Microbial diversity manifests differently in different ecological niches of the body, with greater diversity generally expected in the gut, given that different locations have unique roles to play in the digestive system. Most microbial research is conducted using fecal samples, meaning the resulting microbes come from various places all throughout the intestines and not specific locations. The Integrative Human Microbiome Project (HMP2), provides a unique opportunity to study microbiomes of both the rectum and ileum through the use of biopsy samples taken from both locations. Using the data provided the microbiome compositions of the rectum and ileum were able to be studied and analyzed to showcase how those microbes associated with clinical variables. Inflammatory bowel diseases are complex diseases that are heterogeneous at clinical, immunological, molecular, genetic, and microbial levels. While it is known that those affected by these diseases have microbiomes that differ from those with healthy guts, not much is known about which changes in the microbiome represent causes rather than effects from changes in health.

Porbeagles (Lamna nasus) are a highly commercially important shark species that is threatened with extinction due to overfishing. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) displacement loop (D-loop) sequence data from 18 Northwest (NW) Atlantic and 30 Southwest (SW) Pacific porbeagles reveal that these regional populations have been genetically separated between 1.39 and 1.25 million years ago (MYA), a time frame which correlates with the end of the earth’s last cooling period. There is far greater genetic differentiation (FST = 0.835) between the NW and SW populations than among sharks within each population supporting a very high level of divergence. A lack of gene flow probably stemming from their limited distribution to cold water temperatures (-1oC to 15oC) has led to their genetic divergence. The NW Atlantic population exhibited fewer haplotypes than the SW Pacific population (2 vs 4). The mean nucleotide diversity value of the NW Atlantic population was also 50% lower (0.00143 vs. 0.00228). Male and female NW Atlantic individuals reflected virtually identical mean population diversity values (0.00393 vs 0.00399); however, females were prevalent near shorelines while the males were more often found in open waters. Of the three age groups within the NW Atlantic population, the immature individuals exhibited the greatest mean nucleotide diversity (0.00452), followed by the sub-adult group (0.00293) and the mature group (0.00288), suggesting that dispersion starts earlier in their life cycle and reduces as they get older. The porbeagle population biology, as revealed by D-loop sequence information, may have significant implications for the conservation efforts of this species. As differences in age-based and sex-based dispersion exist, it is important to understand the relative contributions of gene flow by adults of both sexes in order to implement more effective conservation strategies.

In order to understand if and how strategic resource allocation can constrain the structure of pair-wise competition outcomes in competitive human competitions we introduce a new multiplayer resource allocation game, the Multiplayer Lotto Games. This new games allows agents to allocate their resources across a continuum of possible specializations. In order to explore the behavior of strategic agents of the Multiplayer Lotto game, we implement an agent-based model with replicator dynamics. The model simulation showed agent behavior different than what the Population Lotto Game would predict, and we propose the “small wave” hypothesis as the explanation. Namely, that “small battles” along the domain are beneficial to agents with lesser resources such that they perform better against richer agents than otherwise expected.

Due to the large scale of power systems, latency uncertainty in communication can cause severe problems in wide-area measurement systems. To resolve the issue, a significant amount of past work focuses on using emerging technologywhich is machine learning methods such as Q-learning to address latency issues in modern controls. Although such a method can deal with the stochastic characteristics of communication latency in the long run, the Q-learning methods tend to overestimate Q-values, leading to high bias. To solve the overestimation bias issue, the learning structure is redesigned with a twin-delayed deep deterministic policy gradient algorithm to handle the damping control issue under unknown latency in the power network. Meanwhile, a new reward function is proposed, taking into account the machine speed deviation, the episode termination prevention, and the feedback from action space. In this way, the system optimally damps down frequency oscillations while maintaining the system’s stability and reliable operation within defined limits. The simulation results verify the proposed algorithm in various perspectives including the latency sensitivity analysis under high renewable energy penetration and the comparison with other machine learning algorithms. For example, if the proposed twin-delayed deep deterministic policy gradient algorithm is applied, the low-frequency oscillation significantly improved compared to existing algorithms. Furthermore, under the mentorship of Dr. Yang Weng, the development of a big data analysis software project has been collaborating with the Salt River Project (SRP), a major power utility in Arizona. After a thorough examination of data for the project, it is examined that SRP is suffering from a lot of smart meters data issues. An important goal of the project is to design big data software to monitor SRP smart meter data and to present indicators of abnormalities and special events. Currently, the big data software interface has been developed for SRP, which has already been successfully adopted by other utilities, research institutes, and laboratories as well.

Chapter 1: Functional Specialization and Arm Length in Octopus bimaculoides<br/>Although studies are limited, there is some evidence that octopuses use their arms for specialized functions. For example, in Octopus maya and O. vulgaris, the anterior arms are utilized more frequently for grasping and exploring (Lee, 1992; Byrne et al., 2006a), while posterior arms are more frequently utilized for crawling in O. vulgaris (Levy et al., 2015). In addition, O. vulgaris uses favored arms when retrieving food and making contact with a T-maze as dictated by their lateralized vision (Byrne, 2006b). O. vulgaris also demonstrates a preference for anterior arms when retrieving food from a Y-maze (Gutnick et. al. 2020). In Octopus bimaculoides bending and elongation were more frequent in anterior arms than posterior arms during reaching and grasping tasks, and right arms displayed deformation more frequently than left arms, with the exception of the hectocotylus (R3) in males (Kennedy et. al. 2020). Given these observed functional differences, the goal of this study was to determine if morphological differences exist between different octopus arm identities, coded as L1-L4 and R1-R4. In particular, the relationship between arm length and arm identity was analyzed statistically. The dataset included 111 intact arms from 22 wild-caught specimens of O. bimaculoides (11 male and 11 female). Simple linear regressions and an analysis of covariance were performed to test the relationship between arm length and a number of factors, including body mass, sex, anterior versus posterior location, and left versus the right side. Mass had a significant linear relationship with arm length and a one-way ANOVA demonstrated that arm identity is significantly correlated with arm length. Moreover, an analysis of covariance demonstrated that independent of mass, arm identity has a significant linear relationship with arm length. Despite an overall appearance of bilateral symmetry, arms of different identities do not have statistically equivalent lengths in O. bimaculoides. Furthermore, differences in arm length do not appear to be related to sex, anterior versus posterior location, or left or right side. These results call into question the existing practice of treating all arms as equivalent by either using a single-arm measurement as representative of all eight or calculating an average length and suggest that morphological analyses of specific arm identities may be more informative.<br/><br/>Chapter 2: Predicting and Analyzing Octopus bimaculoides Sensitivity to Global Anesthetic<br/>Although global anesthetic is widely used in human and veterinary medicine the mechanism and impact of global anesthetic is relatively poorly comprehended, even in well-studied mammalian models. Invertebrate anesthetic is even less understood. In order to evaluate factors that impact anesthetic effectiveness analyses were conducted on 22 wild-caught specimens of Octopus bimaculoides during 72 anesthetic events.Three machine learning models: regression tree, random forest, and generalized additive model were utilized to make predictions of the concentration of anesthetic (percent ethanol by volume) from 11 features and to determine feature importance in making those predictions. The fit of each model was analyzed on three criteria: correlation coefficient, mean squared error, and relative error. Feature importance was determined in a model-specific manner. Predictions from the best performing model, random forest, have a .82 correlation coefficient with experimental values. Feature importance suggests that temperature on arrival and cohabitation factors strongly influence predictions for anesthesia concentration. This likely indicates the transportation process was incurring stress on the animals and that cohabitation was also stressful for the typically solitary O. bimaculoides. This long-term stress could lead to a decline in the animal’s well-being and a lower necessary ethanol concentration (Horvath et al., 2013). This analysis provides information to improve the care of octopus in laboratory settings and furthers the understanding of the effects of global anesthetic in invertebrates, particularly one with a distributed nervous system.