy to 86.1%. Bacteriophage model accuracies were 79.2, 70.8, and 69.4% for the initial, CCorA, and optimized models, respectively; this suggests complex ecological interactions of bacteriophages are not captured by CCorA. Results indicate distinct ecological drivers of impairment depending on the fecal indicator organism used. Escherichia coli impairment is driven by increased hardness and microbial activity, whereas bacteriophage detection is inhibited by high levels of coliforms in sediment. Both indicators were influenced by organic pollution and phosphorus limitation.

Psychopathology typically is a lasting condition that is persistent from childhood to adulthood. Therefore, it is imperative that children with health conditions and comorbid psychiatric disorders are treated for both conditions as they are likely to have a significant negative impact on children's overall health-related quality of life (HRQL). More specifically, it is important to identify the variables that affect HRQL in children with epilepsy. Research has shown that biomedical variables such as seizure severity and frequency have only moderate relationships with HRQL; therefore, additional factors, such as depression and anxiety, must be identified so that they also may be a focus of treatment. The purpose of this study was to ascertain the relationship among seizure-related variables, health-related quality of life, and psychopathology (i.e., anxiety and depression) in children with epilepsy (n = 51). The seizure-related variables examined in this study include type of seizure, seizure frequency, and seizure treatment with anti-epileptic drugs (AEDs). Canonical correlation analyses indicated that self-report and parent report of anxiety and depression were most strongly correlated with HRQL. Additionally, seizure frequency and number of anti-epileptic drugs also were correlated with HRQL. It is hoped that results from this study will inform both the medical and psychosocial treatment children with epilepsy receive. This comprehensive care needs to go beyond simply attempting to control seizures with minimal adverse drug reactions. Results from this study will contribute to the literature underscoring the importance of identifying, diagnosing, and treating children with epilepsy who have comorbid psychopathology so that they have the best possible psychosocial outcomes.

The limits of the current micro-scale electronics technology have been approaching rapidly. At nano-scale, however, the physical phenomena involved are fundamentally different than in micro-scale. Classical and semi-classical physical principles are no longer powerful enough or even valid to describe the phenomena involved. The rich and powerful concepts in quantum mechanics have become indispensable. There are several commercial software packages already available for modeling and simulation of the electrical, magnetic, and mechanical characteristics and properties of the nano-scale devices. However, our objective here is to go one step further and create a physics-based problem-adapted solution methodology. We carry out computation for eigenfunctions of canonical and the associated perturbed quantum systems and utilize them as co-ordinate functions for solving more complex problems. We have profoundly worked with the infinite quantum potential-well problem, since they have closed-form solutions and therefore are analytically known eigenfunctions. Perturbation of the infinite quantum potential-well was done through a single box function, multiple box functions, and with a triangular function. The proposed solution concept utilizes the notion of

Digital filters having sharp transition band play a vital role in modern digital signal processing (DSP) applications. Emerging technologies require digital filters to be both computationally efficient in software/hardware realizations. This thesis is concerned with the design and structural-level optimization of sharp transition band digital filters employing the well known frequency response masking (FRM) approach. Unlike the conventional finite impulse response (FIR) based FRM approach, the FRM technique used in this thesis incorporates infinite impulse response (IIR) digital interpolation subfilters, thereby reducing the overall filter order that results in a reduction of hardware complexity. Two realization methods are discussed in this thesis, namely, the bilinear-lossless-discrete-integrators (bilinear-LDI) digital filter design technique, and the lattice wave digital filter (lattice WDF) digital filter design technique. Diversity controlled (DC) genetic algorithm (GA) is employed to optimize both types of IIR based FRM digital filters over the efficient canonical signed digit (CSD) multiplier coefficient space. DCGAs represent FRM digital filters by a binary chromosome and proceed from a population pool of candidate chromosomes to future generations in order to arrive at the desired FRM digital filter satisfying the design specifications. A novel cost-function is used that allows the DCGA to simultaneously optimize both the amplitude-frequency and group-delay frequency response. A fast convergence speed has been observed. / Communications

This study targets the poorly described egg and larval stages of wrasses and parrotfishes that as adults inhabit coral reefs and seagrasses in the western central Atlantic. Descriptions are provided to allow laboratory identification of the egg and larval stages of these fishes. Accounts are given for 16 of the 20 species of labrid and six of the 14 species of scarids that occur here. The biological, hydrographic, and meteorological data from four oceanographic surveys of the southern Straits of Florida were analyzed to provide a synthesis of the effects of the environment on the distribution of larval fishes occupying a region that is influenced by geostrophic currents and mesoscale recirculation features. Results indicate these oceanographic phenomena play an important role in influencing the distribution of these fishes in their pelagic nursery habitat. The most striking evidence for this comes from the close association of high abundances of fish larvae with the Tortugas Gyre, a semi-permanent mesoscale eddy frequently present off the western Florida Keys. Most species were found in greatest abundance near the center of the eddy, while others were limited to offshore waters along its periphery in deeper depth strata. Older larvae occurred more frequently than younger stages. Those taxa most abundant near the center of the eddy were also more often taken as older larvae. Two hypotheses are proposed to account for larval accumulation in the center of the eddy, which are not mutually exclusive. The first is based on advection of passive larvae that are cyclonically entrained into the center of the eddy along the horizontal plane, while the second provides for a cascade of ecological effects that originate from eddy-induced upwelling in the vertical plane. Diel and ontogenetic effects were shown to be important components of the vertical distribution patterns displayed by these fishes. The vertical distribution of most species within the top 115 m of the water column was non-uniform. Mean depths of most larvae were deeper during the day than at night, with older stage larvae occurring deeper than younger stages.

No description available.

The structure of symplectic (canonical) transformations on manifolds with conical singularities is established. The operators associated with these transformations are defined in the weight spaces and their properties investigated.

We consider a system of infinitely many hard balls in R^d undergoing Brownian motions and submitted to a smooth pair potential. It is modelized by an infinite-dimensional stochastic differential equation with a local time term. We prove that the set of all equilibrium measures, solution of a detailed balance equation, coincides with the set of canonical Gibbs measures associated to the hard core potential added to the smooth interaction potential.

We consider a system of infinitely many hard balls in Rd undergoing Brownian motions and submitted to a smooth pair potential. It is modelized by an infinite-dimensional Stochastic Differential Equation with a local time term. We prove that the set of all equilibrium measures, solution of a Detailed Balance Equation, coincides with the set of canonical Gibbs measures associated to the hard core potential added to the smooth interaction potential.

A Hamiltonian system in potential form (formula in the original abstract) subject to smooth constraints on q can be viewed as a Hamiltonian system on a manifold, but numerical computations must be performed in Rn. In this paper methods which reduce "Hamiltonian differential algebraic equations" to ODEs in Euclidean space are examined. The authors study the construction of canonical parameterizations or local charts as well as methods based on the construction of ODE systems in the space in which the constraint manifold is embedded which preserve the constraint manifold as an invariant manifold. In each case, a Hamiltonian system of ordinary differential equations is produced. The stability of the constraint invariants and the behavior of the original Hamiltonian along solutions are investigated both numerically and analytically.