Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Understanding The Impacts Of Topobathymetric Data On Storm Surge Model Predictions, Sydni Crain

Master's Theses

The topobathymetric characteristics of a region are regularly altered by natural and anthropogenic causes. This directly impacts the resulting storm surge during a hurricane. The primary goal of this research was to gain a better understanding of the impact that topography and bathymetry have on storm surge models, particularly the Advanced Circulation (ADCIRC) Model. Hurricane Zeta (2020) and Hurricane Ida (2021) were chosen as case studies; therefore, the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) was chosen as the study site. This research was completed by comparing ADCIRC storm surge results which were based on older, lower-resolution data with results derived from more …

Privacy-Aware And Hardware-Based Accleration Authentication Scheme For Internet Of Drones, Tom Henson

Master's Theses

Drones are becoming increasingly present into today’s society through many different means such as outdoor sports, surveillance, delivery of goods etc. With such a rapid increase, a means of control and monitoring is needed as the drones become more interconnected and readily available. Thus, the idea of Internet of drones (IoD) is formed, an infrastructure in place to do those types of things. However, without an authentication system in place anyone could gain access or control to real time data to multiple drones within an area. This is a problem that I choose to tackle using a Field Programmable Gate …

Multi-Valued Solutions For The Equation Of Motion, Darcy-Jordan Model, As A Cauchy Problem: A Shocking Event, Chandler Shimp

Master's Theses

Shocks are physical phenomenon that occur quite often around us. In this thesis we examine the occurrence of shocks in finite amplitude acoustic waves from a numerical perspective. These waves, or jump discontinuities, yield ill-behaved solutions when solved numerically. This study takes on the challenge of finding both single- and multi-valued solutions.

The previously unsolved problem in this study is the representation of the Equation of Motion (EoM) in the form of the Darcy-Jordan model (DJM) and expressed as a dimensionless IVP Cauchy problem. Prior attempts to solve have resulted only in implicit solutions or explicit solutions with certain initial …

Application Of Machine Learning Techniques To Forecast Harmful Algal Blooms In Gulf Of Mexico, Bala Tripura Sundari Yerrapothu

Master's Theses

The Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) forecast is crucial for the mitigation of health hazards and to inform actions for the protection of ecosystems and fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM). For the sake of simplicity of our application we assume ocean color satellite imagery from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as a proxy for HABs.

In this study we use a deep neural network trained on the 2-Dimensional time series proxy data to provide a forecast of the HABs’ manifestations in the GoM.Our approach analyzes between both spatial and temporal features simultaneously. In addition, the network also helps …

A Deep Learning-Based Automatic Object Detection Method For Autonomous Driving Ships, Ojonoka Erika Atawodi

Master's Theses

An important feature of an Autonomous Surface Vehicles (ASV) is its capability of automatic object detection to avoid collisions, obstacles and navigate on their own.

Deep learning has made some significant headway in solving fundamental challenges associated with object detection and computer vision. With tremendous demand and advancement in the technologies associated with ASVs, a growing interest in applying deep learning techniques in handling challenges pertaining to autonomous ship driving has substantially increased over the years.

In this thesis, we study, design, and implement an object recognition framework that detects and recognizes objects found in the sea. We first curated …

Krylov Subspace Spectral Methods With Non-Homogenous Boundary Conditions, Abbie Hendley

Master's Theses

For this thesis, Krylov Subspace Spectral (KSS) methods, developed by Dr. James Lambers, will be used to solve a one-dimensional, heat equation with non-homogenous boundary conditions. While current methods such as Finite Difference are able to carry out these computations efficiently, their accuracy and scalability can be improved. We will solve the heat equation in one-dimension with two cases to observe the behaviors of the errors using KSS methods. The first case will implement KSS methods with trigonometric initial conditions, then another case where the initial conditions are polynomial functions. We will also look at both the time-independent and time-dependent …

Gogo: An Improved Algorithm To Measure The Semantic Similarity Between Gene Ontology Terms, Chenguang Zhao

Master's Theses

Measuring the semantic similarity between Gene Ontology (GO) terms is an essential step in functional bioinformatics research. We implemented a software named GOGO for calculating the semantic similarity between GO terms. GOGO has the advantages of both information-content-based and hybrid methods, such as Resnik’s and Wang’s methods. Moreover, GOGO is relatively fast and does not need to calculate information content (IC) from a large gene annotation corpus but still has the advantage of using IC. This is achieved by considering the number of children nodes in the GO directed acyclic graphs when calculating the semantic contribution of an ancestor node …

Naturalists’ Perspectives On The Use Of Mobile Technology During A Nature Hike, Aubin Marishka Radzewicz St. Clair

Master's Theses

Naturalists act as our link between scientific knowledge and the public’s understanding of natural history and conservation efforts. In order for them to succeed, they need access to reference materials as well as up-to-date information (Mankin, Warner, & Anderson, 1999). Incorporating mobile technology (i.e. tablets) into naturalists’ endeavors in natural history and environmental education can be used as supportive and educational tools. My project investigated how newly trained naturalists used tablet technology while leading groups of children on nature hikes. I investigated naturalists’ views on the use of mobile technology as a tool during the hikes. My research was guided …

The Application Of P-Bar Theory In Transformation-Based Error-Driven Learning, Bryant Harold Walley

Master's Theses

In P-bar Theory, Perkins et al. (2014) proposed a rule based method for determining the context of a partext (i.e., a part of a text document).

In Transformation-Based Error-Driven Learning and Natural Language Processing: A Case Study in Part-of-Speech Tagging Brill (1995) demonstrates a method of error-driven learning applied to individual words at the sentence level to determine the part of speech each word represents.

We combine these two concepts providing a transformation-based error-driven learning algorithm to improve the results obtained from the static rules Perkins proposed and determine if the rule order prediction will provide additional metadata.

Reinforcement Learning Of Distributed Surveillance Plans, Madhavi Chittireddy

Master's Theses

This thesis describes the design and implementation of a Reinforcement Learning algorithm on a camera surveillance model which is used to know the stackelberg strategies of attacker and defender. This reinforcement learning algorithm is compared with the uniform policy and hill climbing algorithms by executing them on a common set of different data files, generated programmatically with various combinations of problem size, location, and orientation transitions as well as rewards of attacker and defender. The comparison includes the time taken to obtain better stackelberg policy and the resulted final pay-off of the defender. This thesis shows that the reinforcement learning …

Automated Filtering And Attribution Of Archive Bathymetry Based On A Priori Knowledge, Rodney Wade Ladner

Master's Theses

Hydrographic offices hold large volumes of historical bathymetric data. Many of these valuable datasets were collected using older generation survey systems and contain little or no metadata. Current efforts to utilize these data require human intervention to remove outliers and assess quality. This thesis develops automated algorithms based on a priori knowledge of existing bathymetric topography to remove errant soundings and concurrently provide an estimate of uncertainty.

Opportunistic Random Media Access In Wlans, Chong Tang

Master's Theses

This thesis proposes a new medium access protocol for IEEE 802.11 wireless local area networks, which is called opp01tunistic medium access. The protocol changes the media access opportunities of nodes by adjusting the contention window dynamically according to the different bit rates. Thereby, the protocol can reduce collision and improve throughput significantly. The n·aditional IEEE 802.11 standards access channel with binary exponential back-off algorithm and all nodes choose the back-off interval from the same initial range. The new protocol in this thesis divides nodes as well as contention windows in proportion to data rate. It offers three methods to group …

Continuous Analysis Of Photocatalytic Activity In Thin-Films And Coatings, Steven Michael Allee

Master's Theses

Materials that undergo photocatalytic reactions create evolved gases due to ultraviolet light decomposition. Current methods of measuring these gases typically result in destruction of the sample. A test fixture was developed to measure evolved gases in a nondestructive manner through the utilization of a flow-through sensor array system. Preliminary testing indicates responsive measurements down to parts-per-billion sensitivity for some gases and will be compared with mass spectrometry measurements. Further development of this process could lead to the ability to measure photocatalytic reaction gases on a continuous basis without interruption of the process or destruction of materials introduced to the system.

Detection Of Hydrogen In A Two-Phase Cryogen Flow Stream With Thermal Protection Design Configurations, Anton Dmitrievitch Netchaev

Master's Theses

All commercial liquid-propelled rockets use hydrogen as means to reach outer space. These rocket boosters are tested on the ground and use hydrogen as means of purging the remaining explosive gasses left in the test tanks. To conserve helium, a non-renewable resource, a test fixture was developed to characterize and test sensors that could improve the accuracy and response of the current system. By improving response time of the system, helium waste during the purge process can be minimized. The test fixture was constructed to simulate temperatures and pressures that are encountered at the testing facilities. The test fixture is …

To Shift Or Not To Shift: Maximizing The Efficiency Of A Wireless Sensor Network Using Multiple Sinks, Chabli Boler

Master's Theses

Energy efficiency is a vital part of wireless sensor networks (WSN). Using correct techniques, we can improve the overall data throughput of the network and, at the same time, cut down the cost of running it. The efficient utilization of the life of the sensor node in a WSN is a critical problem. This is a problem since the sensor nodes closest to the sink node expend more energy because they send more messages, mostly for routing, than any other node on the network.

This decreases the life of those sensor nodes and will lead to dead spots in the …