Digital Commons Network^™

Curated Spaces: Cognition By Design, Sydney Harvey

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“Curated Spaces: Cognition by Design” is a dissertation that considers the connection between designed spaces and cognition. This work combines philosophy of mind and aesthetics. The dissertation introduces the term “Curated Cognition”, which builds on the concept of situated cognition ( Brooks, 1991; Odling-Smee, Laland, and Feldman,  2003;  Sterelny, 2010; Krueger, 2015; Colombetti, 2020 ). The dissertation argues that the environment is essential to cognition, and all environments are curated; therefore, the way we think, feel, and act is curated as well. Some non-human animals may inhabit worlds that are not curated. For example, an octopus may find shelter in …

Editorial For The Special Issue “Advances And Applications Of Polymer Gels For Subsurface Energy And Storage”, Baojun Bai, Jingyang Pu

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Polymer gels are essential functional materials for subsurface energy operations, playing a critical role in conformance control, fluid diversion, hydraulic fracturing, and leakage mitigation. As reservoirs become increasingly complex and the demand for sustainable energy grows, continued innovation in gel technologies is crucial. This editorial introduces a Special Issue titled "Advances and Applications of Polymer Gels for Subsurface Energy and Storage," which compiles seven original research articles exploring recent developments in gel synthesis, characterization, and applications. The featured studies highlight the versatility of polymer gels, including nanoparticle-reinforced composites, foam–gel hybrids, recrosslinkable preformed particle gels, and advanced fracturing fluids. The contributions …

Homotopy-Safe Trajectory Planning And Attack Detection For Low-Altitude Uav Under False Map Information Injection Attacks, Chen Li, Qi, Juntao Zhao, Xin Yuan, Kai Wu, Wei Ni, Ren Ping Liu

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Low-altitude unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been extensively deployed in logistics support, surveillance, and disaster relief. However, their open communication networks and inherently vulnerable navigation systems render them susceptible to false map information injection attacks (FMIIA). To effectively mitigate the impact of FMIIA, this paper presents a UAV local flight trajectory optimization framework that integrates a robust attack detection method based on initial excitation (IE) and an efficient local path reconstruction approach utilizing the Marden theorem. First, an IE-based adaptive robust observer is formulated, where IE enhances the observability of the system's input-output responses, enabling joint estimation of the UAV's …

Electrification Of Australian Remote Communities Through Degradation-Aware Techno-Economic And Environmental Optimization Of Sustainable Vehicle-To-Home Enabled Hybrid Renewable Energy Systems, Tushar Kanti Roy, Barun K. Das, Md Apel Mahmud

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

The integration of hybrid renewable energy systems (HRES) with vehicle-to-home (V2H) capabilities presents a promising pathway to achieve sustainable electrification in remote communities. This work presents an innovative energy management system (EMS) in which a multi-objective optimization problem is formulated to simultaneously minimize net present cost (NPC), lifecycle CO2 emissions, and loss of power supply probability (LPSP). Three configuration-specific objective functions are proposed where these configurations include (i) off-grid photovoltaic (PV)–wind turbine (WT)–battery energy storage system (BESS)–diesel generator (DG), (ii) on-grid PV–WT–BESS–Grid, and (iii) off-grid PV–WT–BESS–DG with V2H. The EMS integrates mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) for degradation-aware deterministic dispatch, sequential …

2026 Safety Belt Usage Survey In Kentucky, Erin Lammers-Staats, Derek S. Young, Kenneth R. Agent

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

No abstract provided.

Thermal And Electrical Properties Of (Cr,Mo,Ta,V,W)C High-Entropy Carbide Ceramics, Ali Sarikhani, Steven M. Smith, Suzana Filipovic, William G. Fahrenholtz, Gregory E. Hilmas

Materials Science and Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The synthesis and characterization along with the resulting properties of fully dense (Cr,Mo,Ta,V,W)C high entropy carbide ceramics were studied. The ceramics were synthesized from metal oxide and carbon powders by carbothermal reduction, followed by spark plasma sintering at various temperatures for densification. Increasing the densification temperature resulted in grain growth and an increase in the lattice parameter. Thermal diffusivity increased linearly with testing temperature, resulting in thermal conductivity values ranging from ∼7 W/m•K at room temperature to ∼12 W/m•K at 200 °C. Measured heat capacity values matched theoretical estimates calculated using the Neumann-Kopp rule. Room temperature electrical resistivity decreased from …

The Role Of Mxene In The Process Of Sintering Hpcs To Ceramic, Jianyu Dai, Congjie Wei, Jeremy Watts, Chenglin Wu

Materials Science and Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This work presents a detailed investigation of the pyrolysis and sintering processes of hydridopolycarbosilane (HPCS) polymers, focusing on the formation of β-silicon carbide (β-SiC) and the influence of Ti₃C₂–Ox in this process. Due to the computational limitations of density functional theory (DFT), molecular dynamics methods with appropriate potentials are necessary for simulating large-scale systems, however, the available potentials are limited when the modeling process evolves relatively more element types or complex chemical-mechanical processes are studied. In this work, a machine learning based MACE (Multi-body ACE) model is adopted and trained to accurately capture the polymer's transformation …

Manufacturing Routes For Oxide Dispersion Strengthened Alloys, Ertugrul Demir, Seung Min Ha, Alexander Killips, Guan Cheng Chen, Yitian Chi, Dileepa Maddumage, Dalong Zhang, Xiaochun Li, Haiming Wen, Enrique Lavernia

Materials Science and Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Oxide dispersion strengthened alloys are promising structural materials for high temperature, irradiation, and mechanically demanding environments because their performance depends on fine and stable oxide dispersoids distributed within a metallic matrix. However, reliable fabrication remains challenging because precursor oxide nanoparticles or oxide forming species must be transformed into stable oxide dispersoids without excessive agglomeration, coarsening, contamination, or loss during processing. This review critically compares powder metallurgy, additive manufacturing, and liquid metallurgy routes for ODS alloy fabrication, with emphasis on oxide evolution, microstructure control, mechanical performance, scalability, and industrial maturity. Powder metallurgy remains the most reliable route for producing fine and …

Coverage-Aware Gradient-Boosted Intrusion Detection For Smart-Meter Distributed Denial-Of-Service Resilience, Harsh Kumar, Sanjeev Kumar

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) relies on continuous communication among smart meters, gateways, routers, and utility monitoring systems, increasing exposure to distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) traffic. This study presents a system-level intrusion-detection methodology integrating coverage-aware sensor placement with leakage-controlled gradient-boosted classification. The contribution lies in combining monitoring visibility, training-only feature sanitization, duplicate and cross-partition overlap removal, false-positive-constrained threshold selection, repeated external testing, and a validated feature-budget mode. Seventeen CIC-DDoS2019 parquet files were analyzed. After removing conflicting labels, exact duplicate feature vectors, and 4,666 testing records overlapping the training partition, the final dataset contained 121,088 training records and 297,790 external testing records with …

Ask Dr. Wang: A Community Conversation On Ai At Cary Library, Stephen Yang, Zhengjia Yang, Julie Yin, Eric Gu, Jiawei Liu

Paul English Applied Artificial Intelligence (AI) Institute Publications

This report describes a community engagement project by the Youth STEAM Initiative (YSI) in conjunction with a public talk by Dr. Haixun Wang, “How AI Remembers, Imagines, and Creates,” held at the Cary Memorial Library in Lexington, Massachusetts. Prior to the talk, YSI collected questions and perspectives from community members through an online survey, gathering thirteen responses spanning students, parents, and professionals. This report summarizes the talk, themes that emerged from those responses, the community’s views on AI creativity, and reflections from the YSI team.

Identifying Influential Drivers To The Utilization Of Prefabrication On Student Housing At Cal Poly: A Case Study On The Delivery Method, Dominique Giang

Construction Management

As universities experience increasing enrollment and housing shortages, student housing projects require efficient delivery methods capable of meeting strict occupancy deadlines while minimizing disruption to active campus environments. This research investigates the influential drivers behind the utilization of prefabrication on an ongoing student housing project at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. The seven-story project consists of 417 student beds and incorporates repetitive layouts and prefabricated building components. Through qualitative interviews with key project stakeholders involved in early decision-making and field execution, the study examines how project objectives, construction constraints, and delivery considerations influenced the decision to implement prefabrication. …

Metrological Characterization Of Pavement Friction Measurements For High-Friction Surface Treatments: Si Traceability, Uncertainty Evaluation, And Adhesion–Hysteresis Separation Via Water–Soap Bpt Protocol, Alireza Roshan, Magdy Abdelrahman

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Laboratory friction measurements are central to material screening for High-Friction Surface Treatments (HFST), yet metrological aspects including a proposed metrological traceability framework or uncertainty, and reproducibility are consistently underreported. This study applies a metrology-aligned framework to British Pendulum Tester (BPT) measurements performed in three states: dry, wet (water), and water–soap to assess operational adhesion and hysteresis components, document traceability to the International System of Units (SI), and report GUM-style uncertainty with covariance for the adhesion difference. Measurements were obtained for calcined bauxite (CB) and rhyolite (Rhy) in HFST and Coarse gradations across seven polishing protocols (baseline; LAA-1000/2000; MDA-105/180; PSV-10 h/20 …

Optimization Of Bonding Behavior Of Crumb Rubber-Modified (Crm) Asphalt For Sustainable High-Friction Surface Treatment (Hfst) Applications, Abdallah Aboelela, Magdy Abdelrahman

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Binder bonding strength (BBS) is critical to aggregate retention and friction performance in high-friction surface treatment (HFST). Although epoxy resin is traditionally used, asphalt-based binders offer a sustainable alternative; however, their bonding behavior and influence on polishing performance remain insufficiently understood. This study investigated the evolution and optimization of BBS in crumb rubber-modified (CRM) asphalt for rhyolite-based HFSTs. BBS was measured under dry and wet-conditioned states for two CR contents (10% and 15%), two CR types (cryogenic and ambient), two interaction temperatures (170 and 200 °C), and interaction times from 10 to 240 min. HFST performance was assessed using the …

Flexural Performance Of Deficient Rc Beams Repaired With Gfrp Composite, Zena Aljazaeri, Hayder Alghazali, Zuhair Al-Jaberi, John J. Myers

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Fiber-reinforced polymer composite materials have been improved for use in repairing and strengthening existing infrastructure over the past few decades. This case study focuses on the effect of confinement with GFRP strips on the structural performance of out-of-service beams in bridge applications due to the impact of over-height vehicles or inadequate lap-spliced reinforcements. In this study, beams with inadequate lap splices in the tension zone were utilized to mimic the damaged area in out-of-service RC beams. The proposed repair technique is a glass fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP) composite in the form of longitudinal sheets and U-wrapped strips. The experimental study determined …

Kentucky Transportation Cabinet Secretary’S Office Of Safety ‘Safety Academy’, Gabriel Dadi, Farshid Taherpour, Amanda Casolare

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC) Safety Academy was developed to provide a structured and practical safety training program that strengthens safety leadership, planning, communication, employee engagement, hazard recognition, and continuous improvement across KYTC operations. The program was refined over the course of multiple discussions with Cabinet representatives to ensure that the content reflected the needs and responsibilities of KYTC personnel. The final Safety Academy consists of six modules: Safety Academy Welcome, Safety Leadership, Safety Planning, Safety Engagement, Hazard Recognition, and Safety Academy Closeout and Evaluation. The modules combine instructional content with discussions, practical examples, group exercises, and KYTC-related scenarios to …

Kentucky Traffic Collision Facts 2025 Report, Paul Ross, Eric Green, Tony Fields, Christopher Blackden, Kenneth Agent, Christopher Van Dyke

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

No abstract provided.

Analysis Of Traffic Crash Data In Kentucky 2021-2025, Paul Ross, Eric Green, Tony Fields, Christopher Blackden, Christopher Van Dyke

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

No abstract provided.

Biodesulfurization Of Crude Oil Using Locally Isolated Pseudomonas Aeruginosa From Oil-Contaminated Soil In Iraqi Kurdistan, Yousif Mohammed Sharif, Sherwan Mohammed Simo, Lokman Aziz Abdulkareem, Muthanna H. Al-Dahhan

Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Locally sourced crude oil from Iraqi Kurdistan contains recalcitrant organosulfur compounds that impair air quality, corrode refinery equipment, and hinder compliance with fuel sulfur regulations. This study isolated a Pseudomonas sp. closely related to the Pseudomonas aeruginosa from oil-contaminated soil near Kashy Refinery (Duhok Province, Kurdistan Region, Iraq) and evaluated its biodesulfurization potential as an environmentally friendly alternative to hydrodesulfurization. Batch experiments were conducted at 34 °C and atmospheric pressure using mineral salts medium supplemented with 1%, 3%, and 5% (v/v) Tawki crude oil. The highest sulfur removal efficiency of 83.33% was obtained at 1% (v/v) crude oil after 10 …

Dustmambanet: A Hybrid Inceptionv3–State-Space Network For Robust Solar Panel Dust Detection, Kadhim Hayawi, Sakib Shahriar

All Works

To develop a robust, scalable vision-based model for automatic detection and quantification of dust accumulation on solar photovoltaic panels, overcoming limitations of existing convolutional and attention-based methods and supporting proactive maintenance. We propose DustMambaNet, a hybrid model that consists of a pretrained InceptionV3 convolutional neural network as a feature extractor and two selective state space sequence modules. The state space modules use gated depthwise convolutions to represent long-range spatial dependencies that are of linear complexity, after rearranging spatial features to form sequences. The network provides a binary classification of dust with a severity index (DSI) and a continuous one. All …

A Framework For Automated Quantity Extraction From .Ifc Models And Normalized Bid Comparison, Asmaa Mohamed Farouk

Theses and Dissertations

Accurate bid comparison remains a major challenge in construction tendering due to

differences in Bill of Quantities formats, item naming conventions, and pricing methods across

contractor submissions. These variations require time-consuming manual work and often lead to

subjective decisions. This research presents a computational framework that uses Building

Information Modeling through the .ifc file format, combined with text analysis techniques for

automated bid normalization.

The developed system uses a dual-component approach. Phase 1 extracts quantities from .ifc

model files using 3D geometric calculations, automated element classification. Phase 2 uses text

mining with a domain-specific dictionary of construction terms to interpret …

Deployment-Oriented Evaluation Of Temporal And Spatial Forecasting Approaches For Electric Vehicle Charging Demand In Energy Systems, Maher Alaraj, Eyob Solomon Getachew

All Works

Accurate short-term electric vehicle (EV) charging demand forecasting is important for charging infrastructure operation, grid management, and energy-system planning. This study presents a deployment-oriented and reproducible evaluation of temporal, spatial, and unified spatio-temporal forecasting approaches for day-ahead EV charging demand prediction. Using publicly available charging-session data aggregated at hourly resolution across ZIP-code regions, we compare persistence and ARIMA baselines, XGBoost, Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks, Graph Convolutional Networks (GCNs), and a unified GCN+LSTM architecture under a consistent preprocessing pipeline, leakage-free validation protocol, and rolling-origin evaluation framework. For the Boulder ZIP-code dataset considered in this study, temporal information provided the dominant …

Thermal Management Of Heat Sinks Equipped With Internal Cooling Mechanism: A Comparison With Advanced Heat Dissipation Techniques, Saif Ullah Khalid, Muhammad Ali Nasir, Mehmet Karahan, Muhammad Saleem Khan, Furqan Jamil

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Thermal management devices aim to remove extra heat from heat generation devices. There are numerous ways of heat rejection from the source, including active and passive cooling. The cooling techniques may be natural or forced, and the popular tools are heat pipes, heat sinks, and heat exchangers. In this piece of literature, several heat pipe and heat sink configurations are tested, including a novel internally cooled configuration using mono and hybrid nanofluids. Among heat sinks, solid finned and hollow finned configurations are mainly compared with the state-of-the-art heat pipes and thermal management systems for broader comparisons. Solid cylindrical fins are …

Which Factors Are Most Important For Understanding Neighborhood-Scale Electrification Transitions In New York City, And How Do These Factors Interact Within Urban Energy Systems?, Aaryan Nair

Publications and Research

Building electrification has emerged as a central strategy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from urban areas, yet its implementation remains uneven across cities due to differences in buildings, infrastructure, and local conditions. This literature review examines the factors that influence neighborhood-scale electrification transitions in New York City and explores how these factors interact within urban energy systems. Drawing on research from building science, energy systems, infrastructure planning, and sustainability transitions, the paper identifies five recurring categories of influence: building characteristics, demand characteristics, infrastructure conditions, planning and investment capacity, and socioeconomic conditions. The review finds that building age, typology, density, and …

Synthesis Of Fe-Doped Porous Carbon Catalyst Derived From Coconut Shell Waste Using Ferric Nitrate Nonahydrate (Fe(No3)3.9h2o) As An Iron Precursor, Ilham Lestadi Putra, Sukarni Sukarni, Heru Suryanto

Journal of Mechanical Engineering Science and Technology (JMEST)

Renewable energy from lignocellulosic biomass is a promising alternative to fossil fuels. Coconut shell (CS) waste is a favorable precursor for porous carbon due to its high carbon content, abundance, and non-food nature. However, conventional biochar often has limited surface area and catalytic active sites, hindering its effectiveness as a catalyst. While Fe-based modifications are promising, the use of ferric nitrate-assisted activation of coconut-shell-derived porous carbon remains underexplored. This research focused on developing an Fe-doped porous carbon catalyst from CS via ultrasound-assisted impregnation, followed by activation in a tube furnace. CS biochar was produced through pyrolysis at 550 °C and …

Optimization-Based Energy Management Of A Standalone Hybrid Power Plant Using A Hybrid Iheo–Pso Metaheuristic Framework, Muhammad Zeeshan Tariq, Asma Aziz, Barun K. Das

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

The current study combines solar photovoltaic (PV) power, energy storage batteries and wind power to propose a novel and effective method for energy management and optimisation of hybrid renewable energy systems. Optimising the management and coordination of many energy sources is becoming essential, as the world moves towards sustainable energy choices. This study seeks to improve system performance, reliability and operating costs, using a unique hybrid control and power management paradigm, the Improved Human Evolutionary Optimisation (IHEO) algorithm, presented as a novel optimisation method that balances energy flow, generation, storage and consumption. This study shows that the proposed model greatly …

Microbial Risk Assessment And Mitigation For Underground Hydrogen Energy Storage In Salt Caverns: A Multidisciplinary Investigation, Adnan Aftab, Silvia J. Salgar Chaparro, Muhammad Ali, Quan Xie, Ali Saeedi, Alireza Keshavarz, Mohammad Sarmadivaleh

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Underground hydrogen storage (UHS) in salt caverns is a promising solution for large-scale renewable energy storage, but its long-term stability may be compromised by hydrogenotrophic microorganisms such as sulphate-reducing bacteria (SRB). This study integrates global salt basin analysis, numerical modelling, and laboratory experiments to assess microbial risks associated with the hydrogen storage. We evaluated salt deposits across six continents, reviewed microbial communities in seawater sources commonly used for the leaching, and simulated SRB behaviour under varying hydrogen concentrations. Experiments using both commercial SRB strains and indigenous consortia from Western Australia revealed minimal microbial activity under hypersaline, low-carbon conditions. These findings …

Engineered Porous Structures For Propellants Using Additive Manufacturing, Elbert Caravaca

Dissertations

Foamed polymers are widely used today for shock absorption and packaging materials to prevent damage to their contents. Typical foamed densities vary from 0.1 g/cm³ to 0.4 g/cm³ depending on the polymeric materials used. There is a need to explore foaming densities above 0.4 g/cm³ for propellants with highly engineered surface area progression for increased combustion performance. One way to achieve this is through highly controlled and engineered graded foam structures. To further exploit this approach, additive manufacturing coupled with a tunable means to generate foamed structures is the target of this work. To generate foam structures …

The Sliding Aperture Transform: A Mathematical Method Applied To Radiation-Induced Dlts Capacitance Transients, Md Abu Bakkar Siddique

Graduate Masters Theses

This thesis presents the Sliding Aperture Transform (SLAPt), a novel mathematical technique for extracting exponential argument and pre-factor  from experimental data. The method transforms measured waveforms into an inverse-domain representation where exponential decay processes appear as distinct peaks, simplifying data analysis and reducing the effects of baseline offsets and noise. The technique is here applied to time dependent capacitance transients associated with irradiated and non-irradiated silicon pn junction diodes. The technique is further developed and applied to positive argument exponentials using an axillary function. This allows forward bias  current-voltage measurements, and forward pulse-bias current transient measurements to be SLAP analyzed, …

Using Clustering Techniques And Mitre Att&Ck Threat Interpretation To Detect Anomalies In Modbus/Tcp For Industrial Control Systems, Shivanjali Khare, Tirthankar Ghosh, Jhansi Sreya Jagarapu, Atharva Haridas Sagare

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

Recent attacks on America's critical infrastructure have drawn increased attention on securing industrial control systems and operational technology in power plants, utility companies, and other sectors providing public services. Attack detection and mitigation strategies on these systems have shown promising results using machine learning and other statistical baselining techniques, mostly using supervised learning and classification. Unsupervised learning using cluster analysis and other techniques remain mostly unexplored. In this paper, we propose multi-layered feature extraction and hybrid clustering framework to detect fine-grained nested attack patterns in Modbus-over-TCP traffic. Operating under the assumption of known number of distinct network categories, our approach …

How Do Governments Combat Jihad Online?, Noah Cook

Honors College Theses

Since the September 11th, 2001 attacks, jihadist groups like ISIS, al-Qaeda, and al-Shabaab have used the internet as a tool for recruitment, radicalization, and propaganda dissemination. Since then, governments, non-governmental organizations, and private companies have developed strategies to combat jihadism on the internet. This paper examines how these actors have worked to mitigate the digital jihadist footprint and its effects by analyzing three main approaches to countering violent Islamist extremism on the internet: counter narrative initiatives, awareness-raising programs, and content removals. This paper finds that each of these methods has its own strengths and weaknesses. Counter narrative campaigns show the …