Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Communicating About Extreme Heat: Results From Card Sorting And Think Aloud Interviews With Experts From Differing Domains, Jeannette Sutton, Nicholas Waugh, Savannah Olivas

Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security, and Cybersecurity Faculty Scholarship

Climate trends indicate that extreme heat events are becoming more common and more severe over time, requiring improved strategies to communicate heat risk and protective actions. However, there exists a disconnect in heat-related communication from experts, who commonly include heat related jargon (i.e., technical language), to decision makers and the general public. The use of jargon has been shown to reduce meaningful engagement with and understanding of messages written by experts. Translating technical language into comprehensible messages that encourage decision makers to take action has been identified as a priority to enable impact-based decision support. Knowing what concepts and terms …

Communicating Hazard Location Through Text And Map In Earthquake Early Warnings: A Mixed Methods Study, Jeannette Sutton, Michele M. Wood, Nicholas A. Waugh, Savanah Crouch

Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security, and Cybersecurity Faculty Scholarship

The purpose of this research was to examine the effect of presenting hazard location in different formats on key warning message outcomes—understanding, personalizing, believing, deciding, and milling. We conducted two studies using experiment and focus group methods. In the experiment, we compared a standard ShakeAlert earthquake early warning message, which merely implied location, to three enhanced messages that communicated information about the earthquake epicenter via text, map, or a combined text-and-map format. Focus groups explored reactions to warning messages accompanied by different types of maps. Overall, the standard ShakeAlert message was associated with worse message outcomes compared to messages that …

Addressing Human Error Through Effective Cyber Policy Design, Katherine Amoresano

Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security, and Cybersecurity

Human error is a significant contributing factor to the rise in Cybersecurity attacks regardless of increased technical control implemented to safeguard Information systems. Adversaries can circumvent technical safeguards due to human errors which result from inadequate enforceable policies and training on Cybersecurity for the everyday user. Several studies and articles show that the majority of successful attacks are human enabled, proving the need for human-centric cybersecurity research and practices. This exploratory work reviews the human aspect of Cybersecurity by investigating the cybersecurity policies at SUNY Albany and other SUNY institutions. We used a survey of students and faculty members at …

Metabolic Alterations And Cardiovascular Risk After Hepatitis C Cure In Subjects With Or At Risk For Hiv, Christophe Maxime Fokoua Dongmo

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Background. Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection engenders substantial metabolic changes. These changes are altered when the virus is cleared after successful treatment. We measured these metabolic alterations that occur after HCV cure; further, we assessed whether these alterations differed in subgroups defined by patients’ characteristics.

Human-Wildlife Coexistence With Coyotes In Los Angeles County, Ca And Cook County, Il, Alan Eapen

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The expansion of coyotes (Canis latrans) into urban and suburban areas where human concentration is high has led to human-coyote conflicts often leading to increased management actions against coyotes. Recently in Los Angeles and Cook Counties, municipalities have developed coyote management plans to foster human-wildlife coexistence in an effort to reduce conflict, an emerging concept that promotes the cohabitation of humans and animals in shared landscapes. The thesis investigates coyote management plans and policies concerning human-coyote interactions in Los Angeles and Cook Counties to address human-wildlife. Using a case study analysis of Los Angeles and Cook Counties, this study analyzed …

Permaculture As An Ecopedagogy Curriculum And Alternative Theory Of Development : An Exploration Of The Ecological Consciousness Of Rural Western Kenyan Farmers Using Photo-Voice With A Farmer Field School During Covid-19, David Yisrael Epstein

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation explores two main questions of farmers in Western Kenya – how they see farming as a creative process and their role in that – and how change is made possible in their community. I explore stories from farmers themselves, using photographs they have taken and stories they tell about those photographs, which answer these two questions. In doing so, I attempt to understand the degree to which collective action has taken root in a community exposed to a permaculture based curriculum within a farmer field school. It also importantly seeks to understand what happens when such a curriculum …

Space Weather And Criminal Violence : A Longitudinal Analysis Of Major Us Urban Areas, Richard Mcmillan

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The study of criminology began with the investigation of the physical features of humans committing crimes such as homicide. The study of space weather includes the investigation of the physiological manifestations of various forms of space weather on terrestrial-bound humans. These two fields of inquiry are joined in this investigation of the association of space weather with the incidence of criminal violence in the United States. This study of the possibility that a physical force emanating from the Sun or from outer space can affect human behavior in the form of criminal violence is part of a long search for …

It Takes Two To Tango : Understanding The Processes That Lead To Simultaneous Changes In Tropical Cyclone Intensity And Size And Communicating The Associated Hazards To Emergency Managers, Emily A. Paltz

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The severity of tropical cyclone (TC) hazards is modulated by both TC intensity and size. More intense TCs produce stronger storm surges and increase wind damage. Larger TCs potentially impact more people, increase the duration of TC hazards, produce stronger storm surges and increase the amount of rainfall and flooding. Thus, accurately forecasting both TC intensity and size and effectively communicating those forecasts are critical to properly preparing communities for TC impacts. Forecast accuracy can be improved by enhancing our understanding about the processes that cause changes in TC intensity and size. This research divides the Extended Best Track dataset …

Monitoring White-Tailed Deer Abundance And Habitat Selection In The Albany Pine Bush Preserve Using Unmanned Aerial Systems, Christopher Plummer

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Unmanned aerial systems (UAS) have seen recent advancements in technology that gave rise to their increasing use in recreational and commercial application, including wildlife conservation. Adaptive management is a must for wildlife conservation, with the goal of learning from management decisions to improve future management strategies, especially in the face of growing human related stressors such as climate change and habitat loss. Monitoring is a critical step for adaptive management, as it allows the manger to learn about the ecology of the natural system and quantify the impacts of management strategies. Species and habitats are frequently monitored for wildlife conservation …

Examining Terrain Effects On Upstate New York Tornado Events Utilizing High-Resolution Model Simulations, Luke Lebel

Atmospheric & Environmental Sciences

The region at the intersection of the Mohawk and Hudson valleys of New York is characterized by complex terrain. It has been hypothesized that this complex terrain may have an impact on the development and evolution of severe convection in the region. Specifically, previous research has hypothesized that terrain-channeled flow in the Hudson and Mohawk valleys contributed to increased low-level wind shear and instability in the valleys during past severe weather outbreaks. However, a lack of observations in the region prevented this hypothesis from being robustly tested.

The goal of this study is to further examine this hypothesis and complement …

Three Essays On Model Selection, Fangning Li

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

In empirical research, we often need to address the issue of what model to use given a collection of candidate models. Conventionally, we use model selection to choose one best model from the collection of candidate models based on some model selection criteria. Model averaging is a generalization of model selection in the sense that it assigns weights to candidate models and uses a weighted average to construct an aggregated model. Usually model averaging provides better performance than model selection which chooses a single candidate model based on AIC or BIC.

Review Of Web Technology: Theory And Practice, By Akshi Kumar., Michael Knee

University Libraries Faculty Scholarship

This is a review of the book Web Technology: Theory and Practice, by Akshi Kumar

Legislation To Reduce Microplastic Pollution : Understanding The Factors That Facilitated Passage Of The Federal Microbead-Free Waters Act Of 2015, Alyson Kelly Northrup

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The full environmental impacts of microplastic pollution in aquatic environments remain uncertain, but several detrimental effects have been documented, including adverse health effects in multiple species and the susceptibility of microplastics to adsorb toxins and leach plastic additives. Plastic microbeads from rinse-off personal care products are a source of microplastic pollution that is introduced directly into the environment through runoff, including wastewater treatment plant effluent. In December 2015, the federal Microbead-free Waters Act of 2015 banned the manufacture and sale of all rinse-off personal care products containing plastic microbeads in the United States.

Emotion Forecasting In Dyadic Conversation : Characterizing And Predicting Future Emotion With Audio-Visual Information Using Deep Learning, Sadat Shahriar

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Emotion forecasting is the task of predicting the future emotion of a speaker, i.e., the emotion label of the future speaking turn–based on the speaker’s past and current audio-visual cues. Emotion forecasting systems require new problem formulations that differ from traditional emotion recognition systems. In this thesis, we first explore two types of forecasting windows(i.e., analysis windows for which the speaker’s emotion is being forecasted): utterance forecasting and time forecasting. Utterance forecasting is based on speaking turns and forecasts what the speaker’s emotion will be after one, two, or three speaking turns. Time forecasting forecasts what the speaker’s emotion will …

Remote Sensing Of Planetary Boundary Layer Height And Particulate Matter 2.5 In New York State Mesonet Network, Bhupal Shrestha

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Abstract:

Fusing Satellite Data To Monitor The Urban Area's Effect On Plant Phenology, Norman Gervais

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation centrally focuses on developing and validating the use of fused satellite imagery to monitor the effects of the urban area on plant phenology, specifically the timing of the start and end of the growing season (SOS and EOS, respectively). In the first paper, Chapter 2, data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and Landsat were fused together using the Spatial and Temporal Adaptive Reflectance Fusion Model (STARFM) to produce a time series of a high spatial and high temporal resolution vegetation index. From this time series, the SOS and EOS were extracted and compared between the urban …

Clinical Information Extraction From Unstructured Free-Texts, Mingzhe Tao

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Information extraction (IE) is a fundamental component of natural language processing (NLP) that provides a deeper understanding of the texts. In the clinical domain, documents prepared by medical experts (e.g., discharge summaries, drug labels, medical history records) contain a significant amount of clinically-relevant information that is crucial to the overall well-being of patients. Unfortunately, in many cases, clinically-relevant information is presented in an unstructured format, predominantly consisting of free-texts, making it inaccessible to computerized methods. Automatic extraction of this information can improve accessibility. However, the presence of synonymous expressions, medical acronyms, misspellings, negated phrases, and ambiguous terminologies make automatic extraction …

Race, Ethnicity, And The Great Recession : A National Evaluation Of Mortgages And Subprime Lending, 2004-2010, Meghan M. O'Neil

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The dissertation analyzes multilevel models to predict mortgage origination and the allocation of subprime credit pre-and-post Great Recession. With representative samples from two full years of mortgage applications filed in the top 100 U.S. metropolitan areas, the dissertation uncovers evidence of persistent disparities by race and neighborhood minority concentration despite controls for socioeconomic, demographic, assimilation and housing variables. Mortgage outcomes varied by applicant race, neighborhood racial composition and neighborhood racial change. Findings suggest evidence of Fair Housing Act violations and disparate impacts towards minority homebuyers and minority neighborhoods. Results lend support for spatial assimilation theories in explaining much of the …

Informing Responders Using Gis And Gps, Deidre Mccarthy

CHAR

Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast in August 2005 and created the single largest disaster for cultural resources that the United States has witnessed since the inception of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) in 1966. Notably, the NHPA created the National Register of Historic Places, our nation’s catalog of important cultural resources. The NHPA also stipulates that any federal undertaking which may adversely affect National Register eligible resources be mitigated. For the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Katrina created the largest compliance project ever under Section 106 of the NHPA.

Although causing a great deal of damage, Katrina also …

Keynote Address: Climate Change: From Global To New York Scale, Christopher D. Thorncroft

CHAR

This talk is concerned with the science and impacts of climate change from global to New York scales. It will provide an assessment of how the climate has changed over the past Century based on a purely observational perspective. The scientific basis for anthroprogenic climate change will be explained and discussed including a description of the “greenhouse effect” and why it is important for life on this planet. We will briefly discuss global and local consequences of a warmer climate and what we need to be prepared for going forward in the coming decades.

Review Of Principles Of Computer Science, Ed. By Donald R. Franceschetti., Michael Knee

University Libraries Faculty Scholarship

A review of "Principles of Computer Science" edited by Donald R. Franceschetti.

Determination And Analysis Of Dscovr-Eipc Satellite-Retrieved Radiance From Cloud Geometric And Optical Properties, Emily Christine Morgan

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Using simulations and numerical fitting, this work sought to describe the satellite-retrieved radiance of clouds as a function of their thermodynamic and optical properties. Subsequently, this understanding can then be used in a look-up-table to determine the properties of clouds imaged by the EPIC sensor in the NASA DSCOVR satellite. In this study, background oxygen absorption was modeled in a radiative transfer model and convolved with EPIC filter functions for two absorption-reference pairs for Oxygen A- and B-band. This absorption profile was established as the primary vertical coordinate in this study, leveraging the similarity principle to allow for intercomparison of …

State Dependency Of The Forest-Tundra-Short Wave Feedback : Comparing The Mid-Pliocene And Pre-Industrial Eras Using A Newly-Developed Vegetation Model, Pablo Paiewonsky

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The forest-tundra-short wave feedback is the dominant short wave (SW) vegetation feedback at mid-to-high northern latitudes and is an important feedback in Earth’s climate system, especially due to its potential role in modulating glacial cycles. Little research has been done on how the strength of this feedback might vary with the background climate state. It is hypothesized that the feedback has generally strengthened over the last four million years. The feedback mechanism is hypothesized to be weaker under warm Northern Hemispheric conditions when tundra is primarily confined to the high Arctic than under cooler conditions in which the forest-tundra boundary …

Stone Walls Of New York And New England, John W. Delano Phd

Atmospheric and Environmental Science Faculty Scholarship

Stone walls are an enduring testimony of the hard labors and work ethic of subsistence family farms on ~100-acre lots. Those lots had been defined by hardy teams of surveyors who used compasses and chains to define the magnetic directions and lengths of boundaries. Farmers cleared (‘improved’) large sections of their land of trees for the purpose of grazing animals and growing crops. As we venture into the deep woods today, we often encounter these forgotten stonewalls that reveal that others long ago were there. Modern airborne surveys using ‘Light Detection And Ranging’ (LiDAR) not only reveal the vast extent …

Bayesian Model Testing Of Models For Ellipsoidal Variation On Stars Due To Hot Jupiters, Anthony Gai

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

A massive planet closely orbiting its host star creates tidal forces that distort the typically spherical stellar surface. These distortions, known as ellipsoidal variations, result in variations in the photometric flux emitted by the star, which can be detected by the Kepler Space Telescope. Currently, there exist several models describing such variations and their effect on the photometric fux [1] [2] [3] [4]. By using Bayesian model testing in conjunction with the Bayesian-based exoplanet characterization software package EXONEST [4] [5] [6], the most probable representation for ellipsoidal variations was determined for synthetic data and two systems with confirmed hot Jupiter …

Efficient Execution Of Top-K Closeness Centrality Queries, Paul W. Olsen

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Many of today's applications can benefit from the discovery of the most central entities in real-world networks.

Persuasion In Online Communication : Automation And Counteraction, Samira Shaikh Shaikh

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

In this thesis, we studied persuasion in online communication and how to automate

Using Storm-Watersheds And A Multi-Criteria Decision Model For Biodiversity Conservation In An Urban Environment, Christina M. Chiappetta

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Many planning and land use decisions in New York State are controlled at the local (town or municipal) level, not an optimal scale for planning and implementing resource conservation management. Watershed boundaries provide a more ecologically meaningful scale for conservation, because they capture a full range of natural ecosystem processes that span political boundaries. However, defining an urban watershed is complicated by stormwater infrastructure, so standard topographic watershed boundaries may be inadequate for urban resource conservation even when applied at the watershed scale. Storm-watersheds distort both municipal and watershed boundaries, because the flows are redirected in ways that are often …

Monitoring Soil Response To Decreasing Acidic Deposition In A Western Adirondack Tributary Over A 16 Year Period, Michael Robert Antidormi

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Abstract

What We Can Learn From Small Units Of Analysis, Andrew Palmer Wheeler

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The dissertation is aimed at advancing knowledge of the correlates of crime at small geographic units of analysis. I begin by detailing what motivates examining crime at small places, and show how aggregation creates confounds that limit causal inference. Local and spatial effects are confounded when using aggregate units, so when the researcher wishes to distinguish between these two types of effects it should guide what unit of analysis is chosen. To illustrate these differences, I generate simulations of what happens to effect estimates when you aggregate a micro level spatial effects model or presume a neighborhood effects model.