Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Comparison Of Longitudinal Changes In Resting State Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Between Alzheimer’S And Healthy Controls, Berk Can Yilmaz

Theses

Resting State Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (rs-fMRI) is a technique that is widely used for analyzing brain function using different approaches and methods. This study involves rs-fMRI analysis of Blood Oxygenation Level Dependent (BOLD) signals acquired from Alzheimer’s disease (AD) Patients and Healthy Controls (HC). Each subject in the study had both functional and anatomical images with at least one rs-fMRI scan with their Anatomical (T1) scans. Previous rs-fMRI studies have demonstrated that AD shows differences in Amplitude of Low Frequency (<0.1 Hz) Fluctuations (ALFF), and Regional Homogeneity (ReHo) measures according to HCs.

The aim of the study is to investigate individual and group level differences using ReHo and mALFF related …

Analysis Of Gameplay Strategies In Hearthstone: A Data Science Approach, Connor W. Watson

Theses

In recent years, games have been a popular test bed for AI research, and the presence of Collectible Card Games (CCGs) in that space is still increasing. One such CCG for both competitive/casual play and AI research is Hearthstone, a two-player adversarial game where players seeks to implement one of several gameplay strategies to defeat their opponent and decrease all of their Health points to zero. Although some open source simulators exist, some of their methodologies for simulated agents create opponents with a relatively low skill level. Using evolutionary algorithms, this thesis seeks to evolve agents with a higher skill …

The Primary Volatile Composition Of Comet C/2015 Er61 (Panstarrs), Aaron Butler

Theses

In the outer edges of the solar system exist two regions: the Kuiper belt and Oort cloud. These two regions have a high amount of icy bodies (comets) orbiting the Sun. Comets located within the Oort cloud and Kuiper belt contain an ancient codex to the solar systems contents, before the formation of our solar system. Presented are near-infrared, high-resolution (λ/Δλ ~40000) data obtained from the immersion-grating echelle spectrograph iSHELL at the 3m NASA Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) in Maunakea, Hawaii of the Oort cloud comet C/2015 ER61 (PANSTARRS). Observations took place on April 15 and 17 in 2017 while …