Adaption and application of morphological pseudoconvolutions to scanning tunneling and atomic force microscopy

A recently developed class of digital filters known as morphological pseudoconvolutions are adapted and applied to Scanning Tunneling Microscopy (STM) and Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) images. These filters are shown to outperform, both visually and in the mean square error sense, previously introduced Wiener filtering techniques. The filters are compared on typical STM/AFM images, using both modeled and actual data. The technique is general, and is shown to perform very well on many types of STM and AFM images

Using polarized Raman spectroscopy and the pseudospectral method to characterize molecular structure and function

Electronic structure calculation is an essential approach for determining the structure and function of molecules and is therefore of critical interest to physics, chemistry, and materials science. Of the various algorithms for calculating electronic structure, the pseudospectral method is among the fastest. However, the trade-off for its speed is more up-front programming and testing, and as a result, applications using the pseudospectral method currently lag behind those using other methods. In Part I of this dissertation, we first advance the pseudospectral method by optimizing it for an important application, polarized Raman spectroscopy, which is a well-established tool used to characterize molecular properties. This is an application of particular importance because often the easiest and most economical way to obtain the polarized Raman spectrum of a material is to simulate it; thus, utilization of the pseudospectral method for this purpose will accelerate progress in the determination of molecular properties. We demonstrate that our implementation of Raman spectroscopy using the pseudospectral method results in spectra that are just as accurate as those calculated using the traditional analytic method, and in the process, we derive the most comprehensive formulation to date of polarized Raman intensity formulas, applicable to both crystalline and isotropic systems. Next, we apply our implementation to determine the orientations of crystalline oligothiophenes --- a class of materials important in the field of organic electronics --- achieving excellent agreement with experiment and demonstrating the general utility of polarized Raman spectroscopy for the determination of crystal orientation. In addition, we derive from first-principles a method for using polarized Raman spectra to establish unambiguously whether a uniform region of a material is crystalline or isotropic. Finally, we introduce free, open-source software that allows a user to determine any of a number of polarized Raman properties of a sample given common output from electronic structure calculations. In Part II, we apply the pseudospectral method to other areas of scientific importance requiring a deeper understanding of molecular structure and function. First, we use it to accurately determine the frequencies of vibrational tags on biomolecules that can be detected in real-time using stimulated Raman spectroscopy. Next, we evaluate the performance of the pseudospectral method for calculating excited-state energies and energy gradients of large molecules --- another new application of the pseudospectral method --- showing that the calculations run much more quickly than those using the analytic method. Finally, we use the pseudospectral method to simulate the bottleneck process of a solar cell used for water splitting, a promising technology for converting the sun's energy into hydrogen fuel. We apply the speed of the pseudospectral method by modeling the relevant part of the system as a large, explicitly passivated titanium dioxide nanoparticle and simulating it realistically using hybrid density functional theory with an implicit solvent model, yielding insight into the physical nature of the rate-limiting step of water splitting. These results further validate the particularly fast and accurate simulation methodologies used, opening the door to efficient and realistic cluster-based, fully quantum-mechanical simulations of the bottleneck process of a promising technology for clean solar energy conversion. Taken together, we show how both polarized Raman spectroscopy and the pseudospectral method are effective tools for analyzing the structure and function of important molecular systems

Designing a Better Day: Annotated Bibliography of Adult Day Care Literature, 1990-1998

This monograph contains 56 annotated bibliographies of literature published since 1990 on Adult Day Care facilities. The annotations are organized into five components - organization, staff, family, client, and physical setting - all of which form the dimensions of place for Adult Day Care. A matrix of the annotated bibliographies gives an overview of categories addressed in each publication.https://dc.uwm.edu/caupr_mono/1007/thumbnail.jp

PLANR.: Planar Learning Autonomous Navigation Robot

PLANR is a self-contained robot capable of mapping a space and generating 2D floor plans of a building while identifying objects of interest. It runs Robot Operating System (ROS) and houses four main hardware components. An Arduino Mega board handles the navigation, while an NVIDIA Jetson TX2, holds most of the processing power and runs ROS. An Orbbec Astra Pro stereoscopic camera is used for recognition of doors, windows and outlets and the RPLiDAR A3 laser scanner is able to give depth for wall detection and dimension measurements. The robot is intended to operate autonomously and without constant human monitoring or intervention. The user is responsible for booting up the robot and extracting the map via SSH before shutting down

Designing a Better Day: Adult Day Centers: Comparative Case Studies

The Adult Day Center (ADC) is emerging as a new and important social institution and place type in the continuum of care environments. Nine case studies representing the range of ADC\u27s currently operating in the United States are considered from a holistic, systemic perspective. Each case is presented in terms of place profile, program, physical setting and the place in use. The results are not a matter of ADC best practices or good/bad ways of doing things, but rather a method of identifying characteristics and components that appear to contribute to making a positive difference in the experience of adult day care.https://dc.uwm.edu/caupr_mono/1008/thumbnail.jp

Silk from Crickets: A New Twist on Spinning

Raspy crickets (Orthoptera: Gryllacrididae) are unique among the orthopterans in producing silk, which is used to build shelters. This work studied the material composition and the fabrication of cricket silk for the first time. We examined silk-webs produced in captivity, which comprised cylindrical fibers and flat films. Spectra obtained from micro-Raman experiments indicated that the silk is composed of protein, primarily in a beta-sheet conformation, and that fibers and films are almost identical in terms of amino acid composition and secondary structure. The primary sequences of four silk proteins were identified through a mass spectrometry/cDNA library approach. The most abundant silk protein was large in size (300 and 220 kDa variants), rich in alanine, glycine and serine, and contained repetitive sequence motifs; these are features which are shared with several known beta-sheet forming silk proteins. Convergent evolution at the molecular level contrasts with development by crickets of a novel mechanism for silk fabrication. After secretion of cricket silk proteins by the labial glands they are fabricated into mature silk by the labium-hypopharynx, which is modified to allow the controlled formation of either fibers or films. Protein folding into beta-sheet structure during silk fabrication is not driven by shear forces, as is reported for other silks

Nanomechanical testing of silica nanospheres for levitated optomechanics experiments

Optically-levitated dielectric particles can serve as ultra-sensitive detectors of feeble forces and torques, as tools for use in quantum information science, and as a testbed for quantum coherence in macroscopic systems. Knowledge of the structural and optical properties of the particles is important for calibrating the sensitivity of such experiments. Here we report the results of nanomechanical testing of silica nanospheres and investigate an annealing approach which can produce closer to bulk-like behavior in the samples in terms of their elastic moduli. These results, combined with our experimental investigations of optical trap lifetimes in high vacuum at high trapping-laser intensity for both annealed and as-grown nanospheres, were used to provide a theoretical analysis of the effects of porosity and non-sphericity in the samples, identifying possible mechanisms of trapping instabilities for nanospheres with non-bulk-silica-like properties.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figure

Screening for Food Insecurity in Primary Care

Introduction. Hunger Free VT (HFVT) is a non-profit organization whose mission is to end the injustice of hunger and malnutrition for all Vermonters. HFVT developed an internet-based Continuing Medical Education (CME) course in order to bring awareness to the issue of food insecurity and enhance medical provider training. The CME course entitled Childhood Hunger in Vermont: The Hidden Impacts on Health, Development, and Wellbeing was started by 59 health care providers in VT but only completed by 4.https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/comphp_gallery/1086/thumbnail.jp

An apparatus for in-vacuum loading of nanoparticles into an optical trap

We describe the design, construction, and operation of an apparatus utilizing a piezoelectric transducer for in-vacuum loading of nanoparticles into an optical trap for use in levitated optomechanics experiments. In contrast to commonly used nebulizer-based trap-loading methods which generate aerosolized liquid droplets containing nanoparticles, the method produces dry aerosols of both spherical and high-aspect ratio particles ranging in size by approximately two orders of mangitude. The device has been shown to generate accelerations of order $10^7$ $g$, which is sufficient to overcome stiction forces between glass nanoparticles and a glass substrate for particles as small as $170$ nm diameter. Particles with sizes ranging from $170$ nm to $\sim 10$ $\mu$m have been successfully loaded into optical traps at pressures ranging from $1$ bar to $0.6$ mbar. We report the velocity distribution of the particles launched from the substrate and our results indicate promise for direct loading into ultra-high-vacuum with sufficient laser feedback cooling. This loading technique could be useful for the development of compact fieldable sensors based on optically levitated nanoparticles as well as matter-wave interference experiments with ultra-cold nano-objects which rely on multiple repeated free-fall measurements and thus require rapid trap re-loading in high vacuum conditions.Comment: 9 pages, 10 figure