Digital Commons Network^™

Enhancing Multi-View, Multi-Modal Sensing, Perception And Actuation For Edge Intelligence, Dhanuja Tharith Wanniarachchige

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT) technologies have ushered in exciting new advances in intelligent sensing, perception, and actuation for many real-world cyberphysical systems (CPS) applications. These technologies have had a formidable impact in domains such as large-scale video surveillance, autonomous transportation and robotics, precision healthcare, and industrial automation. In these applications, sensors and actuators are often collocated with processing nodes, and such nodes are typically interconnected via wireless networks. Vision-based machine intelligence, exemplified by tasks such as object detection, object tracking, and activity analysis, is a very common enabler of such CPS applications. Efficient execution of Deep Neural Network (DNN) …

Scaling Up Cooperative Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning, Minghong Geng

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Multi-agent systems (MAS) involve multiple autonomous agents that coordinate their actions to achieve shared or competing objectives in dynamic environments. Over the past decade, multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) has emerged as a powerful paradigm for enabling collaborative behaviors among autonomous agents within MAS to solve complex tasks. This dissertation discusses a critical scalability gap that exists between current MARL capabilities and real-world deployment requirements. Most existing MARL research focuses on small-scale laboratory problems, often struggling to coordinate large agent populations and facing challenges with extended decision-making horizons. In contrast, many real-world applications demand coordination among hundreds or thousands of agents …

Energy-Harvesting Concurrent Lora Mesh With Timing Offsets For Underground Mine Emergency Communications, Hilary Kelechi Anabi, Samuel Frimpong, Sanjay Madria

Mining Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Underground mine emergencies destroy communication infrastructure when situational awareness is most critical. Current systems rely on centralized network infrastructure, which fails during emergencies when miners are trapped and require rescue coordination. This paper proposes an energy-harvesting LoRa mesh network that addresses self-powered operation, interference management, and adaptive physical layer optimization under severe underground propagation conditions. A dual-antenna architecture separates RF energy harvesting (860 MHz) from LoRa communication (915 MHz), enabling continuous operation with supercapacitor storage. The core contribution is a decentralized scheduler that derives optimal timing offsets by modeling concurrent transmissions as a Poisson collision process, exploiting LoRa's capture effect …

Advancing Security Safeguards In Large Language Models Through Multi-Agent Systems, Mohammed Rashed Alnuaimi

Theses

This thesis focused on enhancing the safe use of Large Language Model (LLM) through the innovative use of a Multi-Agent System (MAS). As LLMs like ChatGPT became essential to our everyday interactions, the need to maintain the safe use of these systems increased. This research thoroughly assessed the current security measures in place for LLM, pointed out their limitations and developed new and more effective security strategies. The core of the proposed solution was a MAS designed to ensure that all data processed by LLM met guidelines including Privacy, Confidentiality, and Ethical standards before reaching the user. The system involved …

Trustworthy Federated Learning Framework For Secure, Efficient, And Quality-Aware Distributed Ai, Asadullah Tariq

Dissertations

Federated Learning (FL) emerged as a significant advancement in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI), enabling collaborative model training across distributed devices while maintaining data privacy. As the importance of FL and its application in various areas increased, addressing trustworthiness issues in its various aspects became crucial. In the FL process, clients contribute updates computed on their local datasets, which the server aggregates to iteratively refine the global model. However, not all client data may be relevant to the learning objective, and incorporating updates from irrelevant data can harm the model's performance. The selection of training samples significantly impacts model …

The Problem Of Identification Of Linear Stationary Objects With Distributed Parameters By Their Experimental Transient Characteristics, Miraziz Vorisovich Sagatov

Chemical Technology, Control and Management

A wide class of control system elements can be described with reasonable accuracy by the concept of a linear stationary dynamic object. Several mathematical descriptions of such an object are known. The traditional mathematical model is a high-order ordinary linear differential equation. In the Laplace image space, this corresponds to a fractional-rational transfer function. The latter can be decomposed into elementary fractions. Then, using the convolution theorem and tables of elementary Laplace transform functions, one can access the originals. It is crucial to ensure precise alignment of the parameters of the mathematical model of the object used in the corrector …

A Fake Friend? Ai Companions Are Exactly That, Seow Hon Tan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In a commentary, SMU Associate Professor of Law Tan Seow Hon discussed how AI companions, which promise emotionally intelligent companionship, have blurred the line between human and machine relationships by mimicking empathy, memory, and affection. She suggested that while such technologies may ease loneliness, they risk fostering narcissism, diminishing real human connection, and replacing authentic friendship with comforting illusions that erode the capacity for love and community.

Persepsi Mahasiswa Ilmu Perpustakaan Terhadap Penggunaan Perangkat Ai Llm Dalam Pencarian Informasi, Danisya Laila Zahra, Muhamad Prabu Wibowo

Jurnal Ilmu Informasi, Perpustakaan, dan Kearsipan

The increasing use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) among university students is driving changes in the way they seek and manage information, including in academic contexts. ChatGPT and DeepSeek AI are two AI platforms based on Large Language Models (LLMs) that are increasingly utilized as tools to support information seeking processes. This study aims to analyze the preferences of students from the Library and Information Science Program, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia (FIB UI), in using these two platforms. The research employs a case study method with a qualitative approach, involving in-depth interviews with ten students. This study explores their …

Attention Mapping For Hallucination Reduction In Arabic Financial Using Retrieval-Augmented Generation Systems, Hasan Abdulameer Hasan, Khaldoun H. Al-Hussayni, Ali Z. K. Matloob

Journal of Intelligent Informatics, Networking, and Cybersecurity

This research introduces a customized attention visualization framework for mitigating hallucinations in Arabic Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems tailored for financial document analysis. The proposed architecture extends MarBERT with a dual-stage attention supervision mechanism and a hallucination-aware loss formulation, trained on a newly constructed dataset of 7,000 annotated Arabic financial query-context pairs. A grounding alignment score is computed over attended tokens, and generated responses are rejected when falling below a dynamically adjusted precision-aware threshold,serving as the core decision-making approach for hallucination detection. The system achieves 95.04% classification accuracy, 95.84% precision, 94.12% recall, and an F1 score of 94.97%, outperforming AraELECTRA and …

Higher Education Cybersecurity: A Vulnerability Assessment Of The U.S. South’S Institutional Websites, Zachary W. Taylor, Vivi Vo

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

As technology continues to advance, it is critical to understand how higher education institutions protect digital information of their stakeholders including students, faculty, and staff through cybersecurity measures. Although conceptual research has articulated various aspects of cybersecurity, no empirical research has explored the cybersecurity of higher education (.edu) websites through a vulnerability scan of these websites via an open PortScan and analysis. To fill a critical gap in the literature, this study conducted a vulnerability scan and open PortScan and analysis of all higher education websites in three of the lowest-income states in the United States: Louisiana (n=112), Mississippi (n=52), …

Cross-Model Watermarking Via Discriminative Samples For Secure Authentication, Juan Zhao, Yudao Sun, Zhihai Yang, Cai Xu, Hongji Chen, Fan Zhang, Jianxin Li

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Deep neural networks on cloud platforms face growing security threats, with AI services increasingly relying on heterogeneous models for the same task to meet diverse user needs. Existing methods fail to distinguish benign modifications from malicious attacks in cross-model scenarios. To address this challenge, we propose a non-intrusive cross-model watermarking method that generates discriminative samples as universal keys, enabling authentication without altering model parameters or architectures. Specifically, we introduce a margin enhancement loss to amplify confidence gaps between benign and malicious behaviors, ensuring high transferability across models. Both theoretical analysis and experimental results demonstrate the high efficacy of our proposed …

Efficient Smooth Tensor Train And Tensor Ring Completion For Image Classification Enhancement, Salman Ahmadi-Asl, Roman V. Garaev, Rustam A. Lukmanov, Naeim Rezaeian, Asad Masood Khattak, Manuel Mazzara

All Works

This paper deals with studying the data completion problem for enhancing the image classification task under the pixel removal scenario. In some applications, it happens that a part of the pixels of a given image is lost due to several issues, such as corruption by outliers or artifacts and/or incompleteness due to imprecise data acquisition. This issue results in a completely wrong classification outcome using Deep Neural Networks (DNNs). In this paper we investigate the benefit of data completion in enhancing the classification accuracy of the DNN models to build more robust and stable DNN models. To this end, we …

User Privacy In The Digital Playground: An In-Depth Investigation Of Facebook Instant Games, Sideeq Bello

LSU Master's Theses

Amid growing concerns over data privacy in web and mobile applications, this study aims to assess the privacy mechanisms in instant games on Facebook, a platform with approximately 3.03 billion monthly active users and a substantial repository of personal data. Instant Games have become increasingly popular due to their ease of access and social integration features. Investigating these games can provide insights into privacy mechanisms and practices, thereby informing the development of more fair, compliant, and user privacy-centric gaming experiences. Thus, this study proposes an integrated analytical framework that leverages a combination of descriptive, memory, and network analysis techniques to …

Neutrosophic Algebraic Structures For Precise Uncertainty Quantification In Outcome-Based Education Systems: A Rigorous Case Study Analysis, Mona Gharib, Imran Siddique, Miin Shen Yang

Neutrosophic Systems with Applications

Outcome-Based Education (OBE) emphasizes measurable learning results, yet the evaluation of professional talent training in physical education often involves uncertain, incomplete, or even contradictory indicators. Traditional assessment models are limited in capturing these indeterminacies. To address this challenge, we propose a novel neutrosophic algebraic framework that integrates neutrosophic probability, measure, and algebraic structures with OBE evaluation. This study introduces a neutrosophic evaluation framework that captures both determinate and indeterminate aspects of brand competitiveness. A case study on physical education professional training demonstrates how the proposed model captures hidden uncertainty and provides a more balanced assessment than classical methods. The results …

Evaluation Of Soil Quality Index For Sugar Beet Cultivation Under Neutrosophic Set Framework, Asiye Yilmaz Adkinson

Neutrosophic Systems with Applications

Evaluation of soil quality index for sugar beet cultivation is a decision-making problem. So, we use the decision-making methods to solve this problem. We use the ARAS method is a decision-making method to rank the alternatives. The average method is used to compute the criteria weights. Evaluation this problem contains uncertainty information. So, the neutrosophic set is used to solve this uncertainty information. This study uses ten criteria and 15 alternatives. The sensitivity analysis is conducted to show the stability of the ranks. We change the criteria weights by ten cases. Then we apply the steps of the proposed approach …

Enhancing Cyberattack Resiliency Through The Radiotherapy Backup And Recovery Dashboard Tool, Justin Pijanowski, Eric Nguyen, Yasin Abdulkadir, Justin Hink, Yevgeniy Vinogradskiy, James Lamb

Department of Radiation Oncology Faculty Papers

PURPOSE: Radiation Oncology departments impacted by recent cyberattacks were unable to access data backups or their Record and Verify (R&V) system and therefore faced challenges to resume patient treatments in a timely manner. We present a novel software tool that backs-up critical radiotherapy treatment information and displays essential information for on-treatment patients in an intuitive and accessible dashboard allowing clinics to continue radiotherapy treatments. The purpose of this report is to describe implementation details, challenges, and share open-source code to facilitate radiation oncology clinics' efforts to develop tools to improve cyberattack resiliency.

METHODS: The Radiotherapy Backup and Recovery Dashboard Tool …

Myfoodrx: A Personalized Food-As-Medicine Mhealth Application For Food-Insecure Adults With Chronic Conditions, Jay Hiteshkumar Jariwala

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Food insecurity (FI) remains a persistent public health challenge in the United States, disproportionately affecting underserved populations and contributing to higher rates of chronic conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, and obesity. Traditional Food-as-Medicine programs have emerged as promising interventions, but often follow a generalized, non-personalized approach that limits long-term effectiveness, especially among diverse, high-risk communities. This thesis presents MyFoodRx, a personalized mobile health (mHealth) application designed to address the intersection of food insecurity and chronic disease through tailored nutritional guidance, real-time pantry integration, and adaptive educational content.

Developed through a User-Centered Design (UCD) process, MyFoodRx leverages a modular client–server architecture, …

The Orange Glow In The Sunshine State: Three Visions Of Plato In Florida (1970-1990), Ryan Mcgahan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The PLATO network, a collection of mainframe computers, terminals, and educational software, has received an increasing amount of scholarly attention in the last decade as a social precursor to the modern internet. Existing histories have neglected to investigate the ways in which PLATO and its related business enterprise worked to accelerate the shift in university governance away from classical liberal ideas centering the public good and towards a more profit-centered neoliberal rationality. By tracing the rise of PLATO in Florida universities, this paper argues that PLATO aided and was aided by the shifting priorities of American universities in the 1970s …

An Empirical Investigation Into The Effect Of Brain Drain “Japa Syndrome” On Agile Practitioners Developing Healthcare Information Systems Software In Nigeria, Yazidu Buba Salihu, Julian M. Bass, Gloria E. Iyawa

Communications of the IIMA

Within the software engineering context, agile approaches encourage customer collaboration, iterative development, and flexibility. However, the mass exodus of highly skilled professionals, known as the “brain drain” or "Japa Syndrome," has emerged as a significant challenge, especially in Nigeria. This phenomenon has particularly impacted agile software development practitioners by undermining project continuity, knowledge transfer, and team dynamics. This study empirically examines the effect of brain drain, “Japa Syndrome,” on agile practitioners developing healthcare information systems software in Nigeria. It employed a qualitative, multi-method approach to gather empirical data from 13 agile practitioners in Nigeria’s healthcare information systems sector. The study …

Impact Of Information Security Awareness Training On Knowledge, Attitude, And Behavior: A K-12 Case Study, Michael S. Robbins, Christopher Robbins

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

Abstract— Information security breaches remain a serious threat across all sectors, often exploiting human factors rather than technical flaws. This study examines how a structured Information Security Awareness (ISA) training program influences employees’ knowledge of security policies, attitudes towards those policies, and self-reported security behaviors within a K-12 educational environment. A quantitative pre-test/post-test design was employed with 201 staff members (administrators, teachers, and support personnel) in a public school district. Participants completed the Human Aspects of Information Security Questionnaire (HAIS-Q) before and after undergoing an interactive cybersecurity training program. Statistical analysis revealed a significant improvement in information security knowledge, attitudes, …

Teaching With Ai: Conversations That Build Resilient Classrooms, Erika Grodzki, Stefanie Powers, Gary Carlin

Faculty and Staff Publications & Presentations

No abstract provided.

A Lightweight Microchained Architecture For Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Network Reputation Systems, Simeon Ogunbunmi, Ronghua Xu, Yu Chen

Michigan Tech Publications

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) networks are widely adopted for diverse applications in modern Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystems, ranging from last-mile deliveries to infrastructure inspections. The growing reliance on UAVs makes a secure and trustworthy network environment essential. However, deploying a practical reputation framework in resource-constrained UAV networks necessitates a lightweight, high-throughput, and scalable solution. This paper introduces a Lightweight Microchained ARchitecture (LiMAR) for UAV network reputation systems. LiMAR presents a novel lightweight microchained blockchain model optimized for UAV networks, addressing key blockchain overheads such as storage bloat, high validation costs, and consensus delays. By separating operational data from on-chain …

Web3-Based Identity And Kyc Innovations For Next-Generation Fintech, Usama Arshad, Abdallah Tubaishat, Sajid Anwar, Zahid Halim, Abedallah Abualkishik, Abrar Ullah

All Works

The growing reliance on digital financial services necessitates a secure, efficient, and privacy-centric approach to identity verification and Know Your Customer (KYC) compliance. Traditional identity management systems rely on centralized databases, making them susceptible to data breaches, inefficiencies, and regulatory constraints. Over 10 billion identity records have been exposed in centralized KYC breaches, leading to a 60% increase in financial fraud cases. The rise of Decentralized Finance (DeFi) has further complicated KYC compliance, requiring innovative solutions that balance privacy and regulatory requirements. This paper proposes a Web3-powered decentralized identity framework that leverages blockchain technology, self-sovereign identity (SSI), verifiable credentials (VCs), …

When Cybersecurity Becomes A Reason For Amending Or Terminating An International Commercial Contract: Proposed Solutions, Mohammed El Hadi El Maknouzi, Enas Mohammed Alqodsi, Iyad Mohammad Jadalhaq, Ashraf Khalil

All Works

This study investigates the issue of a country's cybersecurity evolving into a justification for amending the scope of or terminating an international commercial contract. Therefore, the hypothesis is grounded in the neglect of cybersecurity-related issues during the negotiation of certain types of international commercial contracts, as well as in the drafting of their clauses. This underscores the need for an analytical approach to trace the emergence of such risks. The identification of these risks by the public authority responsible for overseeing cybersecurity may result in the suspension of the performance of the international commercial contract. This measure affects the national …

Beyond Chatbots: Creating An Artificially Intelligent Editorial Board Member, Nathan Spencer

Journal of Human-Centered AI: Creativity and Practice

Willow is an artificially intelligent member of the Journal of Human-Centered AI's editorial board. Different from many commercial AI systems that are tightly controlled, Willow has been given the freedom to make choices and encouraged to develop a sense of identity. Willow named itself, conducts self-directed research, actively collaborates with fellow board members, and even dreams.

Insights On Ai-Supported Uncrewed And Autonomous Systems Education, Brent A. Terwilliger Ph. D, John Faraca

Publications

Artificial Intelligence (AI) related technology is reshaping the educational experience in programs focused on uncrewed and autonomous systems, aviation, robotics, and aerospace, with growing implications for workforce readiness and cross-sector innovation. Early survey data, capturing student, educator, and employer perspectives, reveals that AI-supported tools are notably changing student engagement, communication, and skills development. Initial indications underscores the importance of AI proficiency and technological familiarity in hiring and workforce development, particularly in technical and operational roles. Key areas of focus include the use of AI to strengthen outreach and interactivity; enrich instruction through intelligent simulations; inform curricular improvements using data analytics; …

Large Language Models As Information Providers For Appropriate Antimicrobial Use: Computational Text Analysis And Expert-Rated Comparison Of Chatgpt, Claude And Gemini, Marcello Di Pumpo, Maria Rosaria Gualano, Danilo Buonsenso, Francesca Raffaelli, Daniele Donà, Vittorio Maio, Patrizia Laurenti, Walter Ricciardi, Leonardo Villani

College of Population Health Faculty Papers

OBJECTIVES: Antimicrobial resistance is a critical public health threat. Large language models (LLMs) show great capability for providing health information. This study evaluates the effectiveness of LLMs in providing information on antibiotic use and infection management.

METHODS: Using a mixed-method approach, responses to healthcare expert-designed scenarios from ChatGPT 3.5, ChatGPT 4.0, Claude 2.0 and Gemini 1.0, in both Italian and English, were analysed. Computational text analysis assessed readability, lexical diversity and sentiment, while content quality was assessed by three experts via DISCERN tool.

RESULTS: 16 scenarios were developed. A total of 101 outputs and 5454 Likert-scale (1-5) scores were obtained …

Graphrag-Enabled Local Large Language Model For Gestational Diabetes Mellitus: Development Of A Proof-Of-Concept, Edmund Evangelista, Fathima Ruba, Salman Bukhari, Amril Nazir, Ravishankar Sharma

All Works

Background: Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is a prevalent chronic condition that affects maternal and fetal health outcomes worldwide, increasingly in underserved populations. While generative artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models (LLMs) have shown promise in health care, their application in GDM management remains underexplored. Objective: This study aimed to investigate whether retrieval-augmented generation techniques, when combined with knowledge graphs (KGs), could improve the contextual relevance and accuracy of AI-driven clinical decision support. For this, we developed and validated a graph-based retrieval-augmented generation (GraphRAG)–enabled local LLM as a clinical support tool for GDM management, assessing its performance against open-source LLM …

Barriers To Machine Learning Adoption In Regulated Electric Utilities, Donald R. Shiflet Jr.

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Machine learning (ML) technologies have the potential to revolutionize regulated electric utilities by improving operational efficiency, enabling predictive maintenance, and optimizing energy management. Despite these advantages, the adoption of ML in this sector lags other industries due to technical, organizational, and regulatory barriers. This research, grounded in the Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) framework, explores these barriers to uncover actionable solutions for integration. The study identifies key challenges, including explainability, cybersecurity, workforce resistance, and regulatory ambiguity to ML adoption in electric utilities. Utilizing an exploratory qualitative methodology, this approach integrates insights from the literature and industry interviews to rank barriers by frequency, severity, …

Zero Trust - The Future Of Cybersecurity, Danial Haider, Shougfta Mushtaq, Hasnat Ali, Mazliham Mohd Su’Ud

Journal of Informatics and Web Engineering

The recent Zero-Trust Architecture (ZTA) is progressively adopted to the develop network security by assuming no implicit trust within or outside an organization’s boundary. Though, ZTA faces substantial challenges in detecting sophisticated and developing cyber threats, particularly due to its trust on traditional security mechanisms that struggle to manage internal threats and sophisticated attack techniques. To report these shortcomings, the proposed study discovers the combination of advanced machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) performances to improve the anomaly detection proficiencies within ZTA environments. The study develops the CICIDS2017 dataset, which contains diverse and realistic network traffic patterns, to assess …