Digital Commons Network^™

A Game Theoretical Approach To Optimal Pitch Sequencing, William Melville

Theses and Dissertations

This paper presents a game theoretical solution to the difficult challenge of optimal pitch sequencing. We model the batter/pitcher matchup as a zero-sum game and determine the equilibrium strategy for both the pitcher and batter. We conclude that the Stackelberg equilibrium and our newly defined decision point equilibrium serve as effective pitch sequencing strategies.

Rigorous Computation Of The Evans Function, Devin Mcghie

Theses and Dissertations

We develop computer-assisted methods of proof for rigorous computation of the Evans function in order to prove stability of traveling waves. We use the parameterization method, series solutions, and the Newton-Kantorovich Theorem to obtain precise, rigorous error bounds for the numerical solution of the ODE used in the construction of the Evans function. We demonstrate these methods on a scalar reaction-diffusion model and on the Gray-Scott model.

Factors That Influence The Recruitment And Retention Of Civil Engineers, Gina Young Souriac

Theses and Dissertations

With a growing demand for civil engineers in the United States, understanding factors that influence students to choose civil engineering (CE) as a major in college, pursue an M.S. degree in CE, and persist in the CE industry can lead to valuable insights for recruitment and retention of future and current civil engineers. Additionally, understanding factors that prominently influence male and female civil engineers to persist in and depart from CE, separately, can lead to valuable insight towards improving focused recruitment and retention of both genders. This thesis includes three research studies that identify, analyze, and discuss these important factors. …

A Large-Scale Survey Of Brown Dwarf Atmospheres, Savanah Kay Turner

Theses and Dissertations

Brown dwarfs are substellar objects that fall in-between the smallest stars and largest planets in size and temperature. Due to their relatively cool temperatures, the atmospheres of these 'failed stars' have been shown to exhibit interesting properties such as iron, silicate, and salt clouds. Theoretical atmospheric models based on known physics and chemistry can be used as tools to interpret and understand our observations of brown dwarfs. I have fit archival and new infrared spectra of over 300 brown dwarfs with atmospheric models. Using the parameters of the best-fit models as estimates for the physical properties of the brown dwarfs …

Semi-Differentiation Of Reversible, Soluble-Insoluble Potential Sweep Voltammograms, Tyler Williams, Ranon Fuller, Cameron Vann, Devin Rappleye

Faculty Publications

Semi-differentiation, or convolution as it is sometimes known, is a mathematical technique commonly used to disentangle overlapping peaks in cyclic or linear sweep voltammograms. However, this technique is often misapplied due to misunderstandings of fractional calculus. Additionally, rigorous treatment and validation of the theory of semi-differential analysis of reversible, soluble-insoluble electrochemical reactions is lacking. Peculiarities of semi-differentiation are explored; theoretical relations for semi-differentiated voltammograms are given; the exponential nature of the theoretical curve is explored; theoretical relations are compared to experimental voltammograms for AgNO₃ in 1 M nitric acid at 298 K, NiCl₂ in LiCl at 974 K, …

Comparative Gpr Analysis Of Carbonate Strandline Deposits, Sydney Adelaide Richards

Theses and Dissertations

The Bahamas Island archipelago grows by the precipitation and secretion of calcium carbonate. A majority of this growth is by lateral accretion of shoreline sedimentary deposits. Previous research is not clear on whether the growth is largely due to eustasy, sediment input from catastrophic events, or a combination of both. The Bahamas is an ideal location for studying Holocene carbonate generation and deposition, but there is limited research on the analysis of strandlines in relation to lateral accretion. Carbonate strandline deposits are commonly classified as low-energy beach ridge deposits. Previous researchers have primarily focused on ooid shoals and subtidal regions. …

Bézout Domains And Elementary Divisor Domains: Are They The Same?, Michael D. Walton

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the connections between Bézout domains and elementary divisor domains. I establish what both of these domains are, and I provide some clarifying examples of each. I state and prove some key results that have been established already in the literature. I describe a process by which I tried to show a distinction between Bézout domains and elementary divisor domains, and then provide an explicit example which shows that this process as formulated would not lead to an example of a Bézout domain which is not an elementary divisor domain. Throughout the thesis, I also state open questions …

Use And Misuse Of X-Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (Xps): Reproducibility, Gross Errors, Data Reporting, And Peak Fitting, George Hobbs Major

Theses and Dissertations

X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) is the most widely used surface analysis technique for chemically probing surfaces. Its popularity stems from the large amount of information that can be gathered about the electronic states of the atoms it probes, including core shell information and valence electron information. Simple qualitative analysis (peak identification) can often be performed, but quantitative analysis is a much more complicated process. Although XPS usage has increased dramatically, so has the amount of erroneous analysis observed in the literature. In my thesis, I first present a perspective on how to improve the quality of surface and material data …

A Survey Of Graph Neural Networks On Synthetic Data, Brigham Stone Carson

Theses and Dissertations

We relate properties of attributed random graph models to the performance of GNN architectures. We identify regimes where GNNs outperform feedforward neural networks and non-attributed graph clustering methods. We compare GNN performance on our synthetic benchmark to performance on popular real-world datasets. We analyze the theoretical foundations for weak recovery in GNNs for popular one- and two-layer architectures. We obtain an explicit formula for the performance of a 1-layer GNN, and we obtain useful insights on how to proceed in the 2-layer case. Finally, we improve the bound for a notable result on the GNN size generalization problem by 1.

Skew Relative Hadamard Difference Set Groups, Andrew Haviland

Theses and Dissertations

We study finite groups $G$ having a nontrivial subgroup $H$ and $D \subset G \setminus H$ such that (i) the multiset $\{ xy^{-1}:x,y \in D\}$ has every element that is not in $H$ occur the same number of times (such a $D$ is called a {\it relative difference set}); (ii) $G=D\cup D^{(-1)} \cup H$; (iii) $D \cap D^{(-1)} =\emptyset$. We show that $|H|=2$, that $H$ has to be normal, and that $G$ is a group with a single involution. We also show that $G$ cannot be abelian. We give examples of such groups, including certain dicyclic groups, by using results …

Designing Resilient Agents Using Grammatical Evolution, Behavior Trees, And Finite Linear Temporal Logic, Aadesh Neupane

Theses and Dissertations

Resilience is essential for long-term autonomous agents. Swarm behaviors seen in bees, ants, birds, fish, and others are interesting because they resiliently perform complex coordinated tasks like foraging, nest-selection, flocking and escaping predators without centralized control or coordination. Conventionally, mimicking swarm behaviors with robots requires researchers to study actual behaviors, derive mathematical models, and implement these models as state machines. Since the conventional approach is time-consuming and cumbersome, this dissertation uses a grammatical evolution algorithm with Behavior Trees (BTs) to evolve behaviors that are resilient to different perturbations for foraging and nest maintenance tasks. The modular, reactive, and readable properties …

Toward Automatically Composed Fpga-Optimized Robotic Systems Using High-Level Synthesis, Szu-Wei Lin

Theses and Dissertations

Robotic systems are known to be computationally intensive. To improve performance, developers tend to implement custom robotic algorithms in hardware. However, a full robotic system typically consists of many interconnected algorithmic components that can easily max-out FPGA resources, thus requiring the designer to adjust each algorithm design for each new robotic systems in order to meet specific systems requirements and limited resources. Furthermore, manual development of digital circuitry using a hardware description language (HDL) such as verilog or VHDL, is error-prone, time consuming, and often takes months or years to develop and verify. Recent developments in high-level synthesis (HLS), enable …

The Naci Way: Connecting Native Groups And Teachers Through Culturally Responsive Instructional Design, Stephanie West, Heather Francis, Cally Flox, Brenda Beyal, Emily Soderborg, Jason Mcdonald

Instructional Psychology and Technology Graduate Student Projects

In 2018, the BYU ARTS Partnership Native American Curriculum Initiative (NACI) was developed in response to teacher questions regarding the teaching of Native topics. Despite increased movements towards reconciliation, Native groups continue to be marginalized in Westernized educational settings. Additionally, teachers lack clear guidelines regarding the respectful teaching of Native topics. Describing the challenges we, the NACI team members, faced in our four-year journey partnering with Native groups in Utah, we outline key instructional design decisions we made and identify the culturally responsive principles that guided those decisions. We also advocate for the application of culturally responsive principles and practices …

Navigating The Unfamiliar: The Lived Experience Of Elementary School Teachers As They Navigate The Use Of New Literacies During A Global Pandemic, Sydney Boyer

Theses and Dissertations

New literacies within schools is supported by both education policy and research; despite this, new literacies have yet to enter and transform the classroom. The COVID-19 pandemic offered an unprecedented opportunity to study teachers' experiences as they are required to navigate new literacies while teaching online. Therefore, the purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore the lived experience of three upper elementary school teachers as they navigated the use of new literacies in a Title I school during a global pandemic. Data sources included three in-depth interviews and were analyzed through a thematic approach. Data analysis resulted in identifying …

A Language-Model-Based Chatbot That Considers The User's Personality Profile And Emotions To Support Caregivers Of People With Dementia, Yeganeh Nasiri

Theses and Dissertations

Chatbots are programs that mimic human conversation using Artificial Intelligence (AI). Recent advances in natural language pro- cessing pave the way for chatbots to generate more human-like responses. Therefore, chatbots are finding more complex tasks to perform, such as emotional support which requires both understanding emotions and the ability to properly respond to them. This work presents a chatbot capable of identifying the user's personality and creating responses based on that. During this process, emotion detection is being used to detect and react to users' emotions. The chatbot uses a dynamic knowledge graph to save information as the conversation goes …

Unsupervised Categorical Clustering On Labor Markets, Matthew James Steffen

Theses and Dissertations

During this "white collar recession,'' there is a flooded labor market of workers. For employers seeking to hire, there is a need to identify potential qualified candidates for each job. The current state of the art is LinkedIn Recruiting or elastic search on Resumes. The current state of the art lacks efficiency and scalability along with an intuitive ranking of candidates. We believe this can be fixed with multi-layer categorical clustering via modularity maximization. To test this, we gathered a dataset that is extensive and representative of the job market. Our data comes from PeopleDataLabs and LinkedIn and is sampled …

Characterizing The Informativity Of Level Ii Book Data For High Frequency Trading, Logan B. Nielsen

Theses and Dissertations

High Frequency Trading (HFT) algorithms are automated feedback systems interacting with markets to maximize returns on investments. These systems have the potential to read different resolutions of market information at any given time, where Level I information is the minimal information about an equity--essentially its price--and Level II information is the full order book at that time for that equity. This paper presents a study of using Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) models to predict the spread of the DOW Industrial 30 index traded on NASDAQ, using Level I and Level II data as inputs. The results show that Level II …

Network Representation Theory In Materials Science And Global Value Chain Analysis, Mats C. Haneberg

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is divided into two distinct chapters. In the first chapter, we apply network representation learning to the field of materials science in order to predict aluminum grain boundaries' properties and locate the most influential atoms and subgraphs within each grain boundary. We create fixed-length representations of the aluminum grain boundaries that successfully capture grain boundary structure and allow us to accurately predict grain boundary energy. We do this through two distinct methods. The first method we use is a graph convolutional neural network, a semi-supervised deep learning algorithm, and the second method is graph2vec, an unsupervised representation learning …

The Topology And Dynamics Of Surface Diffeomorphisms And Solenoid Embeddings, Xueming Hui

Theses and Dissertations

We study two topics on surface diffeomorphisms, their mapping classes and dynamics. For the mapping classes of a punctured disc, we study the $\ZxZ$ subgroups of the fundamental groups of the corresponding mapping tori. An application is the proof of the fact that a satellite knot with braid pattern is prime. For the mapping classes of the disc minus a Cantor set, we study a special type of reducible mapping class. This has direct application on the embeddings of solenoids in $\mathbb{S}^3$. We also give some examples of other types of mapping classes of the disc minus a Cantor set. …

Language Modeling Using Image Representations Of Natural Language, Seong Eun Cho

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents training of an end-to-end autoencoder model using the transformer, with an encoder that can encode sentences into fixed-length latent vectors and a decoder that can reconstruct the sentences using image representations. Encoding and decoding sentences to and from these image representations are central to the model design. This method allows new sentences to be generated by traversing the Euclidean space, which makes vector arithmetic possible using sentences. Machines excel in dealing with concrete numbers and calculations, but do not possess an innate infrastructure designed to help them understand abstract concepts like natural language. In order for a …

Pausing In American English: Documenting Native English Speakers' Pausing Patterns, Ammon Hunt

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine more deeply the relationship between pause location and duration and its connection to clause and phrase boundaries for native English speakers (NESs). Previous research has shown pauses produced by NESs to be located at clause boundaries (Brown & Miron, 1971; Hawkins, 1971; Tavakoli, 2011), but little empirical work has been done to probe this issue further. For this research, 80 speech samples, 40 male and 40 female, were randomly selected from the International Dialects of English Archive (IDEA) representing different regions in the United States. Oral data from the read-aloud portion of …

The Impact Of Gender On The Acceptance Of Surveillance Technology, Jody Messick

Sigma: Journal of Political and International Studies

A classic dilemma facing governments and citizens alike is the trade-off between privacy and security. This concept is found in the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, which implies that citizens have a right to be protected against “unreasonable searches and seizures by the government” (FindLaw 2019). The technological revolution, and its implications for privacy, has complicated the nature of this right. Different types of data require different approaches to the privacy versus security tradeoff. A 2003 panel by Wright et. al asks how “sensor data,” data that is collected through technology that tracks a user’s online or real-world movements, should be approached, …

On Civilizational Strategic Studies, Stephen T. Satkiewicz

Comparative Civilizations Review

Given the on-going crises around the world, especially the current war in Ukraine, it has become imperative to analyze the strategic interests of the major geopolitical players in the world. Samuel P. Huntington formulated his controversial “Clash of Civilizations” thesis almost thirty years ago, but this topic has received a resurgence of interest due to Christopher Coker’s research on “civilizational states.” Coker takes this concept a bit further by arguing that different geopolitical actors disagree on how the world should be ordered.

Now is perhaps the most opportune time to examine the relevance of civilizations as well as civilizational theory …

Covid-19 Lockdown: Impact On College Students’ Lives, Wendy C. Birmingham, Lori L. Wadsworth, Jane H. Lassetter

Faculty Publications

Objective: In light of COVID-19, leaders issued stay-at-home orders, including closure of higher-education schools. Most students left campus, likely impacting their employment and social network. Leaders are making decisions about opening universities and modality of instruction. Understanding students' psychological, physiological, academic, and financial responses to the shut-down and reopening of campuses can help leaders make informed decisions. Participants: 654 students from a large western university enrolled during the pandemic shutdown. Methods: Students were invited via email to complete an online survey. Results: Students reported stress, depression, loneliness, lack of motivation, difficulty focusing on schoolwork, restless sleep, appetite changes, job loss …

Data For Caveat Emptor-Scan Quality Of Elsevier’S Digital Backfile Pdf Collection, Gregory M. Nelson, Paul Kj Robbins

ScholarsArchive Data

The data set contains two Supplementary Files that contain (1) metadata for 31 of Elsevier's journal backfile packages and (2) metadata and results of a PDF scan quality study.

Large Eddy Simulation For Empirical Modeling Of The Wake Of Three Urban Air Mobility Vehicles, Denis-Gabriel Caprace, Andrew Ning

Faculty Publications

Recent advances in urban air mobility have driven the development of many new VTOL concepts. These vehicles often feature original designs departing from the conventional helicopter configuration. Due to their novelty, the characteristics of the super-vortices forming in the wake of such aircraft are unknown. However, these vortices may endanger any other vehicle evolving in their close proximity, owing to potentially large induced velocities. Therefore, improved knowledge about the wakes of VTOL vehicles is needed to guarantee safe urban air mobility operations. In this work, we study the wake of three VTOL aircraft in cruise by means of large eddy …

Impact Of Applying Visual Design Principles To Boardwork In A Mathematics Classroom, Jennifer Rose Canizales

Theses and Dissertations

Though black boards and white boards have been a fundamental tool in the classroom for over a century, little research has been done on how to best design and present information using these boards. My study takes visual design principles and applies them to boardwork in a mathematics classroom to better organize and clarify the content. This research shows that students notice boardwork, have strong opinions on what makes boardwork good, and that the application of design principles on boards has a significant impact on students and the teacher. Students felt their cognitive load was lightened and that they were …

Control Education For Societal-Scale Challenges: A Community Roadmap, John Anthony Rossiter, Christos G. Cassandras, João Hespanha, Sebastian Dormido, Luis De La Torre, Gireeja Ranade, Antonio Visioli, John Hedengren, Richard M. Murray, Panos Antsaklis, Francoise Lamnabhi-Lagarrigue, Thomas Parisini

Faculty Publications

This article focuses on extending, disseminating and interpreting the findings of an IEEE Control Systems Society working group looking at the role of control theory and engineering in solving some of the many current and future societal challenges. The findings are interpreted in a manner designed to give focus and direction to both future education and research work in the general control theory and engineering arena, interpreted in the broadest sense. The paper is intended to promote discussion in the community and also provide a useful starting point for colleagues wishing to re-imagine the design and delivery of control-related topics …

Investigations Into U'-Band Photometry Of The Haumea System, Seneca Heilesen

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The dwarf planet Haumea orbits near the edge of the Solar System in the Kuiper Belt. As it rotates, different parts of the object can be seen from Earth, so observing Haumea as it rotates allows us to see whether the surface is uniform or varied. Previous work has shown that one part of Haumea has a reddish dark spot, as opposed to the bright gray surface, and that Haumea has two nearby moons, the larger of which is called Hi’iaka. To better understand Haumea’s surface and Hi’iaka, we gathered new observations using BYU time at the Astronomical Research Consortium …

Developable Mechanisms On Regular Cylindrical Surfaces, Jacob R. Greenwood, Spencer P. Magleby, Larry L. Howell

Faculty Publications

Developable mechanisms can provide high functionality and compact stowability. This paper presents engineering models to aid in the design of cylindrical developable mechanisms. These models take into account the added spatial restrictions imposed by the developable surface. Equations are provided for the kinematic analysis of cylindrical developable mechanisms. A new classification for developable mechanisms is also presented (intramobile, extramobile, and transmobile) and two graphical methods are provided for determining this clas sification for single-DOF planar cylindrical developable mechanisms. Characteristics specific to four-bar cylindrical developable mechanisms are also discussed.