Digital Commons Network^™

Pso-Style Social Influence In An Ant Colony Algorithm For Continuous-Domain Optimization, Ashraf M. Abdelbar, Donald C. Wunsch

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

ACOR is a well-established Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) algorithm for continuous-domain optimization. In this paper, we propose an extension (which we call ACOR∗) in which several fundamental modifications are made to ACOR's solution construction process, including the incorporation of a social influence mechanism borrowed from Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). Our modifications to the ACOR algorithm are intended to promote search diversity and combat premature convergence. We experimentally evaluate our proposal in the context of training feedforward neural networks for classification using 65 widely used datasets from the University of California Irvine (UCI) repository, as well as the optimization of several …

Golden And Silver Dark Sirens For Precise H0 Measurement With Hetdex, Yixuan Dang, Ish Gupta, Robin Ciardullo, Erin Mentuch Cooper, Shiksha Pandey, Dustin Davis, Surhud More, Rachel Gray, Hsin Yu Chen, Daniel J. Farrow, Caryl Gronwall, Donghui Jeong, Shun Saito, Donald P. Schneider

Physics Faculty Research & Creative Works

Gravitational waves (GWs) from compact binary coalescences are standard sirens that provide a direct measure of the source's luminosity distance, enabling an independent measurement of the Hubble constant (H0). While a bright siren—a GW event with an identified electromagnetic (EM) counterpart—provided the first such constraint, most detections, currently dominated by black hole mergers, lack EM signatures. A measurement of H0 is still possible with these dark sirens by statistically associating GW events with galaxies in existing catalogs based on the sky localization. In this work, we explore the potential of two subsets of dark sirens categorized by their localization precision: …

Phases And Dynamics Of An Impurity Immersed In One-Dimensional Quantum Droplets, Dimitrios Diplaris, Ilias A. Englezos, Friethjof Theel, Peter Schmelcher, Simeon I. Mistakidis

Physics Faculty Research & Creative Works

We explore the ground-state properties of a single impurity immersed in a one-dimensional quantum droplet medium formed by a two-component Bose mixture. Relying on ab initio simulations, we demonstrate that tuning the impurity–droplet interactions allows to controllably reshape the droplets' density profiles and associated correlation patterns. For attractive impurity-medium couplings, the impurity becomes localized within the droplet, which exhibits a density hump at the vicinity of the impurity, while repulsive interactions facilitate phase separation. Comparing our many-body results with the appropriate extended Gross–Pitaevskii description, we find adequate agreement for the droplet density profiles, with the effective field approach systematically overestimating …

Social Media Is A Juggernaut: Lagged Correlation Analysis Using Ngram Data On “Internet” And “Social Media” With Amplification By The Advent Of The “Iphone”, William Zywiak, Gao Niu, Nicolas Petrell, Victoria Nichele, Kirsten Hokeness

Mathematics and Economics Faculty Journal Articles

The amount of new information transmitted per day can be overwhelming. The data available through Ngram Viewer allows statistical examination to determine the most salient topics, as well as lagged correlation and lagged variance to support possible causal connections between concepts. Using this database, we determined that COVID, crypto, microplastics, and especially social media are important topics of the last few years. We also present results that suggest the development of the internet and the iPhone fueled the prominence of social media, and the access of the iPhone also increased access to the internet.

Integrating Multi-Scale And Multi-Filtration Topological Features For Medical Image Classification, Pengfei Gu, Huimin Li, Haoteng Tang, Dongkuan Xu, Erik Enriquez, Dongchul Kim, Bin Fu, Danny Z. Chen

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Modern deep neural networks have shown remarkable performance in medical image classification. However, such networks either emphasize pixel-intensity features instead of fundamental anatomical structures (e.g., those encoded by topological invariants), or they capture only simple topological features via single-parameter persistence. In this paper, we propose a new topology-guided classification framework that extracts multi-scale and multi-filtration persistent topological features and integrates them into vision classification backbones. For an input image, we first compute cubical persistence diagrams (PDs) across multiple image resolutions/scales. We then develop a "vineyard" algorithm that consolidates these PDs into a single, stable diagram capturing signatures at varying granularities, …

Exploring Regenerative Vegetable Systems On The Central Coast Of California, Una S. O'Connell

Master's Theses

As climate change and current agricultural practices place pressure on the long term sustainability and resilience of food production systems, there is growing interest in whether existing agricultural systems can adapt to maintain productivity while improving environmental outcomes.

This study evaluated the effects of regenerative versus standard organic vegetable production systems on yield, insect communities, and weed suppression across three field trials conducted on California's Central Coast. In addition, I collected baseline soil health data for all trials. Trials 1 and 2 were carried out at the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo Organic Farm using cabbage and broccoli as cash …

Constructing Orthonormal Bases With The Residuals Of Successive Approximations, An Introduction To Multiresolution Analysis, Elijah J. Guptill

Master's Theses

Wavelets and wavelet analysis are used in the study of signal processing, quantum field theory, functional analysis, multifractal analysis, and various other areas of mathematics. Multiresolution analysis provides a framework for building a wavelet basis of $\mathcal{L}^{2}(\mathbb{R})$ from a scaling function $\phi$, whose dyadic dilations and translations, $\{2^{j /2}\phi(2^{j}x-k):j,k\in \mathbb{Z}\}$, approximate $\mathcal{L}^{2}(\mathbb{R})$. One of the key properties of  $\phi$ is that it must satisfy $\phi(x)=\sum_{k\in \mathbb{Z}}{p_{k}2^{j /2}\phi(2^{j}x-k)}$ with respect to the norm on $\mathcal{L}^{2}(\mathbb{R})$. This equation is called a two-scale difference equation. Such equations enforce a regularity on the ordinary generating function $2^{-1 /2}\sum_{k\in \mathbb{Z}}{p_{k}z^{k}}$, known as the quadrature condition. …

Developing A Humpback Whale Vocalization Detector Using Machine Learning Models, Lucas Kantorowski

Master's Theses

Humpback whale songs are notoriously complex. Identification of humpback whale song units requires bioacousticians to tediously listen, analyze, and annotate collected sound data. Even sparse data requires listening to the entirety of the collected acoustic data. In this study, three hours of audio containing over one-thousand humpback whale song units was collected in Monterey Bay, California.

Prior studies have seen success using convolutional neural networks by performing image classification on hundreds of hours worth of spectrograms. Our study uses traditional machine learning models, as they are less computationally demanding, and require less data.

We use time splitting and Mel-frequency cepstrum …

Improving The Reliability And Performance Of A Supersonic Indraft Tube Wind Tunnel, Christian J. Kaml

Master's Theses

Access to supersonic testing is increasing in demand, and wind tunnels remain one of the safest and most cost-effective methods for gathering high-speed flow data. Despite being more economical than alternative options, supersonic wind tunnel facilities often require substantial investment to construct, operate, and maintain.

The novel indraft tube tunnel architecture was conceived as a high-speed flow testbed that incorporates features of both Ludwieg tubes and indraft wind tunnels to maintain costs low enough to be accessible even to small universities. This design was first developed and tested in 2018 at California Polytechnic State University, featuring a cost per test …

An Evaluation Of Road Network Structure As A Predictor Of Traffic Volume, Colin M. Mcdonald

Master's Theses

This thesis evaluates the relationships between various graph theory metrics and taxi traffic volume for the cities of San Francisco, California and Porto, Portugal. We also evaluate a modified betweenness centrality metric which incorporates the count of distinct origin-destination pairs from the taxi data as the weight function. This thesis extends a paper by Pengyao Ye, Bo Wu, and Wenbo Fan by reducing circularity through a temporal train-test split and by comparing both line-graph and primal-graph formulations of betweenness centrality.

We found that past traffic volume is almost perfectly correlated with future traffic volume and that the modified betweenness centrality …

Fairlinked: Data Fairification Tools For Materials Data Science, Van D. Tran, Brandon Lee, Ritika Lamba, Henry Dirks, Quynh D. Tran, Balashanmuga Priyan Rajamohan, Ozan Dernek, Laura S. Bruckman, Yinghui Wu, Erika I. Barcelos, Roger H. French

Student Scholarship

FAIRLinked is a software package created to support the FAIRification of materials science data, ensuring proper alignment with FAIR principles: Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. It is built to be compatible with MDS-Onto, an ontology designed to capture the semantics of various types of materials data, enabling integration and sharing across different research workflows. The package is subdivided into three subpackages: InterfaceMDS, RDFTableConversion, and QBWorkflow. The first subpackage, InterfaceMDS allows users to search for terms using either string search or various filters, explore different domains and subdomains, and add terms to MDS-Onto. RDFTableConversion is used for serialization and deserialization of …

Hide-And-Sweep: Detecting Concealed Cameras Via Led Illumination Sweeps, Jonghyuk Yun, Jaeyoung Moon, Yunseo Park, Sean Rui Xiang Tan, Byunghyun Kim, Rajesh Krishna Balan, Jun Han

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Hidden cameras have increasingly infiltrated hotel and Airbnb rooms, posing serious privacy risks. Detecting such cameras is challenging because they are visually inconspicuous and often embedded inside everyday objects. Even worse, existing handheld detectors are manual and also rely on single-angle illumination and hence suffer from high false-positive rates. We present SweepLED (pronounced "sweepled")1, a practical hidden camera detection system that operates on a commodity smartphone augmented with an unobtrusive LED-embedded case. SweepLED performs LED sweeping - a controlled sequence of multi-angle illumination - while the user simply holds the phone still by hand, enabling the camera to capture how …

Electrical Resistivity Tomography Investigation Of Hard Rock Aquifers In The Salinian Block, Roxanne C. Chambers

Physics

Identifying a productive groundwater source in hard rock terrain is often a challenge. Conventional hard rock aquifer models commonly describe a weathering derived layered system consisting of a laminated layer, an underlying fractured zone, and a competent granitic basement. This study investigates the applicability of this conceptual model at Lockshaw Ranch, a granitic site within the Salinian Block of central California located near the Rinconada Fault.

Previous electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) surveys and time domain electromagnetic (TDEM) data were integrated with a newly acquired ERT profile (ERT-06) are used to characterize the subsurface structure and identify potential groundwater bearing zones. …

A Fiftieth Year Retrospective On The 1976 Mw 7.5 Motagua Earthquake In Guatemala, Grant Clark, Trenton Mcenaney, Jeremy Maurer, Andreas Eckert, Stephen S. Gao, Omar G. Flores, Robin Yani, Tina Niemi, Christoph Grützner, Francisco Gomez, Jonathan Obrist-Farner

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

On 4 February 1976, an Mw > 7:5 earthquake ruptured ∼240 km of the Motagua fault in Guatemala, causing ∼23,000 fatalities. This event provided evidence for the fault's role as a major transform boundary between the North American and Caribbean plates. Field observations, seismological analyses, and postseismic studies helped constrain fundamental aspects of the 1976 earthquake mechanics and the spatial complexity of the rupture. This event opened a window for studies documenting past deformation along this plate boundary across multiple spatial and temporal scales. Five decades of research have established this earthquake as an important event for understanding strike-slip ruptures along …

Western Kentucky University Stormwater Utility Survey 2026, Warren Campbell

SEAS Faculty Publications

In the U.S., more than 2200 stormwater utilities have been enacted. This year, we have expanded the survey to include stormwater utilities in other countries. Many of these stormwater assessments are called taxes, but if the assessment is recurring, is not an ad valorem tax, and is dedicated to stormwater purposes, we call it a stormwater utility. With the help of ChatGPT we have been able to identify 25 stormwater fees in Australia. We were also able to identify 3 in New Zealand, and some in Europe as well.

Updates To The Caniform Fauna (Carnivora, Caniformia) Of The John Day Formation, Oregon, Usa, John D. Orcutt, Kevin C. Talbott, Michael J. Monroe, Nicholas A. Famoso

Biology Faculty Scholarship

The John Day Formation of central Oregon preserves a diversity of Oligo-Miocene caniform carnivorans, many of which were first described from the formation. However, many historically important specimens lack detailed locality or stratigraphic information, complicating any analysis of faunal change through time. Here, we describe 16 new specimens of caniforms from the John Day Formation, most with precise stratigraphic information. We report multiple specimens of the amphicyonids Daphoenus Leidy, 1853, Paradaphoenus cuspigerus (Cope, 1878), and Temnocyon altigenis (Cope, 1878), all previously known from the formation. We also report the first definitive occurrence of the hesperocyonine canid Osbornodon Wang, 1994 from …

C*-Extreme Quantum Instruments; Completion And Disintegration Of Completely Positive Maps, Arghya Chongdar

Doctoral Theses

This thesis develops a comprehensive operator-algebraic framework for the study of completely positive (CP) instruments, with contributions spanning convexity theory, integration theory, completion problems, and disintegration theory. We begin by laying the foundational groundwork in the theory of C*-algebras and von Neumann algebras, introducing key structures such as CP maps, positive operator-valued measures (POVMs), and CP instruments, along with their dilation-theoretic properties. Pure and decomposable instruments are characterized via minimal bi-dilations, and CP instruments are realized as bivariate maps, providing a rigorous quantum analogue of classical joint measures. The thesis then investigates convexity-theoretic aspects of instruments. A structural characterization of …

A Detailed Jwst Exploration Of Gas Chemistry And Dust Within The Disk Of A Young Giant Planet, K. Ward-Duong, Mickaël Bonnefoy, Nathaniel Kerman, Kj Soto Villarreal, Nicole Arulanantham, Benoît Tabone, Catherine Dougados, Laurent Pueyo, Mathilde Mâlin, Et Al

Astronomy: Faculty Publications

We present near- to mid-infrared spectroscopy of the young (2 Myr), wide-orbit planetary mass companion SR 12 c, recently observed with JWST at unprecedented spectral resolution and sensitivity. With a mass of only 11 Jupiter masses, and a projected separation of nearly 1000 au from its cool (K+M type) binary host, SR 12 c represents an important and uniquely accessible case study of a circumplanetary disk. It is one of only three such objects detected to date in ALMA continuum observations, alongside the PDS 70 system and the free-floating planet OTS 44. Using JWST/MRS spectra at R3000, we characterize the …

3dcotton, Md Ahmed Al Muzaddid, William J. Beksi

Agriculture - Archive

3DCotton is an image dataset consisting of 8 cotton plants recorded at the Texas A&M University Research Farm. The images were captured using an Apple iPhone at a resolution of 1040x1920 pixels. Approximately 150 images per plant were taken from a distance of 1 m by recording multiple viewpoints. These images can be utilized for developing 3D reconstruction methods.

Ms110 Syllabus: Introduction To Computers, Information Systems, And Artificial Intelligence, Wei Zhang

Management Science and Information Systems Faculty Publication Series

This is a syllabus for Professor Wei Zhang's MS110: Introduction to Computers, Information Systems and Artificial Intelligence Course within UMass Boston's College of Management. This is an Open Educational Resource and can be remixed, copied, redistributed, altered and reused as long as permission is given to the original creator.

Shared Language For Responsible Ai Integration, Asa B. Stone, Mark C. Stone, Alisha Bevins, Jean Claude Niyomugabo, Irene Magara, Jacob Abaare, Derek M. Heeren, Mubarak Abu Zouriq

PRAIRIE: Pioneering Responsible AI for Research, Innovation, and Education

As AI rapidly reshapes how we work and learn, employers increasingly seek graduates who can think before they prompt, exercising judgment under pressure rather than merely producing output. Yet students are praised for AI use in one course and penalized for it in the next, and faculty are left to lead responsibly on shifting ground, with no shared language to guide them.

This paper introduces the PRAIRIE Framework for AI Integration, a shift from reactive gatekeeping toward proactive stewardship. It emerged from a qualitative sentiment analysis of three communities (students, faculty, and industry partners) whose concerns converged on one need: …

What Collaboration Means To Me: From Coordination To Collective Action: Cclp And Cyclops As Infrastructure For Collaborative Collection Stewardship, Boaz Nadav-Manes

Collaborative Librarianship

Academic libraries face growing pressure to manage complex collections under significant resource constraints. While consortial collaboration has long been recognized as a strategic response, existing models remain limited, often failing to influence the full collections lifecycle. This article examines how the Collaborative Collections Lifecycle Project (CCLP) and the Cyclops platform together offer a new model for moving beyond coordination toward genuine collective action in collection stewardship. CCLP provides a community-governed framework structuring collaboration from selection and acquisition through preservation and deaccessioning, while Cyclops complements it with an open, analytics-driven infrastructure that aggregates data across institutions, enabling cross-institutional analysis and translating …

Mapping Public Engagement With Environmental Finance In The U.S: Spatiotemporal Insights From Google Trends On Public Engagement And Policy Equity In The U.S, Hilda Afeku-Amenyo, Charles Knoble, Pankaj Lal

Department of Earth and Environmental Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This study analyzes U.S. public engagement with environmental finance from 2015–2023 using Google Trends data for four key terms: “green bonds,” “sustainable finance,” “climate finance,” and “ESG.” Our analysis reveals a notable rise in engagement with environmental finance topics, with Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investing generating the highest levels of interest. Geographically, the District of Columbia exhibited disproportionate search activity relative to other regions. While public awareness of environmental finance has grown, we highlight disparities in knowledge and accessibility of information. These findings carry significant policy implications, particularly in ensuring equitable access to sustainable financial instruments. We underscore the …

Muon Lifetime: Theory, Experiment, And Simulation, Soren Agustin Munoz

Physics

This senior project investigates the muon lifetime through three complementary approaches: theoretical calculation, laboratory measurement, and computational simulation. The theoretical component develops the necessary background from relativistic field theory to the effective weak interaction, culminating in the leading-order Fermi-theory prediction of τ ≈ 2.2 μs, which explains why the muon lifetime lies on the microsecond scale.

The experimental component measures the lifetime of stopped cosmic-ray muons using a plastic scintillator, photomultiplier tube, and analog timing electronics. A binned Poisson likelihood fit to the primary 15-day acquisition run τ = 2.17^+0.03_-0.09 μs, consistent with the accepted value within the …

Validation Of Electromagnetic Shower Development In A Reduced Alice Focal-E Detector Model Using Geant4, Isaac Lara Romo

Physics

This project focuses on the preliminary simulation of a reduced FoCal-E detector model for the ALICE experiment at CERN. Beamline tests were simulated using an electron gun at various incident energies, and the results were compared with those of the FoCal group. The longitudinal charge deposition per sensor layer was compared between the two setups to verify that the reduced model exhibited expected calorimeter behavior. Additionally, the transverse signal across the high-granularity sensor layers was examined to determine whether the reduced model reproduced the expected lateral development of electromagnetic showers. The results obtained from these measurements show that the reduced …

High-Pressure Studies Of Magnetic Topological Materials, Greeshma Chireckal Jose

ETDs from 2020-2029

Quantum technology leverages the principles of quantum mechanics to transform emerging fields such as quantum computing, spintronics, and next-generation electronics. A crucial step in advancing this frontier is the detailed understanding of fundamental quantum phenomena in materials that can drive quantum innovation. This research aims to systematically investigate quantum phase transitions and unconventional emergent behaviors in magnetic topological materials subjected to external pressure. This study focuses on three representative systems: EuCd2As2, EuMnBi2, and FeSn, each serving as a model for exploring intrinsic magnetic topological states. EuCd2As2, a candidate Weyl semimetal (WSM), is expected to exhibit pressure-induced topological phase transitions, making …

Inverse Modeling The Geo-Spread Of Covid-19 In Brazil, Cameron Keith Mills

ETDs from 2020-2029

In 2021 Fitzgibbon, Morgan, Webb, and Wu used a modified SEIR (susceptible, exposed, infected, and recovered) model to predict how COVID-19 spread through Brazil [12]. For their model, six constant coefficients were used that were fitted, referenced, or assumed. In this thesis, we geo-spatially modify their SEIR model and formulate an inverse problem to recover the now spatial coefficients of the model. We first show there exists a unique solution to the modified model. To solve the inverse problem, we modify an inverse method [17] that focused on minimizing convex functionals. These recovered spatial coefficients can be used with Matlab’s …

Biomedical Applications Of Structurally Defined Natural And Semi-Synthetic Saponins, Chaeeun Lim-Paik

ETDs from 2020-2029

Triterpenoid saponins are amphiphilic glycosides that exhibit a wide range of biological and pharmacological properties, including antifungal, antiviral, molluscicidal, hypoglycemic, and hypocholesterolemic effects. These biological and pharmacological properties make saponins attractive for diverse applications. In this work, we demonstrate three biological applications: (i) immunostimulant vaccine adjuvant, (ii) protein delivery enhancement, and (iii) gene transfection enhancement. In light of the strong structure dependence of saponin activity, expanding the structural diversity of available scaffolds is essential for establishing structure-activity relationships (SAR) across these applications. Here, we expanded our saponin collection through semi-synthetic derivatization and the isolation of new saponins from distinct natural …

Iowa Waste Reduction Center News, June 2026, University Of Northern Iowa. Iowa Waste Reduction Center.

Iowa Waste Reduction Center Newsletter

Contents:

--- Thank you, Leslie
--- Zane joins the IWRC
--- DNR Air Fee changes
--- What does MSEI assistance look like?
--- P2 Green Brewery Certification webinars
--- Energy Efficiency resources
--- Industry News

2026 Cyber-Resilient Health Care Workshop Report, Malcolm Schongalla, Sergey Bratus

Computer Science Technical Reports

The ISTS and the Dartmouth College Cybersecurity Cluster hosted the successful, inaugural Cyber-Resilient Health Care (CRHC) Workshop, March 5th & 6th, 2026. The event theme was "Innovation and Implementation," in response to the need to shift from reactive to proactive resiliency measures in the healthcare sector. Approximately 30 experts in clinical health care, cybersecurity, medical technology, policy, and innovation met to discuss solution-focused innovations addressing hard, cyber-related problems in health care. The agenda featured keynotes, an expert panel, innovation pitches, small group discussions, and a tabletop infrastructure disaster exercise. Participants gained insights into the obstacles and solutions involved in supporting …