Digital Commons Network^™

Voltage And Frequency Control In Ac Islanded Microgrid, Hamad Mohammad Al Sharif

Theses

Microgrids are described as linking many power sources (renewable energy and traditional sources) to meet the load consumption in real-time. Because renewable energy sources are intermittent, battery storage systems are required, typically used as a backup system. An energy management strategy (EMS) is required to govern power flows across the entire microgrid. In recent research, various methods have been proposed for controlling the micro-grids, especially voltage and frequency control. This study introduces a microgrid system, an overview of local control in the microgrid, and an efficient EMS for effective microgrid operations using three smart controllers for optimal microgrid stability. We …

Adaptability And Revisability In Climate Models, Kristopher Edelman

Theses

The global climate is shifting rapidly, bringing with it increased risk for climate-related harms to human societies. Climate science is a multi-disciplinary field, requiring experts from diverse specialties to collaborate in order to model complex systems. The complexity and uncertainty of these scientific models raise philosophical questions such as:

• What epistemic, ethical, and social assumptions go into model creation?
• What mathematical and statistical principles are incorporated into their design?
• How is interpretation involved in the selection and analysis of data to generate climate models?

Philosophical issues related to complexity, uncertainty, and the role of values require that modelers evaluate trade-offs. …

Developing Risk Assessment Tool For Patients’ In-Hospital Falls Using Predictive Modeling, Rasika Patil

Theses

Inpatient falls are a serious cause of fatal and non-fatal injuries among patients of all ages leading to disability and stillness. The post-fall treatment comes with rising medical costs and a stressful recovery phase. The present assessment tools align with analyzing causes of falls from historical data instead of present conditions. The key focus area of this research is to develop general-purpose fall risk assessment tools using machine learning-based predictive modeling. We used performance metrics to compare the accuracy and suggest the best suitable model for each shift. This general-purpose fall risk assessment tool can be used for all age …

Retail Demand Forecasting, Mohamed Al Ali

Theses

Sales and demand forecasting is one the most critical tasks of enterprises. It lays the foundation for many other essential business assumptions, such as cash flows, profit margins, turnover, capacity planning, and capital expenditure. This report presents a solution for the case study of forecasting monthly sales of one of the largest retail stores in Europe, Rossman chain stores. There are three steps in which this problem will be handled. First, a complete and comprehensive exploratory data analysis will be done to understand the data and perform feature engineering. Secondly, a time series will be modeled by autoregressive models using …

Assessing The Use Of Smartphones In Agriculture, Katherine Mary Carpenter

Theses

Smartphones are an as yet untapped resource available to agriculture. They are ubiquitous across the globe yet have not previously been tested as a resource available to farmers. Imaging methods such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and satellite imaging have been well-explored and employed in various aspects of agriculture; however, such methods can be cost-prohibitive and at the mercy of another company or agency. If smartphones could be shown to capture color in such a way that relates in a quantifiable way to data measured by laboratory-grade equipment they could prove to be extremely valuable to farmers. Cutting out expensive …

Continuous Variable Quantum Compilation Analysis, Federico Rueda

Theses

Over the last few years quantum computers have rose to prominence as a solution for increasing computing power and tackling problems intractable by classical computers. Classical computers have struggled to meet the ever-increasing demand for data processing and modeling. Thus, quantum computers would meet the demand for heavy computing tasks that classical computers could never achieve. Today there exist two promising quantum technologies that have the potential to prove quantum supremacy in the near future: super-conducting qubits and Continuous Variable (CV) model. Out of the two, superconducting qubits have been at the forefront of quantum computing research. NISQ (Noise intermediate-scale …

Preferred Rendering Of Memory Colors, Anku Manderna Anku

Theses

With the rise in high quality displays and cameras following the mainstream adoption of smartphones, image quality has become an essential aspect of engaging and attracting consumers. In the case of smartphones, the bar raises with release of every new generation. There are many factors affecting image quality such as sharpness, image noise or non-uniformity, and geometric distortion, but it is fair to say that color plays a vital role in the perceived quality of an image. Colors not only spark emotions and engage a user but also decide the likability of a certain image. Over the past few years …

Smart Urban Solutions For Low-Income Neighborhoods In Dubai: Hor Al Anz Area As A Case Study, Alaa Yahia Ragab Eleraqi

Theses

The project’s main objective is to study and assess the current situation and future setup of implementing smart solutions technologies, and the main challenges facing the growth in Dubai in general and the Hor Al Anz neighborhood in Dubai in particular. The expected results and outcomes of this study are illustrated in this research report. The project report consists of 5 parts. Part 1 covers the implemented initiatives and presents the problem statement and the historical background of the case study area by showing why did I select the Hor Al Anz neighborhood in Dubai (Figure 1 below). The purpose …

Predicting Risk Of Readmission In Heart Failure Patients Using Electronic Health Records, Pradumna Suryawanshi

Theses

This thesis research investigates the prediction of readmission risk in heart failure patients using their electronic health record (EHR) data from previous hospitalizations. We examine three primary questions. First, we study the use of attention mechanism in readmission prediction model based on long short-term memory(LSTM) networks and investigate the interpretability it offers regarding the importance of critical time during the visit in readmission prediction. Second given that, generally dataset is curated by combining data from multiple hospitals we investigate model generalization across multiple sites. Finally since in real life scenario model will be trained on past data and used to …

Test Naming Failures. An Exploratory Study Of Bad Naming Practices In Test Code, Zachariah Wigent

Theses

Unit tests are a key component during the software development process, helping ensure that a developer's code is functioning as expected. Developers interact with unit tests when trying to understand, maintain, and when updating code. Good test names are essential for making these various processes easier, which is important considering the substantial costs and effort of software maintenance. Despite this, it has been found that the quality of test code is often lacking, specifically when it comes to test names. When a test fails, its name is often the first thing developers will see when trying to fix the failure, …

A Deep Learning Classifier For Detecting Atrial Fibrillation In Hospital Settings Applicable To Various Sensing Modalities, Kamil Bukum

Theses

Cardiac signals provide variety of information related to the patient's health. One of the most important is for medical experts to diagnose the functionality of a patient’s heart. This information helps the medical experts monitor heart disease such as atrial fibrillation and heart failure. Atrial fibrillation (AF) is one of the most major diseases that are threatening patients’ health. Medical experts measure cardiac signals usng the Electrocardiogram (ECG or EKG), the Photoplethysmogram (PPG), and more recently the Videoplethysmogram (VPG). Then they can use these measurements to analyze the heart functionality to detect heart diseases. In this study, these three major …

Discrete Implementation Of A Discontinuous Conduction Mode Flyback Regulator, Joseph Even

Theses

This paper discusses the design of a flyback regulator implemented without a dedicated flyback controller integrated circuit (IC). Instead, all aspects of the voltage-mode controller are implemented discretely using a series of timing ICs, logic gates, and comparators. Utilizing a flyback transformer and an optoisolator, galvanic isolation is maintained in the design of a 12V-25V input, 5V/1A output, DC-DC flyback regulator with a constant switching frequency of 100kHz and fixed duty cycle of 0.443. After performing calculations to determine performance parameters, parts are selected to meet design specifications, schematic capture and printed circuit board (PCB) layout are performed, the PCB …

System Design Of Hybrid 350w Audio Receiver And Amplifier, Matthew Segada

Theses

Music, for thousands of years, has been at the center of social and cultural aspects to convey emotions and stories to a vast audience. In the modern world, the usage of digital audio has been the main method of consuming music; however, the method in which the translation of a digital audio signal to the analog realm is taken for granted. In this paper, a audio receiver was designed to accept a USB audio signal from any digital source and output an audio signal for headphones or speakers. The receiver was designed to output a maximum of 350W into speakers …

Harnessing Intelligence In Implementing Smart Parking Systems Integrated With Interactive Guidance System In Distinctive Shindagha Historical Neighborhood To Enhance And Regulate Mass Experiences, Rahaf Ahmad Al Kassab

Theses

Under the light of the importance of finding smart solutions for cities strategic issues and in conjunction with the broad race for urban development in order to provide the best living environment and the most appropriate tourist destination, Mobility Management occupies the first place among these issues. Due to the variation in the urban fabric of cities, especially the old historical neighborhoods that are unique in their nature, composition, and conditions for their preservation, challenges related to mobility management raised in these critical areas. Therefore, in this study, we present a smart suggestion to solve the problem of providing smart …

Engaging Students With Disabilities In Universally Designed Science Education, Latifa Sebti, Michelle L. Damiani

Journal of Science Education for Students with Disabilities

Increased student diversity in classrooms and the need for equitable STEM opportunities for all, creates an impetus for educators to establish inclusive and equitable environments and use teaching practices that facilitate meaningful learning for all students in science education. This article offers a three-part framework for combining inclusive philosophy, the science and engineering practices, and Universal Design for Learning. The article is intended to help teachers and teacher educators universally design science education to level the science learning field through access and equity for all students, including students with disabilities. We advocate for the use of four practices: creating an …

Task Assignment And Path Planning For Autonomous Mobile Robots In Stochastic Warehouse Systems, Maojia Patrick Li

Theses

The material handling industry is in the middle of a transformation from manual operations to automation due to the rapid growth in e-commerce. Autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) are being widely implemented to replace manually operated forklifts in warehouse systems to fulfil large shipping demand, extend warehouse operating hours, and mitigate safety concerns. Two open questions in AMR management are task assignment and path planning. This dissertation addresses the task assignment and path planning (TAPP) problem for autonomous mobile robots (AMR) in a warehouse environment. The goals are to maximize system productivity by avoiding AMR traffic and reducing travel time. The …

Development Of A Novel Algorithm To Remove Spurious Edges From Biological Networks Through Functional Enrichment, Jeffrey Page

Theses

The field of systems biology has facilitated the modelling of large and complex biological networks. These networks, generated from prior knowledge contained in the corpus of medical and scientific literature, or from experimental data are being used to model differing macromolecule networks associated with distinct disease states. While these networks are vital in understanding disease pathology and possible treatment options, they are rife with spurious interactions. These interactions arise from the methods used to create such networks, where the ability to discriminate between direct and indirect relationships is a challenge. To combat these spurious interactions an algorithm that leverages functional …

Aerial Planning For Flying Taxi Of Dubai, Maitha Ali Salem Alnuaimi

Theses

Urban air mobility is the future of transportation in cities, and Dubai is one of the first cities to announce the use of air mobility models in the city. The air taxi is expected to be operational in 2023. It is announced to be electric and autonomous and will be the first in the region. The overall goal of the study was to prepare the infrastructure to operate the taxi. The problem was that the Dubai authorities have not yet started this phase, while the target date for operation has already been announced. The basic design of the study involved …

Testing And Evaluation Of Corroded Steel Girder Bridges, Amanda Bao

Presentations and other scholarship

No abstract provided.

Interpretation And Physical Modeling Of Electronic Transport And Defect States In Igzo Thin-Film Transistors, Muhammad Salahuddin Kabir

Theses

This work is a comprehensive study on the interpretation and modeling of electronic transport behavior and defect states in indium-gallium-zinc-oxide (IGZO) TFTs. Key studies have focused on advancing the state of IGZO TFTs by addressing several challenges in device stability, scaling, and device modeling. These studies have provided new insight on the associated mechanisms and have resulted in the realization of scaled thin-film transistors that exhibit excellent electrical performance and stability. This work has demonstrated the ability to scale the conventional inverted staggered IGZO TFT down to one micron channel length, with excellent on-state and off-state performance where the VT …

Experimental Verification On The Effectiveness Of Random Vibration Testing With Controlling Acceleration And Velocity Kurtosis, Daichi Nakai, Katsuhiko Saito

Journal of Applied Packaging Research

Random vibration tests for packages are conducted to confirm the safety of these packages during shipping. In our previous study, a method of generating the random vibration controlling the power spectral density and kurtosis of acceleration and the kurtosis of velocity was proposed. The aim of the present study is to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. Three vibrations were generated in this study and compared with the real vibration, which replicates the truck bed. In the first case, control of the acceleration and velocity kurtosis was neglected. In the second case, the vibration controlling the acceleration kurtosis was …

Reconfigurable Cushion Design For E-Commerce Packaging Using Kirigami Concept, Euihark Lee, Xingguang Pan, Hannah Kim, Kazuko Fuchi

Journal of Applied Packaging Research

In packaging, cushion barriers are needed to provide content protection in a disposable form. However, conventional cushioning materials and designs typically require a large volume, which decreases shipping and storage efficiency and increases environmental impact. Especially in e-commerce, where “shipping and handling” occur at an exceedingly rapid pace in large-scale operations, many packages suffer from being over or under packed through the fulfilment process. To solve this issue, this paper presents deployable kirigami-based cushion designs that can be collapsed or deployed depending on the distribution situation. Kirigami is a variation of origami that involves both cutting and folding of paper. …

Optimization Of Unit Operations For Microencapsulating Ferrous Fumarate During Scale-Up Of Double Fortification Of Salt With Iron And Iodine, Oluwasegun Modupe, Kiruba Krishnaswamy, Yao Olive Li, Levente L. Diosady

Articles

Objectives: This study evaluates factors responsible for the floating of iron premix in double fortified salt (DFS), which initially affected the large-scale implementation of the salt fortification program in India, and provides solutions to the scale-up of the technology.

Materials and Methods: To mitigate this time-sensitive scale-up challenge. First, the iron premix samples were obtained from the industrial scale-up pilot studies in India, evaluated for the impact of the amount of coating material (5 per cent, 7.5 per cent, and 10 per cent (in weight)), type of formulation (soy stearin, SEPIFILM and hydroxypropyl methylcellulose), amount of titanium dioxide (25-35 per …

Color Layer Scissioning In See-Through Augmented Reality, Tucker Downs, Michael Murdoch

Presentations and other scholarship

Color appearance of transparent objects is not adequately described by colorimetry or color appearance models. Despite the fact that the retinal projection of a transparent object is a combination of its color and the background, measurements of this physical combination fail to predict the saliency with which we perceive the object’s color. When the perceive color forms in the mind, awareness of their physical relationship separates the physical combination into two unique perceptions. This is known as color scissioning.

In this paper a psychophysical experiment utilizing a seethrough augmented reality display to compare virtual transparent color samples to real color …

Analyzing Temporal Patterns In Phishing Email Topics, Erika Bliss

Theses

In 2020, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) found phishing to be the most common cybercrime, with a record number of complaints from Americans reporting losses exceeding $4.1 billion. Various phishing prevention methods exist; however, these methods are usually reactionary in nature as they activate only after a phishing campaign has been launched. Priming people ahead of time with the knowledge of which phishing topic is more likely to occur could be an effective proactive phishing prevention strategy. It has been noted that the volume of phishing emails tended to increase around key calendar dates and during times of uncertainty. …

Gourmetnet: Food Segmentation Using Multi-Scale Waterfall Features With Spatial And Channel Attention, Udit Sharma

Theses

Deep learning and Computer vision are extensively used to solve problems in wide range of domains from automotive and manufacturing to healthcare and surveillance. Research in deep learning for food images is mainly limited to food identification and detection. Food segmentation is an important problem as the first step for nutrition monitoring, food volume and calorie estimation. This research is intended to expand the horizons of deep learning and semantic segmentation by proposing a novel single-pass, end-to-end trainable network for food segmentation. Our novel architecture incorporates both channel attention and spatial attention information in an expanded multi-scale feature representation using …

Impact Of Image Complexity On Early Exit Neural Networks For Edge Applications, Sharan Vidash Vidya Shanmugham

Theses

The advancement of deep learning methods has ushered in novel research in the field of computer vision as the success of deep learning methods are irrefutable when it comes to images and video data. However deep learning methods such as convolutional neural networks are computationally heavy and need specialized hardware to give results within a reasonable time. Early-exit neural networks offer a solution to reducing computational complexity by placing exits in traditional networks bypassing the need to compute the output of all convolutional layers. In this thesis, a reinforcement learning-based exit selection algorithm for early-exit neural networks is analyzed. The …

A Comprehensive Approach To Automated Sign Language Translation, Tejaswini Ananthanarayana

Theses

Many sign languages are bonafide natural languages with grammatical rules and lexicons, hence can benefit from neural machine translation methods. As significant advances are being made in natural language processing (specifically neural machine translation) and in computer vision processes, specifically image and video captioning, related methods can be further researched to boost automated sign language understanding. This is an especially challenging AI research area due to the involvement of a continuous visual-spatial modality, where meaning is often derived from context. To this end, this thesis is focused on the study and development of new computational methods and training mechanisms to …

Handypose And Vehipose: Pose Estimation Of Flexible And Rigid Objects, Divyansh Gupta

Theses

Pose estimation is an important and challenging task in computer vision. Hand pose estimation has drawn increasing attention during the past decade and has been utilized in a wide range of applications including augmented reality, virtual reality, human-computer interaction, and action recognition. Hand pose is more challenging than general human body pose estimation due to the large number of degrees of freedom and the frequent occlusions of joints. To address these challenges, we propose HandyPose, a single-pass, end-to-end trainable architecture for hand pose estimation. Adopting an encoder-decoder framework with multi-level features, our method achieves high accuracy in hand pose while …

Behind The Scenes: On The Relationship Between Developer Experience And Refactoring, Eman Abdullah Alomar, Mohamed Wiem Mkaouer, Anthony Peruma, Christian D. Newman, Ali Ouni

Articles

Refactoring is widely recognized as one of the efficient techniques to manage technical debt and maintain a healthy software project through enforcing best design practices, or coping with design defects. Previous refactoring surveys have shown that code refactoring activities are mainly executed by developers who have sufficient knowledge of the system’s design, and disposing of leadership roles in their development teams. However, these surveys were mainly limited to specific projects and companies. In this paper, we explore the generalizability of the previous results by analyzing 800 open-source projects. We mine their refactoring activities, and we identify their corresponding contributors. Then, …