Digital Commons Network^™

Individualized Bayesian Inference Identifies Novel Genetic Variants For Parkinson's Disease, Jin Ren, Yasaman J. Soofi, Md Asad Rahman, Qing Lu, Jinling Liu

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a complex neurodegenerative disorder with a significant genetic component. While genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have been instrumental in identifying genetic variants associated with PD, the reliance on large sample sizes and population-level analyses may overlook variants with lower minor allele frequencies or individual-specific relevance. Individualized Bayesian Inference (IBI) offers a promising method to complement GWAS by identifying and prioritizing candidate genetic markers at both the individual and patients-like-me subgroup levels. This study evaluates the application of IBI to PD genetics, using GWAS as a baseline for comparison. We analyzed genetic data from the Fox Insight online …

Shadowless In A World Of Shadows: Diminishing The Refraction Of Light Via Nanoconfinement, Vuk Uskoković

Administration and Staff Articles and Research

This paper presents a physicochemical study that merges science and art in the context of exploring the refractive index of water under nanoconfinement. Using a simple and economical experimental approach, it is shown that confinement within the micropores of a zeolitic structure, characterized using electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction, paradoxically reduces the refractive index of water, bringing confined water droplets closer to a shadowless state. Counterintuitively, water under confinement, as indicated by vibrational spectroscopic analyses performed in the transmittance mode in the IR range and reflectance mode in the near-IR range, exhibits greater structural freedom than in its bulk or …

Bayesian Network: An Explainable Artificial Intelligence (Xai) Approach To Human Performance Modelling For Control Room Operations, Houda Briwa

Theses

Alarm systems in process industry control rooms routinely exceed the performance targets set by standards such as EEMUA 191, placing operators under conditions where reliable performance is most difficult to achieve. Predicting how operators respond under such conditions is central to risk management, yet current Human Reliability Assessment (HRA) methods depend on expert judgement that is rarely tested against operational evidence, assume independence among factors known to interact, and do not explicitly represent the cognitive processes through which performance emerges. In Resilience Engineering terms, these methods encode Work-as-Imagined with limited means to assess how far expectations hold when work is …

A Full-Scale Watertight Workflow Numerical Study For A Triangular Fin And Tube Heat Exchanger, Hamdi̇ Selçuk Çeli̇k, Bahadir Doğan, Lati̇fe Berri̇n Erbay

Turkish Journal of Mathematics

In this study, the thermo-hydraulic characteristics of an air-cooled triangular finned tube heat exchanger were analyzed numerically. The full-scale heat exchanger was modeled using Ansys Fluent watertight workflow, considering water as the primer fluid to precisely investigate the effects of geometrical factors. The effects of fin height, fin width, and fin spacing of the triangular fins on the performance of the heat exchanger were examined using k-ω turbulence model. A basic finned-tube heat exchanger model, which was manufactured as a monolithic structure without tube-fin contact resistance by milling from aluminum 5083 material, was tested in an air tunnel to verify …

Revised Draft Final Quarterly Operations And Maintenance Report: Butte Treatment Lagoon System – First Quarter 2026, Pioneer Technical Services, Inc.

Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund Site

No abstract provided.

The Role Of External Factors In Shaping Carbohydrate Conformational Landscapes, Murat Yaman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Carbohydrates (glycans) are among the most structurally diverse biomolecules and participate in a wide range of biological processes, including molecular recognition, cell adhesion, immune response, host-pathogen interactions, and cellular signaling. Their biological functions are governed by a complex interplay between sequence, stereochemistry, conformational flexibility, and environmental factors. However, the structural heterogeneity and dynamic nature of glycans present significant challenges for both experimental characterization and theoretical modeling. In particular, the relationships between glycan structure, conformational dynamics, and the resulting potential energy surfaces remain incomplete.

This dissertation investigates how external factors modulate the potential energy surfaces of carbohydrates through a combination of …

Restoring Linguistic Grounding In Vla Models Via Train-Free Attention Recalibration, Ninghao Zhang, Bin Zhu, Shijie Zhou, Jingjing Chen

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models enable robots to perform manipulation tasks directly from natural language instructions and are increasingly viewed as a foundation for generalist robotic policies. However, their reliability under Out-Of-Distribution (OOD) instructions remains underexplored. In this paper, we reveal a critical failure mode in which VLA policies continue executing visually plausible actions even when the language instruction contradicts the scene. We refer to this phenomenon as linguistic blindness, where VLA policies prioritize visual priors over instruction semantics during action generation. To systematically analyze this issue, we introduce ICBench, a diagnostic benchmark constructed from the LIBERO dataset that probes language–action coupling …

Facevalue: Exploring Real-Time Self-View Overlays To Prompt Meaning-Oriented Self-Awareness In Remote Meetings, Gun Woo (Warren) Park, Anthony Tang, Fanny Chevalier

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In remote video meetings, visual non-verbal cues, such as facial expressions or head movements, are seen continuously but often only partially. This increases ambiguity compared to in-person settings and can cause misinterpretation or misalignment between intended and perceived meaning. Motivated by communication theories, we designed FaceValue, a technology probe that augments the self-view with private, real-time overlays. These overlays are subtle, suggestive prompts intended to help attendees reflect on how their cues might be interpreted by others. To invite personal interpretation, FaceValue avoids behavioral labeling and instead aims to support meaning-oriented self-awareness: recognizing when visible cues may unintentionally (mis)communicate intent. …

Towards More Inclusive Ai Systems In Cities, Siew Ying Shee, Orlando Woods

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly embedded in urban infrastructures and governance, shaping how people, spaces, and futures are classified, prioritised, and managed. Yet, most AI systems are developed within a narrow set of linguistic and geopolitical contexts and exported globally, embedding particular epistemic assumptions into diverse urban environments. Even where formal inclusion metrics are met, such asymmetries can render certain populations and realities less legible within algorithmic systems. Prevailing approaches in digital inclusion—centred on fairness metrics, representation, or access—presume technologies as politically inert and bounded. Yet, the adaptive and probabilistic behaviour of contemporary AI disrupts this premise, challenging the idea …

Karhunen-Loève Modes For Coherent Arrays, Jack E. Mccrae, Santasri R. Bose-Pillai, Steven T. Fiorino

Faculty Publications

The optimal modes for correcting atmospheric turbulence on coherent arrays are determined. These Karhunen-Loève modes are eigenvectors of a covariance matrix. Creating this covariance matrix requires knowledge of the power spectrum of the turbulence, the aperture geometry, and a basis set for the matrix. The Kolmogorov power law is ordinarily chosen here for the turbulence spectrum. By choosing the phase on each array subaperture element minus the phase averaged over all subapertures as this basis, infinite values in the variances and covariances can be avoided. The piston mode of the whole array, which would otherwise also be infinite, is thus …

Sea-Level Rise And Regional Economic Adjustment On The U.S. Gulf Coast, Md A M Hasif, Juhee Lee, Robin A. Choudhury

School of Earth, Environmental, & Marine Sciences Faculty Publications

Sea-level rise (SLR) poses escalating risks to the U.S. Gulf Coast, where critical industries, infrastructure, and populations are concentrated in low-lying areas. This study estimates the short- and long-run economic effects of SLR using a panel autoregressive distributed lag-pooled mean group framework applied to county-level data from 26 coastal counties across five Gulf Coast states from 2005 to 2021. Over this period, mean sea level increased by approximately 11 cm on average across counties, with cumulative changes ranging from about 4 cm to over 24 cm and substantial cross-county variation, providing a meaningful empirical setting for identifying economic adjustment. We …

Long-Term Monitoring And Response Of Papaipema Sciata Bird (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) To Prescribed Fire In Michigan (Usa), Gregory J. Norwood, Logan M. Rowe, Brett A. Degregorio, David L. Cuthrell, Aaron D. Meredith, Steven M. Gray

The Great Lakes Entomologist

The Culver’s root borer moth (Papaipema sciata) (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) is a rare Noctuid that requires Culver’s root (Veronicastrum virginicum) to complete its lifecycle within remnant native grasslands and open woodlands in the midwest and northeast United States. We report on 26 years of monitoring this species’ colonization of Culver’s root stems at Algonac State Park (ASP) in Michigan, where prairies have been maintained by prescribed fire since 1990. P. sciata is considered fire sensitive because eggs spend the dormant season in the combustible prairie litter and duff near host plants. The objectives were to determine the …

Guardians Of The Record (Cs2 Edition): Heaps, Queues, And A Scarce Oracle, Ilan Goodman

Generative AI Teaching Activities

Students defend Wikipedia from vandals with data structures instead of infrastructure: a sliding-window edit-velocity tracker (hash map of queues), a hand-built binary min-heap, and a budget-bounded top-K selection decide which few suspicious edits earn a question to an expensive, rate-limited Oracle — a stand-in for a real LLM.

Clinic-In-A-Box: A Portable, Software-Defined Cyber Range For Realistic, Scenario-Based Cybersecurity Training, Ethan Chumley, Aaron Nair, Royce Yaezenko, Joshua Payne, Veronika Kyles, Paul Wagner, Robert J. Honomichl, Ryan Straight, Shengjie Xu

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

Realistic, hands-on cybersecurity training has traditionally depended on fixed infrastructure such as dedicated lab hardware, cloud subscriptions, or permanent network connectivity, limiting where and how often it can be delivered. This paper presents the design and implementation of a portable, scenario-based cybersecurity training platform housed in a single travel case and built from commodity hardware, type-1 hypervisor virtualization, containerized service orchestration, and software-defined networking. The platform clones, isolates, and resets complete lab environments on demand, allowing the same physical system to support repeated classroom, workshop, or field deployments with minimal manual reconfiguration. Training scenarios are grounded in generated organizational profiles …

The Association Between Rapid Growth In Children Under The Age Of Five And Adolescent Obesity, Ratu Ayu Dewi Sartika, Fadila Wirawan, Iche Andriyani Liberty, Nurul Husna Mohd Shukri, Siti Arifah Pujonarti, Edy Purwanto, Munaya Fauziah

Kesmas

Early-life nutrition is a critical predictor of long-term health, yet the association between rapid early-childhood growth and adolescent obesity, particularly in relation to the “double burden of malnutrition,” remains under-researched in Indonesia. This study aimed to analyze the association between rapid growth and adolescent obesity. Data were obtained from the 1997, 2000, and 2014 waves of the Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS). This study included 641 children (aged 0–23 months at baseline) with complete anthropometric measurements across all three waves. Rapid growth was defined as an increase in z-scores of >0.67 in weight-for-age (WAZ), height-for-age (HAZ), or weight-for-height (WHZ) between …

Symmetry Breaking And Restoration In The Grasshopper Ising Model, Aradh Bisarya

Graduate Masters Theses

Distance-selective interactions in Ising systems give rise to a range of rich and unexpected phenomena. A notable example is the so-called Grasshopper Ising model, a conserved spin Ising model with interactions only between spins at a fixed distance. This model is the discrete version of the following mathematical problem: A grasshopper lands at a random point on a planar lawn of area one. It then makes one jump of fixed distance in a random direction. What lawn shape maximizes the probability that the grasshopper lands on the lawn after the jump? The solution to this problem, corresponding to the ground …

A Variational Algorithm For Preparing Superoptimal Thermal States For Quantum Thermometric Measurement Adaptable To Nisq Hardware, Nicholas Donatelli

Graduate Masters Theses

The conditional thermal state (CTS) is a probe-specific quantum thermal state that is known to outperform the Gibbs state in quantum thermometric measurements at sufficiently low temperatures. This thesis introduces a variational quantum algorithm designed to prepare the CTS on quantum computing hardware which optimizes the angular parameters of the quantum gates that comprise the ansatz circuit and, for the one-qubit case, minimizes relative infidelity of the output state with the known CTS. Using noiseless numerical simulations (SPSA with Qiskit), attempting to prepare the CTS yielded relative infidelities with the known CTS on the order of $10^{-5}$ for most parameter …

Synthesizing Viscoelasticity: Living Polymers, Micro-Macro Relations, And Paths For Resolution, Adam M. Hasler

Graduate Masters Theses

This thesis investigates the relationship between macroscopic rheological signals and underlying microscopic dynamics in complex fluids, specifically focusing on ”living polymers” within the cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) and sodium salicylate (NaSal) surfactant system. The research addresses the inverse parameterization problem, demonstrating how bulk measurements like zero-shear viscosity can mask fundamentally different physical topologies, such as purely cylindrical, reptating micelles versus highly branched networks. Through the successful synthesis of viscoelastically ”degenerate” samples, the study utilizes an array of characterization techniques including frequency sweeps, Large Amplitude Oscillatory Shear (LAOS) to resolve these unique underlying states. Furthermore, the work explores further avenues of study …

A Statistical Mechanics Approach To Reinforcement Learning, Jacob Adamczyk

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

Reinforcement learning (RL), the study of optimal decision-making over long timescales in stochastic systems, has recently seen remarkable advances due in large part to the efforts of the deep learning community. RL has witnessed great success in solving problems in video games, robotics, biological control, and language modeling. However, a unified statistical mechanics framework to understand and develop the corresponding algorithms is lacking. To address this issue, we begin by showing that the reinforcement learning problem can be formulated and solved using the tools of statistical mechanics. Drawing on physical principles of free energy minimization and invariance, we address important …

Modeling Kinetics Of 5-Aminolevulinic Acid-Induced Protoporphyrin Ix Accumulation For Optimal Photodynamic Therapy, Priscilla Melebor

Graduate Masters Theses

Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is a minimally invasive treatment that uses light-activated photosensitizers to selectively destroy diseased tissue through the generation of reactive oxygen species. However, conventional in vitro models often fail to accurately reproduce the pharmacokinetics of photosensitizer accumulation and clearance observed in vivo. This study investigated protoporphyrin IX (PpIX) accumulation following 5-aminolevulinic acid (ALA) exposure under physiologically relevant conditions using two-dimensional (2D) monolayers and three-dimensional (3D) spheroids. By comparing continuous ALA exposure with transient exposure followed by ALA washout, this work provides a more biologically relevant framework for studying PpIX kinetics and optimizing photodynamic therapy.

Spider Biodiversity And Insecticide Sensitivity Across Active And Restored Cranberry Bogs On Nantucket, Tyler J. Kulak

Graduate Masters Theses

Spiders are one of the most diverse groups of organisms on the planet with over 53,000 species described as of 2026. They provide a suite of ecosystem services including their regulation of problematic pests in agricultural systems, appearing in high biomasses across a breadth of ecological niches. While beneficial as pest regulators, they are also susceptible to the same management techniques as pest organisms and are especially vulnerable to chemical control. Cranberry production in Massachusetts likely benefits from spider ecosystem services, but diversity research on spiders in these systems is limited. This study compares the diversity of spider populations from …

The Grasshopper's Journey To The Bloch Sphere, David Llamas

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

The Grasshopper Problem asks a simple geometric question. A grasshopper lands on a lawn of fixed area and jumps a fixed distance in a random direction. What shape of lawn maximizes the probability that the grasshopper remains on the lawn after jumping? The jump rule is rotationally symmetric, but the best lawns do not have to be. This dissertation studies how that symmetry breaking occurs, maps the continuum problem to a novel constrained spin system, and uses the spherical Grasshopper Problem to compare quantum singlet correlations with classical local models.

For planar lawns, boundary-integral and perturbative calculations explain why the …

Exposing And Addressing Machine Learning Brittleness Through Constraint Solving, Muyeed Ahmed

Dissertations

Machine Learning (ML) implementations are fundamentally brittle: nondeterministic, inconsistent, and prone to overfitting; however, constraint solving can be used to systematically expose, quantify, and address this brittleness.

This dissertation first establishes that widely-used implementations of popular ML algorithms are nondeterministic (producing different outputs on the same input, across different runs) and inconsistent (different implementations of the same algorithm producing different outputs on the same input). This is more prevalent in Unsupervised Learning (UL) implementations where, due to the lack of a ground truth, subtle execution errors can go unnoticed and are difficult to verify. Nondeterminism and inconsistency also introduce security …

Development Of Ultrafast Protein Digestion And Standards Free Quantitation Methods For Mass Spectrometric Analysis, Praneeth Ivan Joel Fnu

Dissertations

A wide variety of biologically important molecules, such as enzymes, antibodies, hormones, transporters and receptors are proteins by composition and they play key roles in biological functions such as cellular regulation, communication, metabolism and physiological function. Protein dysfunctions and abnormalities are associated with numerous diseases, making proteins critical targets for understanding disease mechanisms and developing therapeutic interventions. Protein-based therapeutics such as monoclonal antibodies, hormones and vaccines gained popularity due to their high specificity, efficacy, and ability to treat complex diseases that are often difficult to address with small-molecule drugs.

Given the important role of proteins in a variety of biological …

Infrared Detectability Of Whale Species And Behaviors To Enhance Automatic Detection For Real-Time Vessel Strike Avoidance, Laura J. Howes

Graduate Masters Theses

Real-time detection of large whales at sea is critical for mitigating serious injury and mortality from ship strikes and other human activities such as seismic surveys, especially for endangered species such as the critically endangered North Atlantic Right Whale (Eubalaena glacialis). Traditional marine mammal observers are limited by environmental conditions and human factors, necessitating a robust, 24-hour solution. This study investigates the efficacy of a novel onboard detection tool infrared (IR) technology to detect whale blows and body parts. While IR is a promising advancement, its performance under varying sea conditions (e.g., fog, humidity) and its ability to …

Guardians Of The Record: A Two-Tiered Streaming Cascade With Kafka, Flink, And A Real Llm, Ilan Goodman

Generative AI Teaching Activities

Students build a streaming vandalism detector for live Wikipedia edits in which a fast rule-based tier decides which few of ~1,500 edits per minute are worth escalating to a slow, rate-limited real LLM (Gemini) — confronting the cost, latency, and failure modes of putting AI inside a production data pipeline.

Complementing Topographic Wetness With Sentinel-2 Phenological Indices To Map Soil Moisture Gradients In A Snowmelt-Driven Mountain Floodplain, Edward Turk

Master's Projects and Capstones

Soil moisture in mountain floodplains varies over a few meters, far finer than ground-based sensors or coarse satellite images resolve; conventional optical and microwave methods sense only the top few centimeters, missing the root zone that governs plant function and biogeochemistry. Similarly, topography-derived moisture variations miss micro-heterogeneities in moisture related to intrinsic soil heterogeneity and/or the root zone. This has important implications for our ability to characterize local hotspots of biogeochemical reactions, like those related to the generation of methane. In this work, we read vegetation as a proxy for the subsurface, using Sentinel-2 land-surface phenology to infer root-zone moisture, …

Re: Comment Letter For Butte Priority Soils Operable Unit (Bpsou) Draft Diggings East Dewatering Treatability Study Pre-Design Investigation Work Plan (Pdiwp) (Dated August 24, 2026) And The 2026 Draft Diggings East Dewatering Treatability Study Quality Assurance Project Plan (Qapp) (Dated August 24, 2026), Emma Rott

Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund Site

No abstract provided.

Motor Imagery Eeg Decoding For Brain-Computer Interfaces: Structured Representation, Transfer, And Drift, Yiming Shen

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

Motor imagery EEG decoding is often summarized by the accuracy of a final classifier, but the classifier is only the last stage of the pipeline. Before classification, the signal has already been shaped by preprocessing, feature extraction, source-session organization, and adaptation. This dissertation studies how feature representation, source-session transfer, and drift shape reliable MI-EEG decoding for brain-computer interfaces.

It first studies within-session decoding on public MI-EEG datasets using nested validation that keeps preprocessing, feature fitting, and model selection inside the training folds. This analysis separates gains from feature representation from gains due to nonlinear classification, and relates both comparisons to …

Enterococcus Abundance, Distribution, And Environmental Controls At A Sandy Shoreline, South Carolina, Usa, Helen Kehoe

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Water quality monitoring crucially protects the health of beachgoers around the world. However, water-adjacent sediments, such as sandy beaches, are known to harbor harmful bacteria, yet are not monitored despite their intensive recreational use. This project monitored the abundance of fecal indicator bacteria (FIB), specifically Enterococci, in sandy beach sediments at beaches routinely monitored for water quality in Myrtle Beach and North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Surface sediment core sampling (0-5 cm) in the swash zone was conducted once per month for 4 months at 24 beaches in tandem with state-accredited surf-water FIB monitoring using IDEXX’s Enterolert test (Standard Method …