Digital Commons Network^™

Hitch Cart “Landing Gear”, Rebekah White, Jose Raygoza, Randy Hernandez, Brandon Leon

Mechanical Engineering

This report aims to allow our sponsor, to review our design process of the Hitch Cart Landing Gear Prototype. In the design overview section of this report, we discuss the primary design modifications we made to the wheel mechanism of the existing hitch cart prototype, including the addition of the ACME screws and the folding brackets. This allows our sponsor to see the intended improvements made to the past prototype and understand the primary goal of our project. Then, in the implementation section, we cover the entire manufacturing process to allow our sponsor to understand what manufacturing steps must be …

The Mongolian Remodeling And The Structure Of Anoplocephalid Cestode Diversity, Mackenzie Grover

All NMU Master's Theses

Ecological disruption plays an important role in structuring diversity of flora, fauna, and their parasites. At the end of the Eocene, climatic change across Asia resulted in a faunal turnover (the Mongolian Remodeling) as rodents diversified and larger mammals declined. Throughout the Oligocene, the landscape in Asia was characterized by episodic climatic and landscape changes resulting in pulses of rodent diversification. The role of historical ecological disruption in Central Asia in structuring the diversity of parasites of small rodents has not been thoroughly investigated. The hyper-diverse Paranoplocephala species complex (family: Anoplocephalidae) infect rodents throughout the Holarctic and present an opportunity …

On Weak Solutions And The Navier-Stokes Equations, Aryan Prabhudesai

Mathematical Sciences Undergraduate Honors Theses

In this paper, I will discuss a partial differential equation that has solutions that are discontinuous. This example motivates the need for distribution theory, which will provide an interpretation of what it means for a discontinuous function to be a “solution” to a PDE. Then I will give a detailed foundation of distributions, including the definition of the derivative of a distribution. Then I will introduce and give background on the Navier-Stokes equations. Following that, I will explain the Millennium Problem concerning global regularity for the Navier-Stokes equations and share mathematical results regarding weak solutions. Finally, I will go over …

Enabling Iov Communication Through Secure Decentralized Clustering Using Federated Deep Reinforcement Learning, Chandler Scott

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Internet of Vehicles (IoV) holds immense potential for revolutionizing transporta- tion systems by facilitating seamless vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication. However, challenges such as congestion, pollution, and security per- sist, particularly in rural areas with limited infrastructure. Existing centralized solu- tions are impractical in such environments due to latency and privacy concerns. To address these challenges, we propose a decentralized clustering algorithm enhanced with Federated Deep Reinforcement Learning (FDRL). Our approach enables low- latency communication, competitive packet delivery ratios, and cluster stability while preserving data privacy. Additionally, we introduce a trust-based security framework for IoV environments, integrating a central authority …

Application Of Functionalized Organosilicas In Adsorption Of Nitrates, Stephen Amoako

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study addresses the critical environmental issue of elevated nitrate levels in water bodies, primarily due to excessive use of nitrogenous fertilizers and improper waste disposal. It focuses on reducing nitrate concentrations in polluted water to permissible levels through the effectiveness of hybrid materials in nitrate adsorption. We synthesized nine amino-functionalized adsorbents using grafting and sol-gel techniques. Batch adsorption tests confirmed the high nitrate adsorption capacities of these adsorbents, with sol-gel materials showing the highest efficiency due to their abundant amino group contents. Among these, the surfactant-free, sol-gel adsorbent was the most effective, combining ease of synthesis with cost-efficiency. Our …

The Gavel And The Camera: Environmental Law And Photojournalism's Relationship To Appalachian Identity, Emily S. Patton

Honors Theses

Both the federal government and photojournalism have played a substantial role in the “othering” of Appalachia while simultaneously attempting to save it. Examining both institutions demonstrates the exploitative processes that alter the perception of rural communities and their surrounding environment. Stacey Kranitz’s archival exhibit, As It Was Give(n) To Me, internalizes this precarious role of the camera in a region heavily journalized. By inhabiting the area for years, establishing close relationships, and researching the documented history of Appalachia, Kranitz’s work becomes her livelihood in the dissolution of profession vs. personal. She is critical of past projects whose objective portrayal of …

Excited State Processes In Radical Elaborated Platinum Donor-Acceptor Complexes, Sangita Paudel

Chemistry and Chemical Biology ETDs

Organo-transition metal complexes are being widely studied to understand their photophysical properties for their wide range of applications as efficient emitters in organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs), light emitting electrochemical cells (LEECs), etc. Cyclometalated organo-transition metal complexes such as cyclometalated square planar platinum(II) complexes are becoming suitable candidates for such applications because of their highly efficient luminescence. Understanding the excited properties of such complexes is useful in designing highly efficient and color tunable phosphors with desired excited state lifetimes. We aim to explore the influence of radical substituents on electronic structure, luminescence quantum efficiencies, and excited state lifetimes by synthesizing …

Differential Elliptic Flow Analysis Of Hadrons With Different Wuark Content In Simulated Pp Collisions, Elhussein Osama

Theses and Dissertations

According to current physics theories, it is assumed that in the first microsecond after the big bang, the universe was in a state of matter called Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP), where the fundamental consistent of matters (quarks and leptons), were highly energetic, and floating around freely. Searching for such phase of matter; as the possible earliest signatures after the big bang, and among many other interesting experimental measurements, the jet quenching and elliptic flow are the most important ones, in the heavy ion collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiments.

The azimuthal anisotropy …

Positron Emission Tomography In Oncology And Environmental Science, Samantha Delaney

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The last half century has played witness to the onset of molecular imaging for the clinical assessment of physiological targets. While several medical imaging modalities allow for the visualization of the functional and anatomical properties of humans and living systems, few offer accurate quantitation and the ability to detect biochemical processes with low-administered drug mass doses. This limits how physicians and scientists may diagnose and treat medical issues, such as cancer, disease, and foreign agents.

A promising alternative to extant invasive procedures and suboptimal imaging modalities to assess the nature of a biological environment is the use of positron emission …

Quantics Tensor Trains: The Study Of A Continuous Lattice Model And Beyond, Aleix Bou Comas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This four-chapter dissertation studies the efficient discretization of continuous variable functions with tensor train representation. The first chapter describes all the methodology used to discretize functions and store them efficiently. In this section, the algorithm tensor renormalization group is explained for self-containment purposes. The second chapter centers around the XY model. Quantics tensor trains are used to describe the transfer matrix of the model and compute one and two-dimensional quantities. The one dimensional magnitudes are compared to analytical results with an agreement close to machine precision. As for two dimensions, the analytical results cannot be computed. However, the critical temperature …

Context In Computer Vision: A Taxonomy, Multi-Stage Integration, And A General Framework, Xuan Wang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Contextual information has been widely used in many computer vision tasks, such as object detection, video action detection, image classification, etc. Recognizing a single object or action out of context could be sometimes very challenging, and context information may help improve the understanding of a scene or an event greatly. However, existing approaches design specific contextual information mechanisms for different detection tasks.

In this research, we first present a comprehensive survey of context understanding in computer vision, with a taxonomy to describe context in different types and levels. Then we proposed MultiCLU, a new multi-stage context learning and utilization framework, …

Non-Destructive Determination Of Surface Area In Reverse Phase Chromatographic Columns, Margaret Figus

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Excess adsorption isotherms of acetonitrile and methanol from water were measured on eight commercial columns. Columns used in this study represent the latest examples in column development and include three different poroshell columns (Kinotex C18, Ascentis C18, and Halo C18) as well as conventional columns with significantly different adsorbent geometries (Allure C18, YMC C18) and various hybrid-silica columns (Gemini C18, Xterra C18, and XBridge C18). Comparison of the excess adsorption isotherms measured on all these columns and expressed in surface-specific form demonstrated significant similarity of the adsorption properties of all columns, which allows the introduction of the Standard Excess Adsorption …

Deformation Mapping And Modeling Of The Aleutian Volcanoes With Insar And Numerical Models, Jiahui Wang

Earth Sciences Theses and Dissertations

Surface deformation mapping is an essential component for comprehensive monitoring of volcanic activities, serving as a vital tool for discerning crucial insights into magma dynamics, storage, and migration for accurate hazard forecasting, assessment, and mitigation. However, monitoring of the volcanic deformation across the Aleutian volcanic arc is usually limited by the lack of terrestrial sensors deployed due to their remote locations and hostile environmental conditions, necessitating alternative methodologies for data acquisition and analysis.

My PhD study aims at precisely mapping the crustal deformation for the Aleutian volcanoes and tracking the evolution of the magmatic system with Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar …

Advancing Coupled Cluster Methods: Tensor Factorization And Analytic Gradient Implementation, Tingting Zhao

Chemistry Theses and Dissertations

With the rapid advancement of computing capabilities, computational chemistry has become increasingly indispensable in both experiment design and the interpretation of experimental outcomes. Wave-function-based quantum mechanistic methods are highly sought after for their ability to provide high-accuracy data and their potential for systematic improvement. However, to extend their applicability to larger molecules, it is essential to employ rank-reducing approximations to these methods. This dissertation dedicates Chapters Three and Four to the development of rank-reduced methodologies. Additionally, beyond single-point energies, molecular geometries and properties of molecule-excited states hold paramount importance across diverse fields of chemistry. Hence, Chapter Five presents the work …

Companionship, Romance, And Self-Perception With Conversational Chatbots, Jonathan Windsor

Student Research Submissions

Serving as a metaphorical gateway transcending the communicative barriers of physical relationships in interpersonal dialogues, artificial imators of human behavior and speech, also known as conversational chatbots; a simulation of human knowledge and existence in a bi-directional conversation, functions as a rhetor of expression. Spanning from contexts of professional to romantic, I serve to dissect and critically analyze the nuances of human-machine relationships based on pre-established literature, inviting ethical considerations and biases in their design and marketing. Corporate influences spark pre-established servitude-esque relationships with conversational agents. Professional applications, both task-oriented and emotionally based alike, paint a mixed picture of …

A Nlp Approach To Automating The Generation Of Surveys For Market Research, Anav Chug

Honors College Theses

Market Research is vital but includes activities that are often laborious and time consuming. Survey questionnaires are one possible output of the process and market researchers spend a lot of time manually developing questions for focus groups. The proposed research aims to develop a software prototype that utilizes Natural Language Processing (NLP) to automate the process of generating survey questions for market research. The software uses a pre-trained Open AI language model to generate multiple choice survey questions based on a given product prompt, send it to a targeted email list, and also provides a real-time analysis of the responses …

A Just, Sustainable Transition At Fordham University, Ethan Shepard

Student Theses 2015-Present

This paper takes a deeper look at Fordham University’s environmental impact and concludes with a strategy outline that works towards a just, sustainable future on the university campus and surrounding areas. New York City is an area already facing the adverse effects of climate change, and there are several threats that have the potential to cause grave consequences moving forward. Prior to constructing a climate action plan, it is integral to understand the past and present status of The Bronx under a socio-environmental lens. Chapter One focuses on the current status of Fordham’s Rose Hill Campus from a sustainability perspective …

The Impact Of Heterogeneous Voting Strategies And Candidate Issue Adaptation On Elections: An Agent-Based Model, Harmony Peura

Student Research Submissions

Political candidates in a democracy articulate positions on the issues of the day, but they are also highly aware of voter sentiment on those issues, and tailor their campaigns accordingly as they seek to win elections. Voters, too, adjust their political opinions based on (among other things) interactions with others in their social network. I present an agent-based simulation that models this dynamic interplay between candidates and voters, in order to shed light on what outcomes candidates can expect to result from a policy of “chasing” votes. The voters in the simulation differ from one another in the decision procedure …

Techniques And Trials In Pteridophyte Conservation And Cultivation, Jessica Bartel

Senior Theses and Projects

With the progressive nature of climate change conditions globally over the past century, there has been increasing focus on conservation of all species, but particularly those already endangered. Over 12,000 species of ferns live on Earth, and they do not produce seeds, so an investigation into their spores and how they reach maturity will allow us to preserve more genetic material in the future for these species. As a result, we investigated ex situ conservation and survivability of in vitro cultured gametophytes of within the genus Dryopteridaceae through herbarium sample germination rates across samples representing a wide age range ( …

Gis Analysis Application Of Flood Risk Map In Beijing, China, Yuxuan Liu

Honors Capstones

From the end of July to the beginning of August 2023, Beijing, China, affected by Typhoon "Dusuri" experienced the most precipitation in the Beijing area in 140 years of instrument measurement records. This event led to the evacuation of more than 1.8 million people across the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and the tragic loss of 62 lives. After experiencing such fierce heavy rainfall and flood disasters, how to predict and prepare for such catastrophic events and avoid losses in the future has become a crucial problem. Geographic information systems (GIS) can integrate different layers of geospatial information and provide us with powerful …

Sedimentary Conditions At A Tidal Creek That Exhibits Seasonal Pelagic-Benthic Variations, Jack B. Corbin

Honors Theses

Tidal creeks in the Grand Strand of South Carolina are small but numerous connectors between land and ocean. One of these creeks, White Point Swash, exhibits a seasonal switch between planktonic and benthic photosynthesizers. As plankton become less abundant in fall, benthic macroalgae bloom, aided by lower water levels due to fall-winter dredging of the main channel, until late Spring. This study builds on previous findings and examines sedimentary conditions at this site further. Sedimentary chlorophyll a (in microphytobenthos) and pore water nutrient concentrations are confirmed to be higher than water-column concentrations. Sedimentary nutrient fluxes to the sediment-water interface, calculated …

Boolean Group Structure In Class Groups Of Positive Definite Quadratic Forms Of Primitive Discriminant, Christopher Albert Hudert Jr.

Student Research Submissions

It is possible to completely describe the representation of any integer by binary quadratic forms of a given discriminant when the discriminant’s class group is a Boolean group (also known as an elementary abelian 2-group). For other discriminants, we can partially describe the representation using the structure of the class group. The goal of the present project is to find whether any class group with 32 elements and a primitive positive definite discriminant is a Boolean group. We find that no such class group is Boolean.

Signal Processing Algorithms For Doppler Lidar Sensors, Samantha Grubb

Physics and Astronomy Honors Papers

Light detection and ranging (LiDAR) is a remote sensing technology that obtains relative distance and velocity measurements between a sensor and a defined target by using light transmitted and received from the target. FMCW Doppler LiDAR, a particular variant of LiDAR, functions by analyzing the frequency shift in the reflected light to determine the target's range and velocity. This technology plays a crucial role across various sectors including defense, aerospace, and automotive. This paper presents signal processing algorithms designed to optimize data obtained from Doppler LiDAR sensors. By applying various window functions to time domain data, the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) …

Analytical And Numerical Analysis Of The Sirs Model, Catherine Nguyen

Student Research Submissions

Mathematical models in epidemiology describe how diseases affect and spread within a population. By understanding the trends of a disease, more effective public health policies can be made. In this paper, the Susceptible-Infected-Recovered-Susceptible (SIRS) Model was examined analytically and numerically to compare with the data for Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). Since the SIRS model is a complex model, analytical techniques were used to solve simplified versions of the SIRS model in order to understand general trends that occur. Then by Euler's Method, the Runge-Kutta Method, and the Predictor-Corrector Method, computational approximations were obtained to solve and plot the SIRS model. …

On Cheeger Constants Of Knots, Robert Lattimer

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

In this thesis, we will look at finding bounds for the Cheeger constant of links. We will do this by analyzing an infinite family of links call two-bridge fully augmented links. In order to find a bound on the Cheeger constant, we will look for the Cheeger constant of the link’s crushtacean. We will use that Cheeger constant to give us insight on a good cut for the link itself, and use that cut to obtain a bound. This method gives us a constructive way to find an upper bound on the Cheeger constant of a two-bridge fully augmented link. …

Building And Using A Hydrology Experiment For Place-Based Learning With Native American Students, Michaela Shallue

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Geoscience has a known diversity problem, specifically a participation gap of ethnic minority representation, and it is especially severe regarding Native American representation. To address this participation gap, an identity gap needs to be addressed first. Native students need to visualize themselves as geoscientists before they can commit to geoscience programs and careers. This project uses a hands-on, place-based learning activity as an opportunity for Native students to better see themselves as geoscientists.

A portable rainfall simulator was constructed, calibrated, and refined for use in teaching concepts about rainfall, runoff, and erosion. It was employed in place-based learning exercises with …

The Effect Of Seed Mix Density And Composition On Wetland Plant Community Assembly In The Great Salt Lake Watershed, Elana Feldman

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Wetlands provide important ecosystem services to society but are in danger across the globe partly due to the spread of invasive species (species that harm humans, the environment, or the economy). One species, Phragmites australis, is a widespread invader across the country, including in the wetlands of the Great Salt Lake and Utah Lake. Phragmites australis spreads widely and quickly outcompetes native species. In places where P. australis has already been removed, seeding wetlands helps block P. australis from returning. Native plants’ ability to prevent invasive species from entering the community is affected by many factors, but two that …

Exploring Optimal Design Of Experiments For Random Effects Models, Ryan C. Bushman

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

The majority of research in the field of optimal design of experiments has focused on producing designs for fixed effects models. The purpose of this thesis is to explore how the optimal design framework applies to nested random effects models. The object that is being optimized is the model information matrix. We explore the full derivation of the random effects information matrix to highlight the complexity of the problem and show how the optimization is a function of the model's parameters. In conjunction with this research, the ODVC (Optimal Design for Variance Components) package was built to provide tools that …

Assessing Extant Methods For Generating G-Optimal Designs And A Novel Methodology To Compute The G-Score Of A Candidate Design, Hyrum John Hansen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Experimental designs are used by scientists to allocate treatments such that statistical inference is appropriate. Most traditional experimental designs have mathematical properties that make them desirable under certain conditions. Optimal experimental designs are those where the researcher can exercise total control over the treatment levels to maximize a chosen mathematical property. As is common in literature, the experimental design is represented as a matrix where each column represents a variable, and each row represents a trial. We define a function that takes as input the design matrix and outputs its score. We then algorithmically adjust each entry until a design …

Achieving Responsible Anomaly Detection, Xiao Han

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

In the digital transformation era, safeguarding online systems against anomalies – unusual patterns indicating potential threats or malfunctions – has become crucial. This dissertation embarks on enhancing the accuracy, explainability, and ethical integrity of anomaly detection systems. By integrating advanced machine learning techniques, it improves anomaly detection performance and incorporates fairness and explainability at its core.

The research tackles performance enhancement in anomaly detection by leveraging few-shot learning, demonstrating how systems can effectively identify anomalies with minimal training data. This approach overcomes data scarcity challenges. Reinforcement learning is employed to iteratively refine models, enhancing decision-making processes. Transfer learning enables the …