Digital Commons Network^™

Executive Committee - Agenda, 1/7/2025, Academic Senate

Academic Senate Agendas

No abstract provided.

Building Design - Bsc App Tools For Light, Color, Vision, Daylight And Artificial Light, Jens G. Pohl

Architecture

Relationship to Building Science (BSc) App: In the domain of Building Science (BSc), this paper focuses on natural and artificial lighting concepts and design principles that should be considered during the early stages of building design. It provides direct access to a BSc App that offers more than 420 calculation and information functions (https://research.chobugroup.com/buildingscience/analyzer /) in the entire range of building science areas, comprising daylighting, artificial lighting, noise control, room acoustics, climate and thermal comfort, solar energy, and structural systems.

Information Content: The paper briefly explains the principles of physics that underlie light, color and vision at a level that …

Building Design - Bsc App Tools For Noise Control And Room Acoustics, Jens G. Pohl

Architecture

Relationship to Building Science (BSc) App: In the domain of Building Science (BSc), this paper focuses on building design principles related to sound environments that are conducive to comfortable speech communication and the enjoyment of music. It provides direct access to a BSc App that offers more than 420 calculation and information functions in the entire range of building science areas, comprising daylighting, artificial lighting, noise control, room acoustics, climate and thermal comfort, solar energy, and structural systems (https://research.chobugroup.com/buildingscience/analyzer/).

Information Content: The paper briefly explains the principles of physics that underlie the propagation of sound at a level that is …

Fault Box Modeling Of Dip Slip Faults: A Framework For Fault Box Design And Future Studies, Hailey Pressnell

Master's Theses

The behavior of soils during surface fault rupture is a serious concern in the planning and design of infrastructure that may be located within or near a fault zone. Challenges associated with developing mitigation measures for surface fault rupture include the uncertainty of fault rupture and the variability of fault behavior. Current analytical procedures define surface fault rupture according to the type of fault movement (strike slip, normal or reverse), the amount of displacement on the fault, and the mechanics of the material overlying the fault. The purpose of this thesis is to reconfirm analytical solutions and gain a better …

Combining Direct Black Hole Mass Measurements And Spatially Resolved Stellar Kinematics To Calibrate The Mbh–Σ⋆ Relation Of Active Galaxies, Nico Winkel, Vardha N. Bennert, Raymond P. Remigio, Tommaso Treu, Knud Jahnke, Vivian U, Aaron J. Barth, Matthew Malkan, Bernd Husemann, Xuheng Ding

Physics

The origin of the tight scaling relation between the mass of supermassive black holes (SMBHs; MBH) and their host-galaxy properties remains unclear. Active galactic nuclei (AGNs) probe phases of ongoing SMBH growth and offer the only opportunity to measure MBH beyond the local Universe. However, determining an AGN's host galaxy's stellar velocity dispersion, σ⋆, and its galaxy dynamical mass, Mdyn, is complicated by AGN contamination, aperture effects, and different host-galaxy morphologies. We select a sample of AGNs for which MBH has been independently determined to high accuracy by state-of-the-art techniques: dynamical modeling of the reverberation …

Design, Manufacturing, And Assembly Of Modular Snake-Like Robotic Arm, Alongside Design And Implementation Of System’S Digital-Twin, Scott Brown

Master's Theses

A unique modular snake-like robotic arm, also referred to as MA\RS – the Modular Arm \ Robotic System - was designed, manufactured, assembled, simulated, and programmed to create a modular robot which could move to a desired end position given the number of links, the position of the end link and the duration of motion. This robotic arm serves as the start of research into a modular space robotic system to be used in low-gravity environments. As such, this project focused on developing the initial design of the robot and its digital twin. The system’s modularity allows for changes to …

An Investigation Into The Use Of Amateur Astronomy Equipment For Optical Orbit Determination Using A Mobile Telescope Platform, Johan C. Govaars

Master's Theses

The process of optical orbit determination has long been in the domain of large organizations and stationary observatories with highly specialized scientific equipment. This thesis seeks to determine not only if satellites can be captured regularly using purely commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) equipment, but also if initial orbit determinations can be made using that data. Moreover, the use of a mobile telescope platform allows users to circumvent the restrictions of fixed observatories such as low horizon viewing restrictions or existing light pollution.

A completely COTS setup was utilized that included an 8-inch Celestron NextStar 8SE telescope with an f/6.3 focal reducer and …

Generating A Novel Legislator Organization Score, Brandon Lin

Master's Theses

Ever since the 2010 Citizens United v. FEC, corporations and organizations have been able to contribute expenditures and resources into political legislators and campaigns. It has become apparent over the years that organizations can excise significant influence in direct ways to influence campaigns across the United States. During this period, Digital Democracy has collected large amounts of data pertaining to legislative bill information, voting patterns, and donations on behalf of the California public to raise awareness. Digital Democracy has also released its own scoring system that compares the amount of aligning votes between a legislator and an organization. However, this …

Aged 539- Internship In Agriculture Education - Waterford High School, Jennifer Pierce

Agricultural Education: Graduate Internship Reports

This report explores the development and implementation of an agricultural education program plan aimed at enhancing student engagement, community involvement, and career readiness. Drawing from established models of program planning and needs assessment, the report focuses on the integration of instructional strategies, supervised agricultural experiences (SAEs) and FFA involvement to foster comprehensive student development. The plan outlines key goals such as increasing student enrollment, improving curriculum alignment with industry standards, and expanding partnerships with local agricultural stakeholders. Strategies include curriculum enhancement, teacher professional development, and the use of data-driven decision-making. The report also emphasizes the importance of evaluation and continuous …

Counting Catalan: An Experimental Evaluation Of The Mixing Time For The Triangulation Markov Chain, Roy Gotlieb

Master's Theses

Monte Carlo Markov chains (MCMCs) are used in many areas as a way to model a system’s behavior. By running a probabilistic simulation on a system’s state space, we can estimate properties of the system that could be untenable to directly compute. It is of interest to determine how quickly a Markov chain mixes\textemdash that is, settles into its stationary distribution. One such chain is induced by taking a binary search tree and performing a rotation or flip on one of its edges. We know that this chain eventually settles into the uniform distribution, but the time complexity bounds on …

Hitch Cart “Landing Gear”, Rebekah White, Jose Raygoza, Randy Hernandez, Brandon Leon

Mechanical Engineering

This report aims to allow our sponsor, to review our design process of the Hitch Cart Landing Gear Prototype. In the design overview section of this report, we discuss the primary design modifications we made to the wheel mechanism of the existing hitch cart prototype, including the addition of the ACME screws and the folding brackets. This allows our sponsor to see the intended improvements made to the past prototype and understand the primary goal of our project. Then, in the implementation section, we cover the entire manufacturing process to allow our sponsor to understand what manufacturing steps must be …

Power At Sea Oscillating Water Column, Nate Hempstead, Max Wong, Ned Eyre Eyre, Luke Wierl

Mechanical Engineering

Current Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) are predominantly powered by batteries or other energy sources that require frequent maintenance and human intervention. To increase the deployment times and efficiencies of AUVs, there is a need to develop improved wave energy conversion systems that harness renewable energy from waves and tides for power generation and storage. This approach aims to reduce or eliminate the need for manual maintenance or battery replacements, while also minimizing the environmental impact on marine wildlife and the surrounding ecosystem.

Swim Fly Drone, Alia Wolken, Sha'anan Levy, Andrew Jwaideh, Eduardo Santos

Mechanical Engineering

This project addresses the need for a versatile drone that is capable of operation in both air and water environments, with potential applications in infrastructure inspection, defense, search and rescue, and ocean exploration. This project focuses on the design and development of a waterproof aerial drone capable of floating on the water surface and submerging underneath to controlled depths with the integration of a custom detachable buoyancy chamber. The buoyancy chamber design utilizes syringes to compress and decompress air inside of the chamber, changing the volume of the chamber, with an actuation system controlled by a closed-loop control system that …

Investigation Of Social Networks Upon Academic Performance And Mental Health, Rachel Izenson

Master's Theses

It has been shown that computing students have a statistically significantly lower overall sense of belongingness compared to other science students. A sense of community is important for many reasons. For example, there are studies that show that a student's sense of belonging correlates with improved academic performance. Our research aims to analyze the sense of belonging among computing students at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo through a network science lens. We surveyed for their sense of belonging, as well as their social network, to understand how friendships impact one's sense of belonging. When student responses were split by gender, …

Real-Time Network Simulations For Ml/Dl Ddos Detection Using Docker, Luis D. Garcia

Master's Theses

As the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) within cybersecurity continues to

grow, machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) models are increasingly used to

detect cyber attacks. However, these models are rarely evaluated in real-time attack

scenarios to see how subtle changes from the real networking environment can affect

their predictions. To address this issue, we propose a scalable, platform-independent

Docker testbed specifically designed for simulating real-time Distributed Denial of

Service (DDoS) attack scenarios that allows researchers to deploy and evaluate their

pre-trained, ML and DL detection models. Our framework is simple to configure

and can run across Intel and …

The Application Of Generative Ai For Sketch-To-Image Conversion, Jeremy J. Kozlowski

Master's Theses

Sketches have historically been the primary way to identify individuals when images are unavailable. Most commonly, this appears in a police investigation, where the police release a sketch to the public in an attempt to find a suspect. However, sketches occasionally do not provide much detail due to the limitations of both the witness and the artist. A poor sketch greatly hinders the public’s ability to identify someone, decreasing the chances they will be found. To improve upon this inefficient way of identifying individuals, we propose a new pipeline that leverages deep generative artificial intelligence models to create detailed images …

Peer Collaborative Networks In Undergraduate Computing Classrooms, Noah T. Ravetch

Master's Theses

Peers are an invaluable resource for students at undergraduate universities. Many factors can impact how students form connections, some of which are tied to the students’ identities. While social networks have been studied in the context of universities, little research has been done specifically about peer collaboration and even less in the context of computer science classes. Our research aims to gain an understanding of how peer networks form in computing classes and the effect of being involved in one on students’ academic performances. We collected survey data (n = 139) about students’ peer collaborative behaviors in computer science classes. …

Finite Element Analysis And Verification Of Transverse Mechanical Properties Of Generally Cylindrical Orthotropic Constitutive Modeling Of 3-Phase Nanocomposite Unit Cell, Christopher J. Hawkins

Master's Theses

Fiber-reinforced composites are increasingly popular due to their specific strength and stiffness, making them ideal for high-performance applications. However, these materials primarily exhibit superior properties in-plane, while their out-of-plane characteristics remain comparatively weaker. Previous research has shown that the most effective method to enhance out-of-plane properties involves the incorporation of carbon nanotubes. Experimental tests have demonstrated significant improvements in properties such as tension, flexural, short beam shear, and fracture toughness. Alongside these experimental studies, analytical equations have been developed to predict the behavior of these composites under various loading conditions, including tension, bending, shear, and fracture. Existing models primarily address …

Joseph Moxon: Fueled By Science, Extinguished By Class. How A Forgotten Middle-Classed Early Modern English Puritan Printer Mathematician And Globe-Maker Helped Forge The Scientific Revolution And Democratize Knowledge Among The Trades, Kenneth L. Macro Jr.

Master's Theses

Joseph Moxon, raised within the trades, elevated into the middle-class, was an inducted Fellow of the Royal Society, Hydrographer to the King’s Most Excellent Majesty, Printer, Author, Translator, Maker of Globes and of Spheres, Maker of Maps and of Mathematical Instruments, Engraver, and Entrepreneur. Moxon was the quintessential Renaissance Man. A tradesman living in a time of great scientific intrigue and discovery, Moxon, acknowledged by few mid-seventeenth century historians, rightfully contributed his scientific discoveries—in the forms of tutorials and manuals written for the common man—as a testimony to all printers who have helped in the progression of the Scientific Revolution. …

Ultrasound Denoising And Speckle Reduction Using Artificial Neural Networks, Mark Atttaalla

Master's Theses

This paper focuses on improving speckle reduction and denoising performance in ultrasound images by leveraging neural networks. A dataset of simulated ultrasound images was created using Field-II simulation software based on CT scan images, to create clean and noisy image pairs. Various Convolutional Neural Network models based on U-Net and generative adversarial networks were developed and tested. Peak Signal-to-Noise-Ratio (PSNR) and Structural Similarity Index Measurement (SSIM) were used as metrics along with qualitative assessment. Results show that our tuned U-Net generator network outperformed traditional filtering such as Lee and BM3D.

Policies And Price Controls On The Research And Development Of Orphan Drugs In The United States And The European Union, Bena Pearl Filipczak Smith

Master's Theses

There is substantive literature surrounding the impact of price controls on the research and development (R&D) of new pharmaceutical products. The European Union (EU) and United States (US) are often studied in contrast to examine the influence of price controls as the US has fewer pharmaceutical price controls than the EU.

We find moderate evidence that the US spent more on annual domestic pharmaceutical R&D than the EU between 2004 and 2021, on average, before and after adjusting for GDP growth per capita and year. We find strong evidence that the US increased annual domestic R&D spending at a faster …

Socially Situated Scientific Discourse: Learning Under The Perceived Threat Of Being A Woman, Kayla Taylor

Feminist Pedagogy

As a companion piece to “Diminishing Dialogue: The Fallacy of Florida Politics,” this critical commentary explores how undergraduate humanities courses and feminist standpoint theory shaped the perspective of an aspiring STEM PhD candidate. The subjective nature of scientific objectivity is examined through the lens of feminist historiography and the author’s own experiences as a woman in STEM.

Executive Committee - Minutes, 11/19/2024, Academic Senate

Academic Senate Minutes

No abstract provided.

Executive Committee - Minutes, 11/5/2024, Academic Senate

Academic Senate Minutes

No abstract provided.

Jwst Lensed Quasar Dark Matter Survey – Ii. Strongest Gravitational Lensing Limit On The Dark Matter Free Streaming Length To Date, Ryan E. Keeley, A. M. Nierenberg, D. Gilman, C. Gannon, S. Birrer, T. Treu, A. J. Benson, X. Du, K. N. Abazajian, Vardha N. Bennert

Physics

This is the second in a series of papers in which we use JWST Mid Infrared Instrument multiband imaging to measure the warm dust emission in a sample of 31 multiply imaged quasars, to be used as a probe of the particle nature of dark matter. We present measurements of the relative magnifications of the strongly lensed warm dust emission in a sample of nine systems. The warm dust region is compact and sensitive to perturbations by populations of haloes down to masses ~ 10⁶ M☉. Using these warm dust flux-ratio measurements in combination with five previous narrow-line flux-ratio measurements, …

Academic Senate - Minutes, 10/29/2024, Academic Senate

Academic Senate Minutes

No abstract provided.

Quantifying Ethics And Trust In Human-Ai Collaboration, Oliver Lane, Kevin Klave

College of Engineering Summer Undergraduate Research Program

As AI Chatbots continue to evolve in both prevalence and capability, their role in education is becoming increasingly prominent. With chatbots like ChatGPT becoming commonplace in higher education, there is an evident need to understand the ethics and trust dynamics of human-AI collaboration. This research contributes to the ongoing discussion on AI in education, highlighting the importance of trust when utilizing AI in academic settings. By conducting an empirical analysis, this research seeks to quantify trust in human-AI collaboration in higher education with the aim of offering actionable items for higher education institutions to follow to promote ethical and responsible …

Empirical Support For Theoretical Conjectures, Luke O. Fanguna, Daniel Frishberg

College of Engineering Summer Undergraduate Research Program

The PI is engaged in ongoing work on experiments designed to gather evidence for or against conjectures in one or both of two active areas in theoretical computer science: Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) mixing times, and greedy approximation algorithms for combinatorial optimization problems. Research in the area of MCMC mixing seeks to prove theoretical upper and lower bounds on the mixing times—or convergence times—of random walk-based algorithms for sampling from various distributions. The PI has published three papers,,, in 2023, on this research, which were entirely theoretical. Two of these papers2,3—comprising the PI’s dissertation—left open a significant gap between …

Solubility Characterization Of Organic Molecules For Aqueous Organic Redox Flow Batteries, Anthony W. Ferrell, Harkeerith K. Vij, Seamus D. Jones

College of Engineering Summer Undergraduate Research Program

The major obstacle to renewable energy sources is a lack of long-term energy storage capabilities. Energy produced during the day dissipates, leaving insufficient electricity for at night. The goal of the project is to design an Aqueous Organic Redox Flow Battery (AORFB) to act as long-term energy storage. Work has been done using machine learning to identify suitable compounds for the batteries. In this work there was no indication as to the aqueous solubility of the molecules; this controls the device’s energy storage capabilities. We used a machine learning model to determine the aqueous solubility of slightly more than 3000 …

Targeting Federated Learning: A Study Of Membership Inference Attacks On Healthcare Data, Brett W. Hillyard, Aditi S. Lappathi

College of Engineering Summer Undergraduate Research Program

This study investigates the vulnerabilities of federated learning models in the healthcare domain, specifically focusing on membership inference attacks (MIA). Federated learning allows local models to train on sensitive healthcare data without sharing the data itself, making it an attractive method for protecting privacy. However, even in this decentralized framework, models remain vulnerable to MIAs, where attackers can infer whether certain data points were used to train a model by analyzing model updates. Using the Texas100 dataset, this study demonstrates that as the number of local models increases, the attack accuracy of MIAs also increases due to higher bias …