Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Unified Model Of Lightning & Electrostatic Discharges Across The Solar System, Annelisa Blackwell Esparza

Theses and Dissertations

As we increase the number of probes on other objects within our solar system, it becomes all the timelier to understand the physics of electrostatic discharges (ESDs). Since these probes will have sensitive instruments on-board, we will need to apply our existing knowledge of ESDs to extraterrestrial environments to protect these investments from deterioration. On Earth, even small-scale ESDs can permanently destroy critical components within electronics, while large-scale ESDs (e.g., lightning strikes) are capable of debilitating entire power grids. The characteristic timescale of an ESD is small compared to the timescales of cloud charging and storm evolution. This lets us …

Design Of Ethical Autonomous Agents For Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Using Fuzzy Logic, Gavin Giovanni Smith

Theses and Dissertations

Autonomous systems have, over the years become part of our everyday lives. These systems have been deployed to executed a diverse range of applications in different industries; finance, healthcare, military, and in particular, the flight industry. With the rise of UAVs, new opportunities arose, but with those opportunities came new pitfalls within any industry. For UAVs, one of the pitfalls came in the form of ethical decisionmaking, which led to a variety of questions. Can the Autonomous systems within UAVs be designed with ethics in mind? Which ethical guidelines would we use to implement such a system? How would we …

Non-Negative Matrix Factorization In The Identification Of Co-Mutations, Michael Robert Kolar

Theses and Dissertations

One of the difficulties of genetic research is the asymmetrical relationship between data collection techniques and data analysis techniques. The goal of this research was to test a novel application of non-negative matrix factorization, which would allow researchers to more easily identify co-mutations. Those co-mutations then can then be further verified by frequency analysis. This pruning process allows researchers to identify more fruitful research opportunities, saving time, energy, and funding. Past research has utilized non-negative matrix factorization to extract factors which meaningfully express underlying data features. This study extends the depth of non-negative matrix factorization knowledge in various ways. First, …

Representation Learning For Open Set Recognition And Novel Category Discovery, Jingyun Jia

Theses and Dissertations

As machine learning models have achieved great success in various research and industry fields, the success of these models heavily relies on the massive amount of data collection and human annotations. While the real world is an open set, the daily emerged categories and the lacking of annotations have become new challenges for machine learning models. The absence of newly emerged categories in training samples can be captured by Open Set Recognition (OSR). Then, given the newly emerged samples, the process of automatically identifying the novel categories is called Novel Category Discovery (NCD). In this dissertation, we focused on learning …

Investigating The O’Connell Effect In Kepler Eclipsing Binaries, Matthew Frederick Knote

Theses and Dissertations

The O’Connell effect – the presence of unequal maxima in eclipsing binaries – remains an unsolved riddle in the study of close binary systems. The Kepler space telescope produced high precision photometry of nearly 3,000 eclipsing binary systems, providing a unique opportunity to study the O’Connell effect in a large sample and in greater detail than in previous studies. I have characterized the observational properties – including temperature, luminosity, and eclipse depth – of a set of 212 systems (7.3% of Kepler eclipsing binaries) that display a maxima flux difference of at least 1%, representing the largest sample of O’Connell …

Internal Waves Of Port Everglades: Experimental And Numerical Studies To Characterize Ambient Magnetic Signals, Johanna Riley Evans

Theses and Dissertations

Ocean dynamics are an important contributing factor to measurable environmental magnetic noise. Seawater is conductive and as an internal wave oscillates across Earth’s magnetic field, a small yet detectable induced magnetic field develops. A significant source of underwater magnetic noise off the southeast coast of Florida comes from internal waves. Characterizing the magnetic signals present required a combination of computational modeling effort and field experiments. For this research, undersea sensors were monitored as a continuous field experiment and a computational fluid dynamic (CFD) magneto-hydrodynamic (MHD) model was customized to simulate internal wave-induced magnetic fields at the site. I developed the …

Understanding Ecological Relationships To Improve Biofouling Management Practices In The Marine Environment, Ann Catherine Wassick

Theses and Dissertations

Biofouling, the growth of benthic invertebrates on anthropogenic surfaces, impacts many industries and is a major vector of non-native species worldwide. Understanding the ecological relationships between biofouling organisms and their environment is necessary to assist management practices. This study investigates the biofouling communities at Port Canaveral, Florida, in order to potentially refine biofouling mitigation practices. Recruitment panels were used to document the temporal changes in community composition, biofouling pressure, recruitment, and growth rates. These factors were also used to assess relationships with temperature and salinity. A second component of this work provided documentation on the variation in non-native species abundance …

Modeling Settlement And Filtration Of The Indian River Lagoon Benthic Community, With An Emphasis On Living Dock Restoration Mats, Sandra Lisette Rech

Theses and Dissertations

The Indian River Lagoon (IRL) is one of the most biologically diverse estuaries in North America. An increase in population and anthropogenic effects have led to eutrophication, a decline in water quality, and overall degradation. The Living Docks program is a citizen science initiative started at the Florida Institute of Technology for lagoon restoration. In this program, public and private docks are volunteered to become Living Docks, where oyster mats made of plastic mesh and dead, dried oyster shells are attached to dock pilings in an effort to provide a natural substrate for benthic organism growth. The community which develops …

On Clinical Use Of Infrared Cameras For Video-Based Estimation Of 3d Facial Kinematics, William Mackenzie Harrington

Theses and Dissertations

Neurological and neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s disease (PD), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and stroke can cause speech and orofacial motor impairments with devastating effects on quality of life. Analysis of orofacial movement provides vital information for early diagnosis and tracking disease progression, but current clinical practice relies on perceptual assessments performed by clinicians, which are unreliable and insensitive to early symptoms. New methods in machine learning have enabled automatic and objective assessment of orofacial kinematics from color and depth videos, hence we introduce MEADepthCamera, a mobile application for RGB-D video and audio recording and automatic estimation of 3D facial …

Cloud Image Classification Using Machine Learning, Marcus Peter Cote

Theses and Dissertations

Machine learning is a rapidly expanding technology that has proven to be highly useful for image classification. Ground-based camera networks are an emerging resource for aviation weather information with near real-time imagery available online for public viewing and download. While raw web camera imagery can be analyzed by aviators, high pilot workload motivates the use of machine learning to autonomously interpret cloud type information from images that is relevant to aviation weather hazards. In particular, transfer learning is a machine learning approach by which elements of a pre-trained machine learning model are refitted for new tasks. By employing transfer learning …

The Use Of Flexible Organic And Inorganic Building Blocks In Complex Metal- Organic Frameworks, Sahar Yahia Rajeh

Theses and Dissertations

Metal organic frameworks (MOFs) are new class of hybrid materials that draw the attention of scientists to discover new properties that help in many fields. The structural diversity of MOFs is accessible by incorporating different organic linkers to the same metal cluster. In this work, we reacted seven flexible organic linkers with different lengths varying from 4-carbons to 10-carbons to a copper-paddlewheel metal cluster. The flexibility of the linkers make the confirmation of MOFs a challenge, although we were able to prepare a new crystalline MOF from a 5-carbon organic linker with two different copper-clusters. Another MOF in powder form …

Climate Adaptation And Risk Preparedness In Florida’S East Coast Cities: Views Of Municipal Leaders, Sheila A. Young, Kenyon C. Lindeman, Samantha R. Fowler

Ocean Engineering and Marine Sciences Faculty Publications

Cities along Florida’s Atlantic coastline are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, posing significant challenges for city planners. How cities see themselves in terms of developing or implementing their climate change adaptation action plans depends, in part, on the extent to which they perceive climate-related events as risks, and their city size. Data were obtained from city leaders (i.e. mayors, city/town managers, or their designees) from 86 cities along Florida’s Atlantic Coast from January to May 2021 to quantitatively assess factors influencing city adaptation planning. Validity and reliability were obtained for the survey. Multiple regression analyses showed significant …

Vibration Control Of Submerged Floating Tunnel In Waves And Earthquakes Through Tuned Mass Damper, Chungkuk Jin, Sung-Jae Kim, Moohyun Kim

Ocean Engineering and Marine Sciences Faculty Publications

In this study, a passive Tuned Mass Damper (TMD) is investigated to dampen resonant motions of a Submerged Floating Tunnel (SFT) in waves and earthquakes. TMD is adopted to control resonant lateral motion. A time-domain dynamics simulation model that considers the elasticity of the tunnel and mooring lines is first established, which is based on the lumped mass method and Morison equation, and the SFT-TMD interaction is considered through springs and dampers. Next, by using the Harmony Search (HS) algorithm, TMD's spring and damping coefficients are optimized; the dynamics simulations under white noise seismic excitations are continuously carried out with …

A Machine Learning Approach To Forecasting Sep Intensity And Times Based On Cme And Other Solar Activities, Peter John Thomas

Theses and Dissertations

High intensity Solar Energetic Particle (SEP) events pose severe risks for astronauts and critical infrastructure. The ability to accurately forecast the peak intensity and times of these events would enable preparatory measures to mitigate much of this risk. Machine learning approaches have the potential to use characteristics of CMEs and other space weather phenomena to predict SEP intensities and times. However, the severe sparsity of SEP events in current datasets poses a problem to traditional machine learning techniques. In this work, we present a dataset of proton event intensities and times, as well as features for corresponding CMEs and space …

Advancing Human-Agent Teamwork, Vijayanth Tummala

Theses and Dissertations

Progress in the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been made in many different fields. We are now reaching a point in AI development typical AI implementations are not enough: where we would need humans and AI systems to actively collaborate with each other, basing their actions on the actions and capabilities of each other. This collaboration could be in the form of agents assisting humans processing and analyzing information, assisting humans with smaller physical tasks or working with humans as an equal team member – having the same goals and performing the same tasks – to accomplish a goal. …

Predicting The Impact Of Iot Data Gathering On User’S Privacy Preferences, Ghassen Kilani

Theses and Dissertations

The proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices has increased data sharing, profiling, and manipulation on various networks. The rapid growth of information disclosure has caused system users to lose motivation to enhance their data privacy. The repeated breaches on different networks worldwide have made people feel discouraged, as they perceive privacy schemes as futile. IoT systems introduce another dimension of privacy leakage due to their expendability nature and information collection features. The situation worsens when users have to manage multiple IoT devices, each following different security protocols, leading to poor decision-making and privacy leakage. This tremendous flow of unsecured …

Asynchronous Messaging In A P2p System: Defending Against A Storage Exhaustion Attack On Kademlia Dht, Maxim Biro

Theses and Dissertations

An instant messaging service designed using a peer to peer distributed network architecture has many appealing properties it gets for free: high scalability, cheap operational cost and no reliance on a third party to provide the service. However, the nature of the distributed network architecture makes implementing some of the instant messaging features rather challenging, asynchronous messaging being one of them. The asynchronous messaging requires that peers store arbitrary data on behalf of other peers for prolonged periods of time, often measured in days, which, if not kept in check, can be easily abused by malicious actors by spamming the …

Process For Designing And Implementing Provably Verifiable Voting Systems, Kholud Alghamdi

Theses and Dissertations

This research aims to explore processes for designing verifiable voting systems in which certain properties can be proven, exemplified with systems applicable to election processes in Saudi Arabia. The electronic government model has become a substantial channel for governments to connect to businesses and citizens, to develop services, and provide general information. E-voting and in particular online voting is one of the important tools that can be used in political and administrative places where information and communications technology devices and tools are utilized to simplify people’s lives and facilitate the election process and decision making. Election processes let a population …

Infrared Search For N-Butane And Trans-2-Butene In Titan’S Atmosphere, Brendan Steffens

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation constitutes a study of the possible presence of trace hydrocarbons, namely n-butane (n-C4H10) and trans-2-butene (trans-2-C4H8) in Titan’s atmosphere. These molecules, both of which bear specific connections of interest to Titan’s astrobiological potential, are predicted by photochemical models to occur at detectable abundances within Titan’s atmosphere. In spite of this, neither has been detected to date, by any means. For this work, both of these molecules were characterized in the laboratory by obtaining a comprehensive set of highresolution, infrared cross section measurements at cold temperatures appropriate for Titan. In the case of n-butane, a pseudoline list (i.e. an …

A Machine Learning Approach To Forecasting Sep Intensity And Times Based On Cme And Other Solar Activities, Peter John Thomas

Theses and Dissertations

High intensity Solar Energetic Particle (SEP) events pose severe risks for astronauts and critical infrastructure. The ability to accurately forecast the peak intensity and times of these events would enable preparatory measures to mitigate much of this risk. Machine learning approaches have the potential to use characteristics of CMEs and other space weather phenomena to predict SEP intensities and times. However, the severe sparsity of SEP events in current datasets poses a problem to traditional machine learning techniques. In this work, we present a dataset of proton event intensities and times, as well as features for corresponding CMEs and space …

Understanding The Spatio-Temporal Evolution Of Surface Heat Flux In The Tropics From Observations And Models, Xin Zhou

Theses and Dissertations

An important component of the earth’s surface energy budget is the surface heat flux that allows the exchange of mass and energy between the ocean and the atmosphere and thereby influences oceanic and atmospheric circulations. For better prediction of weather and climate, numerical models must be able to capture the mean and variability of surface heat flux since surface heat flux directly feeds into model simulation of convection and precipitation. In this study, we explore the spatial and temporal variations of different surface heat flux components over the tropical oceans using observations and atmospheric global climate models (AGCMs). We confine …

Control Of Irradiation Wavelength And Quantum Yield Of Photocleavable Cages, Jingxuan Ma

Theses and Dissertations

An important component of biological research is the precise regulation of biomolecules in their physiological environment. Recent advances in neuroscience, have made it possible to regulate the activity of neurotransmitters using photocleavable protecting groups (PPGs), which are also known as cages. This enables the use of light as a trigger to activate selected neurons via photo release of agonists with precise control of timing as well as synaptic site, popularly referred to as spatiotemporal control. In recent years, a variety of PPGs have been developed and applied to biomolecular cages. PPGs can be classified according to their absorption wavelengths (from …

A Co-Evolutionary Approach To Test Case Generation For Safety-Critical Systems, Brad Thomas Costa

Theses and Dissertations

Safety-critical software development is a costly and time-consuming process that involves thousands of hours dedicated to test development. Tests must meet stringent developmental guidelines to verify the correct and complete implementation of their parent requirements. Further compounding any such effort is the tendency towards requirement churn or the frequent change to the software and other system requirements. This thesis presents a solution, PyTcGen, that alleviates these challenges by processing natural language requirements and programmatically generating the requisite test cases to ensure the software meets all of the conditions of that requirement. The solution uses template matching to marry requirements to …

Cross-Gender And 1-To-N Face Recognition Error Analysis Of Gender Misclassified Images, Paloma Vela Achu

Theses and Dissertations

A number of recent research studies have shown that face recognition accuracy is meaningfully worse for females than males. Gender classification algorithms also perform worse: one commercial classifier gives a 7% error rate for African-American females vs. 0.5% for Caucasian males. In response to these observations, we consider one primary question: do errors in gender classification lead to errors in facial recognition? We approach this question by focusing on two main areas (1) do gender-misclassified images generate higher similarity scores with different individuals from the false-gender category versus their true-gender category? (2) What is the impact of gender misclassified images …

A Method To Evaluate The Impact Of Assistive Displays On The Comfort And Safety Of Driving In Low Visibility Conditions, Hussain Talal Alatiyyah

Theses and Dissertations

Natural phenomena may affect car drivers in terms of having a clear view. It may hinder or distract the driver’s eyesight from essential objects, such as traffic signs, people, or other obstacles in the street. A poor view for a driver could cause accidents that lead to significant harm. Fog is one of these natural phenomena that could impact a driver’s concentration. This study aims to test a methodology for evaluating the use of an assistive computer display, especially in fog situations. An experiment is performed with participants who perform simulated driving under controlled fog conditions with or without an …

Toward A Labeled Dataset Of Iot Malware Features, Stian Hagboe Olsen

Theses and Dissertations

IoT malware has accompanied the rapid growth of embedded devices over the last decade. The last few years have seen increased work on static and dynamic detection and classification techniques for IoT malware. However, this work requires a very diverse and fine-grained set of malware-specific characteristics. This paper takes a step toward constructing a large-scale, diverse, and open-source IoT malware dataset. To demonstrate the depth of the dataset, we propose an approach for recovering symbol tables and detecting the intent of stripped IoT malware binaries using function signature libraries and 14 defining Linux malware features with corresponding regular expressions. We …

A Spatiotemporal Bayesian Model For Population Analysis, Mohamed Jaber

Theses and Dissertations

Spatiotemporal population analysis based on incomplete, redundant, and unidentified observations is critically important, yet it is a very challenging problem. Different approaches have been proposed and several methods have been implemented to address this problem. Capture-recapture methods have been widely used and have become the standard sampling and analytical framework for ecological statistics with applications to population analysis. Despite the fact that capture-recapture methods have been commonly used, these methods do not consider the spatial structure of the population. Moreover, conventional capturerecapture methods do not use any explicit spatial information with regard to the spatial nature of the sampling and …

Construction And Testing Of Large-Area Gem Detectors For The Forward Muon Endcap Upgrade Of The Cms Experiment And Vector-Portal Search For Dark Matter Particles With Dimuon Pairs At √S = 13 Tev, Mehdi Rahmani

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I present my contributions to the second major upgrade of the Compact Muon Solenoid at the Large Hadron Collider and the analysis that I performed on the data collected by the Compact Muon Solenoid during the 2018 and 2017 era. Alongside my team, I assembled and tested ten Gaseous Electron Multipliers to upgrade the forward region at the Compact Muon Solenoid, all of which are now installed at the dedicated stations. The campaign for producing these detectors succeeded in a twoyear-long prototyping endeavor, where I examined the procedural steps for production to optimize the production and testing …

Iot Security For Iotmon Attacks Based On Devices’ App Description, Raghad Jameel A. Alhazmi

Theses and Dissertations

There are concerns associated with ”inter-app” interactions, which occur when many independently developed home automation apps interact and affect one another, causing possibly dangerous unexpected app action. We extended a security tool named IoTMon, an IoT device management system capable of identifying all potential cross-app communication paths and analyzing their danger status. As part of our work, we keep an eye on the app description and safeguard IoTMon from being altered in any way that could obscure the real interaction related to another app action. We validate the IoTMon system’s integrity by applying the hash algorithm SHA512 with digital signature …

Dirichlet Type Boundary Value Problems For Linear And Quasi{Linear Hyperbolic Equations Of Higher Order, Reemah Alhuzally

Theses and Dissertations

Dirichlet type problems for quasi-linear hyperbolic equations are considered. For two-dimensional boundary value problems there are established:

(i) Unimprovable sufficient conditions of unique solvability and well-posedness of linear problems in piecewise smooth domains;

(ii) Unimprovable Sufficient conditions of unique solvability of linear problems in smooth convex domains.

(iii) Optimal Sufficient conditions of solvability, unique solvability and strong well-posedness of quasi-linear problems in piecewise smooth domains;

(iv) Optimal sufficient conditions of solvability and unique solvability of quasi- linear problems in smooth convex domains.

For three-dimensional linear boundary value problems there are established:

(i) Unimprovable sufficient conditions of unique solvability and well-posedness …