Digital Commons Network^™

Computer Vision In Adverse Conditions: Small Objects, Low-Resoltuion Images, And Edge Deployment, Raja Sunkara

Masters Theses

"Computer vision based on deep learning is an essential field that plays a significant role in object detection, image classification, semantic segmentation, instance segmentation, and other applications. However, these models face significant challenges in adverse conditions, such as small objects, low-resolution images, and edge deployment. These challenges limit the accuracy and efficiency of computer vision algorithms, making it difficult to obtain reliable results.

The primary objective of this thesis is to assess the performance of deep learning- based computer vision models in challenging conditions and provide viable solutions to overcome the obstacles. The study will specifically address three key challenges, …

Mat: Genetic Algorithms Based Multi-Objective Adversarial Attack On Multi-Task Deep Neural Networks, Nikola Andric

Masters Theses

"Vulnerability to adversarial attacks is a recognized deficiency of not only deep neural networks (DNNs) but also multi-task deep neural networks (MT-DNNs) that attracted much attention in the past few years. To the best of our knowledge, all multi-task deep neural network adversarial attacks currently present in the literature are non-targeted attacks that use gradient descent to optimize a single loss function generated by aggregating all loss functions into one. On the contrary, targeted attacks are sometimes preferred since they give more control over the attack. Hence, this paper proposes a novel targeted multi-objective adversarial ATtack (MAT) based on genetic …

Dynamic Discounted Satisficing Based Driver Decision Prediction In Sequential Taxi Requests, Sree Pooja Akula

Masters Theses

"Ridesharing platforms rely on connecting available taxi drivers to potential passengers to maximize their revenue. However, predicting the stopping decision made by every driver, i.e., the final task performed during a given day, is crucial to achieving this goal. Unfortunately, little research has been done on predicting drivers’ stopping decisions, especially when they deviate from expected utility maximization behavior. This research proposes a Dynamic Discounted Satisficing (DDS) heuristic to model and learn the task at which human agents will stop working for that day, assuming that the human agents are taking sequential decisions based on their preference order. We apply …

Selecting Consolidation Procedures For Making Concrete Specimens, Paige Marie Toebben

Masters Theses

"The goal of this research was to reevaluate ASTM C31 Standard Practice for Making and Curing Concrete Test Specimens in the Field, as well as deepen our understanding of the relationship between the consolidation process, concrete composition, and workability. An improved understanding of this area will help to reduce variability in concrete quality. The project involved evaluating the effect of different consolidation methods on concrete specimens with changing levels of workability. To do this, concrete cylinders were created with varying viscosities by adjusting the water-to-cement ratio (w/c) and water-reducing agent. More cylinders were created with varying paste volumes while keeping …

Meta-Analysis Of Mesenchymal Stem Cell Gene Expression Data From Obese And Non-Obese Patients, Dakota William Shields

Masters Theses

"The prevalence of gene expression microarray datasets in public repositories gives opportunity to analyze biologically interesting datasets without running the laboratory aspect in house. Such experimentation is expensive in terms of finances, time, and expertise, which often results in low numbers of replicates. Meta-analysis techniques attempt to overcome issues due to few biological or technical replicates by combining separate experiments together to increase statistical power. Proper statistical considerations help to offset issues like simultaneous testing of thousands of genes, unintended hybridization, and other noises.

Microarrays contain light intensities from tens of thousands of hybridized probes giving a measure of gene …

Investigation Of Defect Production And Displacement Energies In Wurtzite Aluminum Nitride, Sean Anderson

Masters Theses

"Aluminum Nitride is an active element of sensors that monitor the performance and well-being of the nuclear reactors due to its piezoelectric properties. Yet, the variations of its properties under irradiation are largely unexplored. We report the results of the molecular dynamics simulations of the structural changes in AlN under irradiation via the knock-on atom technique. By creating and evolving the irradiation cascades due to energetic particle interaction with the atom of the crystalline lattice we determine the rate of the defect production as a function of the deposited energy. Further, we determine a displacement energy, a key characteristic that …

Zoom Fatigue And Virtual Interviewing: The Effects Of Interpersonal Distance, Lillian Rose Schell

Masters Theses

"This research examines breaches of interpersonal distance, one of the proposed causes of Zoom fatigue, within the context of a job interview. It is proposed that when an interviewer perceives a job applicant to be close to them, Zoom fatigue increases and ratings of the applicant decrease. Participants completed a Zoom Exhaustion and Fatigue scale before and after watching an asynchronous video interview in which the size of the job applicant’s face varied between conditions. It was found that breaches of interpersonal distance did not influence self-reported Zoom fatigue. However, breaches of interpersonal distance did influence ratings of the job …

Static I-V Curve And Aging Test For Pim Characterization In Metallic Contacts, Kalkidan Anjajo

Masters Theses

"Spring clips and fabric-over-foams (FOFs) are widely used in mobile devices for electrical connection purposes. However, the imperfect metallic connections tend to induce passive intermodulation (PIM), resulting in a receiver sensitivity degradation, known as RF desensitization. Due to the complexity of the PIM characterization, there is not yet a way to evaluate PIM performance using a simple setup for environments like factories. In this study, a current-voltage (I-V) behavior-based PIM evaluation method is proposed and validated with various metallic contacts and contact forces. The test results demonstrated the feasibility of the PIM performance evaluation based on the measured static I-V …

Cfd Analysis For Beyond Bubbly Gas-Liquid Two-Phase Flows In A Large Diameter Pipe, Sungje Hong

Doctoral Dissertations

"Due to the complexity of multiphase flow phenomena, numerical analysis for multiphase turbulent flow is not as reliable as single-phase computational fluid dynamics (CFD). A literature review has revealed that the current efforts on multiphase flow simulation have focused on small diameter channels under very restricted flow conditions and have been conducted without identifying some important procedures. To expand CFD applications to a wide range of two-phase flow conditions in large diameter channels, this study aims to validate the current CFD models for vertical concurrent air-water two-phase flow simulations beyond bubbly flows. First, a numerical model developed to describe dynamical …

Development Of A Mission Design Tool For Computing Libration Point Formations Using Differential Corrections Initialized With A Genetic Algorithm, Donna Jennings

Doctoral Dissertations

"The growing interest in deep space spacecraft missions and distributed spacecraft formations has established the need for state-of-the-art advancements in the areas of relative dynamics and mission design. The focus of this research is to develop methods for identifying natural (i.e. ballistic) relative formation trajectories in the vicinity of the collinear libration points. A natural formation decreases the station keeping costs, lowering the consumption of spacecraft resources and extending mission lifetime. This research adapts both numerical and machine learning approaches to the problem of mission design. A genetic algorithm was first used to identify a multi-agent spacecraft formation in the …

Drainage And Sedimentary Response Of The Northern Andes And The Pebas System To Miocene Strike-Slip Tectonics: A Source To Sink Study Of The Magdalena Basin, S. Zapata, L. Calderon-Diaz, C. Jaramillo, Francisca Oboh-Ikuenobe, J. C. Piedrahita, M. Rodríguez-Cuevas, A. Cardona, E. R. Sobel, M. Parra, V. Valencia, A. Patiño, J. S. Jaramillo-Rios, M. Flores, J. Glodny

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Miocene strike-slip tectonics was responsible for creating and closing short-lived (ca. 6 Ma) passages and the emergence of isolated topography in the Northern Andes. These geological events likely influenced the migration and/or isolation of biological populations. To better understand the paleogeography of the Miocene hinterland and foreland regions in the Northern Andes, we conducted a source-to-sink approach in the Magdalena Basin. This basin is located between the Central and Eastern Cordilleras of Colombia and contains an ample Miocene record, which includes Lower Miocene fine-grained strata and Middle Miocene to Pliocene coarsening-up strata. Our study presents a new data set that …

Neuemot: Mitigating Neutral Label And Reclassifying False Neutrals In The 2022 Fifa World Cup Via Low-Level Emotion, Ademola Adesokan, Sanjay Madria

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Sports have been extensively studied for their impact on people's emotional well-being, with research revealing that they have the ability to reduce anxiety and unhappiness while boosting positive emotions1. among all sports, soccer stands out as the most popular and controversial2, eliciting a wide range of emotional reactions from fans, players, officials, and spectators, particularly on social media. While sentiment classifications such as positive, negative, and neutral have been extensively studied, low-level emotions, which refer to more specific and granular emotional states beyond the three basic categories, have yet to be given much attention. This study scraped over 300,000 tweets …

Tweetace: A Fine-Grained Classification Of Disaster Tweets Using Transformer Model, Ademola Adesokan, Sanjay Madria, Long Nguyen

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Disaster management teams play a crucial role in responding to catastrophic events with speed and efficiency. However, when faced with large data of disaster-related information, manual systems can struggle to classify the information accurately, especially when they are unavailable. This challenge highlights the need for integrating social media and implementing machine learning models to address the issue. However, the development of such models is dependent on the availability of adequately annotated data, which presents a significant obstacle in the field of crisis management. to address this challenge, our study focuses on the need for disaster event classification through social media. …

Supervised Deep Tree In Alzheimer's Disease, Xiaowei Yu, Lu Zhang, Yanjun Lyu, Tianming Liu, Dajiang Zhu

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

As a progressive neurodegenerative disorder, the pathological changes of Alzheimer's disease (AD) might begin as much as two decades before the manifestation of clinical symptoms. Since the nature of the irreversible pathology of AD, early diagnosis provides a more tractable way for disease intervention and treatment. Therefore, numerous approaches have been developed for early diagnostic purposes. Although several important biomarkers have been established, most of the existing methods show limitations in describing the continuum of AD progression. However, understanding this continuous development is essential to understand the intrinsic progression mechanism of AD. In this work, we proposed a supervised deep …

Assessing The Predictive Capability Of The Nno Ballistic Limit Equation For Low-Density Projectile Impact, William P. Schonberg

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The design of nearly all Earth-orbiting spacecraft includes some sort of added shielding that protects the spacecraft against impacts by meteoroids and orbital debris. The effectiveness of the shielding is typically assessed using ballistic limit equations (BLEs) that are developed using data from high-speed impact tests on key spacecraft components and elements. These equations predict whether or not a particular system or structural element will sustain a critical failure following a specific impact event. As such, they are essential components of spacecraft system design as well as any quantitative spacecraft risk assessments that may need to be performed as part …

Densifying Hydration Products Of Alite By A Bio-Inspired Admixture, Yi Fang, Jialai Wang, Liang Wang, Xin Qian, Xiaodong Wang, Wenyu Liao, Peiyuan Chen, Hongyan Ma

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

A bio-inspired, plant-derived polyphenol, tannic acid (TA) was identified as a renewable admixture to improve the compressive strength of concretes. Aiming to understand the underlying mechanism responsible for this strength improvement, this study examines how TA mediates the hydration of tricalcium silicate (alite). Experimental study shows that TA can form complex with calcium ions through chelating, retarding the hydration of the alite and changing of the hydration products. Particularly, X-ray diffraction analysis shows that TA makes calcium hydroxide preferentially grow on the [0 0 1] face. Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy and 29Si MAS NMR results reveal that the mean chain length …

3d-Printed Hydrogels Dressings With Bioactive Borate Glass For Continuous Hydration And Treatment Of Second-Degree Burns, Fateme Fayyazbakhsh, Michael J. Khayat, Candy Sadler, Delbert Day, Yue-Wern Huang, Ming-Chuan Leu

Biological Sciences Faculty Research & Creative Works

Recent advances in additive manufacturing have led to the development of innovative solutions for tissue regeneration. Hydrogel materials have gained significant attention for burn wound treatment in clinical practice among various advanced dressings due to their soothing and moisturizing activity. However, prolonged healing, pain, and traumatic removal due to the lack of long-term wound hydration are some of the challenges in the treatment of second-degree burn wounds. In this study, 3D-printed dressings were fabricated using gelatin, alginate, and bioactive borate glass (BBG) using an extrusion-based bioprinter. After ionic crosslinking, the 3D-printed dressings were characterized for mechanical properties, degradation rate, hydration …

Study Of Legionella Pneumophila Treatment With Copper In Drinking Water By Single Cell-Icp-Ms, Lei Xu, Austin Sigler, Anna Chernatynskaya, Lindsey Rasmussen, Jingrang Lu, Endalkachew Sahle-Demessie, David J. Westenberg, Hu Yang, Honglan Shi

Biological Sciences Faculty Research & Creative Works

Legionella pneumophila is a persistent opportunistic pathogen that poses a significant threat to domestic water systems. Previous studies suggest that copper (Cu) is an effective antimicrobial in water systems. A rapid and sensitive quantification method is desired to optimize the conditions of L. pneumophila treatment by Cu and to better understand the interaction mechanisms between Cu and cells. In this study, we developed a highly sensitive single cell (SC)-ICP-MS method to monitor L. pneumophila cell concentration and track their uptake of Cu. The SC-ICP-MS method showed excellent sensitivity (with a cell concentration detection limit of 1000 cells/mL), accuracy (good agreement …

Effect Of Vehicle Speed And Weight On Raveling Of Chip Seal Constructed Using Mineral And Tire Derived Aggregate, Alireza Pourhassan, Ahmed A. Gheni, Mohamed Elgawady

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The characteristics of the load applied by traffic, namely, vehicle speed and load magnitude, play a critical role in the raveling performance of chip seal pavement, which is often overlooked in literature. Furthermore, a sustainable chip seal constructed out of tire derived aggregate (TDA) has been recently introduced. Unlike mineral aggregate, rubber is a time-dependent material, and its properties are greatly influenced by the magnitude and rate of loading. Introducing TDA in chip seal has increased the significance and need to investigate the effects of vehicle speed and load on chip seal. This study investigated the raveling performance of different …

Urban Air Mobility: Vision, Challenges And Opportunities, Debjyoti Sengupta, Sajal K. Das

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Urban Air Mobility (UAM) involving piloted or autonomous aerial vehicles, is envisioned as emerging disruptive technology for next-generation transportation addressing mobility challenges in congested cities. This paradigm may include aircrafts ranging from small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones, to aircrafts with passenger carrying capacity, such as personal air vehicles (PAVs). This paper highlights the UAM vision and brings out the underlying fundamental research challenges and opportunities from computing, networking, and service perspectives for sustainable design and implementation of this promising technology providing an innovative infrastructure for urban mobility. Important research questions include, but are not limited to, real-Time autonomous …

Dispatching Point Selection For A Drone-Based Delivery System Operating In A Mixed Euclidean–Manhattan Grid, Francesco Betti Sorbelli, Federico Corò, Sajal K. Das, Cristina M. Pinotti, Anil Shende

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this paper, we present a drone-based delivery system that assumes to deal with a mixed-area, i.e., two areas, one rural and one urban, placed side-by-side. In the mixed-areas, called EM-grids, the distances are measured with two different metrics, and the shortest path between two destinations concatenates the Euclidean and Manhattan metrics. Due to payload constraints, the drone serves a single customer at a time returning back to the dispatching point (DP) after each delivery to load a new parcel for the next customer. In this paper, we present the 1 -Median Euclidean–Manhattan grid Problem (MEMP) for EM-grids, whose goal …

Reward Maximization For Disaster Zone Monitoring With Heterogeneous Uavs, Wenzheng Xu, Chengxi Wang, Hongbin Xie, Weifa Liang, Haipeng Dai, Zichuan Xu, Ziming Wang, Bing Guo, Sajal K. Das

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this paper, we study the deployment of $K$ heterogeneous UAVs to monitor Points of Interest (PoIs) in a disaster zone, where a PoI may represent a school building or an office building, in which people are trapped. A UAV can take images/videos of PoIs and send its collected information back to a nearby rescue station for decision-making. Unlike most existing studies that focused on only homogeneous UAVs, we here study the scheduling of $K$ heterogeneous UAVs, where different UAVs have different energy capacities and functionalities that lead to different monitoring qualities (monitoring rewards) of each PoI. For example, one …

Descriptive Systematics Of Upper Palaeocene–Lower Eocene Pollen And Spores From The Northern Niger Delta, South-Eastern Nigeria, Luke Mander, Carlos Jaramillo, Francisca Oboh-Ikuenobe

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Fossil pollen and spores are a vital source of information on the geological history of tropical vegetation including reconstructions of vegetation diversity and composition. However, such work relies on a sound taxonomic framework, and this is challenging to achieve because of the large number of pollen and spore morphotypes that are encountered in palynological preparations from tropical sediments. In tropical West Africa, for example, extensive taxonomic work on Cretaceous–Paleogene pollen and spores was undertaken in the later part of the twentieth century, but more recent palynological work has focused on stratigraphy and basin evolution, and there is a need for …

Embedded Aperture-Based Fss Sensor, Lauryn Morris, Swathi Muthyala Ramesh, Logan M. Wilcox, Doyle T. Motes, Kristen M. Donnell

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Frequency Selective Surfaces (FSSs) Are Two-Dimensional Periodic Arrays of Electrically Conductive Elements or Apertures that Have a Specific Electromagnetic Reflection And/or Transmission Response. in This Work, an Aperture-Based Sensor Design Was Proposed that is Capable of Sensing Strain When Embedded in a Layered Dielectric Structure (I.e., an Embedded Sensor). an Aperture Approach Was Selected Due to the Potential for Operation in Reflection Mode Without a Conductive Backplane. the Sensor Was Designed to Operate within the K-Band to Improve the Potential Strain Measurement Resolution, as the Unit Cell Dimensions Are Inversely Related to the Operating Frequency and Directly Related to Strain …

Enhancing Near-Field Wireless Localization With Lidar-Assisted Ris In Multipath Environments, Omar Rinch, Ahmed Elzanaty, Ahmad Alsharoa

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In Next-Generation Wireless Networks that Adopt Millimeter-Waves and Large RIS, the User is Expected to Be in the Near-Field Region, Where the Widely Adopted Far-Field Algorithms based on Far-Field Can Yield Low Positioning Accuracy. Also, the Localization of UE Becomes More Challenging in Multipath Environments. in This Paper, We Propose a Localization Algorithm for a UE in the Near-Field of a RIS in Multipath Environments. the Proposed Scheme Utilizes a LiDAR to Assist the UE Positioning by Providing Geometric Information About Some of the Scatterers in the Environment. This Information is Fed to a Sparse Recovery Algorithm to Improve the …

Experimental Verification Of Characteristic Mode Analysis (Cma) Using Reverberation Chamber, Haran Manoharan, Xu Wang, Matthew Wu, Jagan Rajagopalan, Akshay Mohan, Chulsoon Hwang

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In This Work, a Novel Experimental Validation of Characteristic Mode Analysis (CMA) is Proposed using Reverberation Chamber Measurements. using the Modal Weighting Coefficient Formulation based on the Magnetic Moment and Modal H Field Obtained from Solvers, the Total Radiated Power (TRP) is Calculated. This TRP is Compared with the TRP Obtained from the Reverberation Chamber Measurements. a Good Correlation between the Simulation and Measurement Was Achieved for a Simple Rectangular Plate of Size 15 Cm X 8 Cm with an Error of Less Than 4 DB.

Application Of Tvs Models For Seed Simulation Of A Variety Of Tvs Devices, Li Shen, Yang Xu, Steffen Holland, Sergej Bub, David Pommerenke, Daryl G. Beetner

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Accurate Models of Transient Voltage Suppression (TVS) Devices Are Important for Determining the Suitability of Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) Protection Strategies Early in the Design Process. an Improved TVS Model is Used in the Following Paper to Represent a Variety of TVS Devices, Including a Snapback Device, Non-Snapback Device, and a Varistor. the Models Include Recent Improvements to Represent Conductivity Modulation and the overall Shape of the TVS Device's Transient Response. the Models Are Tuned based on Characterizations of These Protection Devices using a Transmission Line Pulse (TLP) and Are Then Used in a System Efficient ESD Design (SEED) Simulation to …

An Analysis On The Effectiveness Of 2 And 3 Terminal Capacitors In Pdn Design, Jack Juang, Jiahuan Huang, Anfeng Huang, Kelvin Qiu, Hanfeng Wang, Yansheng Wang, Zhiping Yang, Chulsoon Hwang

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The Parasitic Inductance of a Capacitor Depends on its Physical Structure. Due to the Geometry of 3-Terminal Capacitors, They Boast a Lower Parasitic Inductance Compared to 2-Terminal Capacitors of the Same and Possibly Smaller Package Sizes. While the Parasitic Inductance of a Single 3-Terminal Capacitor May Be Lower, using Multiple 2-Terminal Capacitors May Result in Similar Performance. in This Work, the Inductance of 2-Terminal (0201, Nominal 2.2 UF) and 3-Terminal (0402, Nominal 4.3 UF) Capacitors is Extracted and Compared through Measurements. from Our De-Embedding Method and Characterized Capacitors, the Inductance of 2-Terminal Capacitors is Only About 20 PH Higher Than …

Analysis On Extraction Of Potential Radiated Emission Limit Line For Data Center Equipment From 10 Ghz To 40 Ghz, Zhekun Peng, Wei Zhang, Jong Hwa Kwon, Donghyun Kim

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The Radiated Emission (RE) Potential Limit Line for Router System is Analyzed from 10 GHz to 40 GHz based on CISPR TR 16-4-4 Standard. Statistical Data is Collected for the Limit Line Extraction from Measurement, Numerical Analysis, 3D Full-Wave Simulation and Literature Studies. All the Factors Considered in Limit Line Calculation Are Analyzed for Data Center Equipment Operation. the Result of Extracted Potential Limit Line Shows the Rising Limit Line between 10 GHz and 40 GHz Frequency Band for Potential Future Radiated Emission Limit Line above 40 GHz Targeted for High-Speed Equipment Radiated Emission. This Paper is Not a Standard …

Analysis Of Electromagnetic Interference Problems Caused By Split Reference Plane On High-Speed Multilayer Boards, Xin Fang, Chulsoon Hwang, Michelle Liu, Rodrigo Rodriguez Navarrete

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Digital/Analog Ground Partitioning Has Been Used to Isolate Noisy Digital and Power Current from Sensitive Analog Currents in High-Speed Multiplayer Printed Circuit Boards. This Design, However, Breaks the Current Return Path for Signal Traces that Cross the Two Separated Grounds, Which Causes Undesired Effects Such as Signal Distortion and Radiated Emission. Electromagnetic Mechanism Associated with Them Needs to Be Understood to Control and Suppress These Undesired Effects. in This Paper, Equivalent Circuit Diagrams Are Presented to Explain the Current Path in a Practical Camera Device with the Separated Ground. Finally, Optimal Stitching Via Locations is Determined to Provide a Good …