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Cost-Aware Predictive Routing For Vision-Language Models, Sahil Sait Naveed Jan 2026

Cost-Aware Predictive Routing For Vision-Language Models, Sahil Sait Naveed

Master's Projects

Vision-language models (VLMs) are increasingly used for multimodal tasks, but their inference costs vary widely across model tiers. This work presents a predictive routing framework that assigns each query to the most cost-effective VLM by using multimodal embeddings, clustering, and per-cluster model error estimates. Evaluated on six commercial VLMs, the selected router reduces average cost by about 49 percent relative to the quality-first setting on both validation and test. This comes with accuracy losses of 0.4 percentage points on validation and 0.9 on held-out test data. It also outperforms K-NN and ZeroRouter routing baselines while providing lowercost operating points than …

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Memory Effects In Many-Body Systems, Jeffrey Beckstrand Jan 2026

Memory Effects In Many-Body Systems, Jeffrey Beckstrand

Master's Projects

This thesis investigates memory effects in many-body systems through the MoriZwanzig Formalism for projected dynamics of a Hamiltonian System which yields the Generalized Langevin Equation (GLE). The GLE is a stochastic differential equation (SDE) that studies the dynamics of observables under the effects of many other observables in the system. Although satisfying, the GLE has a term called the Memory Kernel that encodes the past of the system and introduces a computational challenge by introducing a non-Markovian property to the equation. The kernel is often approximated by introducing a delta function, which simplifies the computation, but at the loss of …

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Javatutor: An Integrated Llm Framework For Structured Programming Tutoring And Problem-Solving In Java, Amey Makarand Dhongade Jan 2026

Javatutor: An Integrated Llm Framework For Structured Programming Tutoring And Problem-Solving In Java, Amey Makarand Dhongade

Master's Projects

Large Language Models (LLMs) are being adopted more actively to assist in pro- gramming tasks, but much of the available AI code assistants devices are encouraging the rapid generation of solutions, as opposed to assisting students in developing an understanding. As a result, they can give the students correct code without teaching on how to judge a problem and how to build solutions or how to debug their programs themselves. This study describes JavaTutor, an LLM-based tutoring system that is used to assist learners in the learning process in a three-step process of understand- ing, generating a solution, and refining …

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Safe-R2r: A Safety-Aware And Budget-Optimized Retrieval Controller For Rag Systems, Mandar Sunil Gondane Jan 2026

Safe-R2r: A Safety-Aware And Budget-Optimized Retrieval Controller For Rag Systems, Mandar Sunil Gondane

Master's Projects

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) improves factual grounding in large language models by incorporating external evidence during inference. However, most RAG systems rely on fixed retrieval strategies that ignore query difficulty, computational cost, and prediction uncertainty. This project introduces SAFE-R2R (Safety-Aware and Budget-Optimized Reason-to-Retrieve), a retrieval controller that treats retrieval as a query-dependent decision problem. SAFE-R2R organizes retrieval into a multi-rung ladder ranging from no retrieval to deeper retrieval with reranking. At each rung, the system generates an answer, computes reliability signals, and combines them into a risk score used within a conformal calibration framework to decide whether to accept the answer …

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Multimodal Emotion Detection System, Shubhankar Sameer Munshi Jan 2026

Multimodal Emotion Detection System, Shubhankar Sameer Munshi

Master's Projects

Trying to understand emotion from speech is a problem that is present in human computer interaction. Nevertheless, there are still some shortcomings in current SER methods. Text-based systems may miss vital vocal cues, such as sarcasm, tone changes, and delivery. On the other hand, purely audio-based systems are prone to noise and unstable acoustic features. The combination of linguistic and acoustic features in multimodal approaches partially solves this problem, but many existing approaches use inflexible multimodal fusion techniques that cannot adjust their behaviors according to the quality of input signals. In this work, we propose a multimodal approach based on …

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Modeling Sealed Deck Construction In Collectible Card Games Using Learning-To-Rank Approach, Michael Dinh Nguyen Jan 2026

Modeling Sealed Deck Construction In Collectible Card Games Using Learning-To-Rank Approach, Michael Dinh Nguyen

Master's Projects

Artificial intelligence has demonstrated strong performance in complex decision-making domains such as chess and Go, motivating research into its application for games with even richer rules and combinatorial complexity. In collectible card games like Magic: The Gathering, deck construction from a constrained card pool is a critical and challenging task that requires evaluating card strength, synergy, and resource balance. This project explores whether machine learning, specifically learning-to-rank (LTR), can effectively model these human decision processes to construct competitive decks in a sealed format. The results found here can also be applicable to other areas of note, such as sports drafting …

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Stepwise Sudoku Reasoning Training Using Transformers, Lok Man Chu Jan 2026

Stepwise Sudoku Reasoning Training Using Transformers, Lok Man Chu

Master's Projects

Sudoku is a constraint satisfaction problem that serves as a testbed for studying reasoning and stepwise deduction. While many solvers can produce correct solutions, they often fail to generate human interpretable sequences of logically consistent steps. This study investigates whether a transformer trained on stepwise deduction traces can learn to solve Sudoku puzzles through sequential, logically deducible moves. Results show that solve accuracy improves significantly with more training data, reaching approximately 78% at 1500k samples. Stepwise analysis indicates that the model effectively learns simple strategies, achieving near-perfect performance. However, performance on more complex strategies remains limited. Overall, while the model …

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Multi-Agent Path Planning And Optimization Using Q-Learning, Chirag Rudresh Jan 2026

Multi-Agent Path Planning And Optimization Using Q-Learning, Chirag Rudresh

Master's Projects

Robot navigation in a multi-agent setting requires a balance between safety and efficiency, especially in dense environments. In these two-dimensional spaces, the scope for geometric errors is much less and could lead to collisions or immobility. This project proposes to address the navigation task using a two-phase path planning pipeline that combines reinforcement learning and convex optimization in a scalable and robust manner. The first phase consists of generating diverse collision-free paths using a Q-learning agent that is trained on a visibility graph representation of the environment. The discretization of the environment using waypoint-based graphs allows the agent to train …

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Workforce Development Academy For Youth, Hassan Hashemian Jan 2026

Workforce Development Academy For Youth, Hassan Hashemian

Mineta Transportation Institute

To address the need for a diverse workforce in the 21st century and create an awareness of the career paths and opportunities that exist in the transportation industry, the College of Engineering, Computer Science, and Technology at the California State University, Los Angeles (CSULA) has created the Workforce Development Academy for Youth (WDAY). The goal of this program is to build a pipeline of diverse, well-qualified young professionals for the transportation industry. The program works with high school students and teachers to offer academic courses, basic skills, workforce readiness training, internships, extracurricular activities, and career placements to prepare students and …

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Availability And Utilization Of School Library Resources And Its Impacts On The Academic Excellence Of Secondary School Students In Edo State., Iyobosa Ewere Mrs., Ben Asuquo, Glory Mbah Mrs. Jan 2026

Availability And Utilization Of School Library Resources And Its Impacts On The Academic Excellence Of Secondary School Students In Edo State., Iyobosa Ewere Mrs., Ben Asuquo, Glory Mbah Mrs.

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

The study examines availability, and utilization of school library resources and its impacts on the academic excellence in secondary school libraries in Edo state. The descriptive survey research was adopted for the study. The population of the study was 2162 senior secondary school students from Idia Girls’ College, Boiling Point Academy and UNIBEN Demonstration Secondary School. The sampling techniques used for the study was Random Sampling Technique, a total of 216 respondents was used as the sample size representing 10% of the total population. A well structured questionnaire was designed and distributed to respondents .A total of 216 copies of …

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Application Of Heron's Formula, Hidefumi Katsuura Jan 2026

Application Of Heron's Formula, Hidefumi Katsuura

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

We apply Heron's formula to obtain a generalized Ptolemy's theorem, to prove Euler's formula for the volume of a tetrahedron, and to prove Klain's theorem on reversible tetrahedra. After that, we prove triangle inequalities derived from a tetrahedron, find an inequality on the circumradius of a tetrahedron, find a volume expression of an isosceles tetrahedron, and give a condition for four points in the space to be co-planar.

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Pattern-Aware Graph Neural Networks For Handling Missing Data, Minett Tran, Taehee Jeong Jan 2026

Pattern-Aware Graph Neural Networks For Handling Missing Data, Minett Tran, Taehee Jeong

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Missing data is ubiquitous in real-world datasets. Traditional methods either discard incomplete samples or apply imputation techniques that ignore potentially informative missingness patterns, implicitly assuming that missingness occurs randomly. However, missingness patterns might provide additional information. We propose pattern-aware graph neural networks that explicitly encode which features are missing alongside observed values. We used four encoding strategies-learned embeddings, frozen random embeddings, statistical features, and hierarchical representations-across seven UCI datasets with naturally occurring missingness. Our Pattern-aware methods achieve substantial improvements over baselines, with an average improvement of 17% in balanced accuracy and 22% in F1-macro across all datasets. Our code and …

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The Energy Change Of Graphs Under Some Edges Deletions, Huan Lei Shi, Wen Huan Wang, Wasin So Jan 2026

The Energy Change Of Graphs Under Some Edges Deletions, Huan Lei Shi, Wen Huan Wang, Wasin So

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

The energy ε(G) of a graph G is the sum of the absolute values of all the eigenvalues of its adjacency matrix. Gutman (2001) pointed out a problem to characterize the graph G and the edge e of G such that ε(G − e) ⩽ ε(G). Tang et al. (2023) gave a sufficient condition for ε(G − e) ⩽ ε(G), where e is not necessarily a cut-edge set or a cut edge. We deduce here a stronger conclusion than the results obtained by Tang et al. (2023). Our findings cover some known conclusions, such as the results obtained by Gutman …

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Low-Carbon Green Hydrogen Strategies For Sustainable Development In Senegal: A Wind Energy Perspective, Astou Sarr, Mamadou Simina Dramé, Serigne Abdoul Aziz Niang, Abdoulkader Ibrahim Idriss, Haitham Saad Mohamed Ramadan, Ali Ahmat Younous, Kharouna Talla, John Robert Bagarino, Marissa Jasper, Ismaila Diallo Dec 2025

Low-Carbon Green Hydrogen Strategies For Sustainable Development In Senegal: A Wind Energy Perspective, Astou Sarr, Mamadou Simina Dramé, Serigne Abdoul Aziz Niang, Abdoulkader Ibrahim Idriss, Haitham Saad Mohamed Ramadan, Ali Ahmat Younous, Kharouna Talla, John Robert Bagarino, Marissa Jasper, Ismaila Diallo

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

This study presents the first comprehensive techno-economic assessment of wind-based green hydrogen production across Senegal, a country highly dependent on fossil fuel imports. Using a novel integrated approach combining 30 years of ERA5 reanalysis data (1993–2023), turbine performance modeling and electrolyzer comparison, it fills an important gap for renewable hydrogen development in West Africa. Wind resources were analyzed at multiple altitudes, revealing strong potential in both coastal and northeastern regions, particularly during the dry season, with higher wind speeds at higher turbine heights. Four turbines (Vestas_150, Goldwind_155, Vestas_126 and Nordex_N100) and two electrolyzer types (alkaline and PEM) were evaluated. The …

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Comment On Shamsaei Et Al. The Role Of Fuel Characteristics And Heat Release Formulations In Coupled Fire-Atmosphere Simulation. Fire 2023, 6, 264, Aurélien Costes, Adam K. Kochanski Dec 2025

Comment On Shamsaei Et Al. The Role Of Fuel Characteristics And Heat Release Formulations In Coupled Fire-Atmosphere Simulation. Fire 2023, 6, 264, Aurélien Costes, Adam K. Kochanski

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Accurate vertical distribution of fire-induced heat fluxes in the atmosphere is critical for realistic coupled fire–atmosphere simulations. In response to concerns raised by Shamsaei et al. (2023) regarding potential energy conservation issues in the WRF-SFIRE heat distribution scheme, this study first conducts a comprehensive theoretical analysis, demonstrating that the original exponential formulation exhibits negligible error under typical domain configurations. Then, it introduces a novel formulation, called the Versatile Energy-Conservative Distribution scheme, that rigorously guarantees energy conservation while providing enhanced flexibility in specifying vertical distribution profiles. The proposed method accommodates multiple profiles, including exponential, Gaussian, and gamma, and enables the independent …

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Exploring Math Word Problem Generation With Llms, Trung Hieu Vuong Dec 2025

Exploring Math Word Problem Generation With Llms, Trung Hieu Vuong

Master's Theses

Math Word Problem (MWP) is an important building block for learning math. This type of problem is particularly useful for younger audiences because solving it involves two simultaneous skill sets: reading comprehension and mathematical reasoning. With publicly available large language models (LLMs), generating additional MWPs is readily achievable. While researchers have started using LLMs as MWP facilitators, there still exists a gap in studies about the diversity of MWPs generated by unmodified, publicly accessible LLMs. For that reason, our study focused on two goals: (1) to evaluate the diversity of MWPs generated by publicly available LLMs when provided with examples …

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Ischool Student Research Journal, Vol.15, Iss.2 Dec 2025

Ischool Student Research Journal, Vol.15, Iss.2

School of Information Student Research Journal

No abstract provided.

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The Hunt For "Dragon Shards Of Knowledge": A Study On The Information Needs Of The Mmorpg Community, Jessamy Hallie Dec 2025

The Hunt For "Dragon Shards Of Knowledge": A Study On The Information Needs Of The Mmorpg Community, Jessamy Hallie

School of Information Student Research Journal

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the information needs and information-seeking behaviors of the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) information community. To evaluate and define these needs and behaviors a literature review of research contributions published by established information professionals studying MMORPG and video game players was performed. The results showed that the MMORPG community is considerably understudied and lacking sufficient library programming and educational opportunities compared to other communities. It also revealed their dependence on collaboration and the promotion of social connection between members. Their shared goals and common interests helped to facilitate members’ information-seeking and …

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Stream Behavior Characterization Of Marin County Coastal Watersheds And Their Influence On Salmonid Habitat, Ellie L. Murdoch Dec 2025

Stream Behavior Characterization Of Marin County Coastal Watersheds And Their Influence On Salmonid Habitat, Ellie L. Murdoch

Master's Theses

Coastal watersheds in California are increasingly affected by climatic variability, threatening stream behavior, ecological function, and salmonid habitat suitability. This study evaluated streamflow behavior of seven watersheds in Marin County, California, with detailed analysis of Corte Madera, Olema, and Redwood watersheds, which are not influenced by reservoir releases. Using USGS stream gauge records, PRISM climate data, SSURGO soils, and geologic and vegetation information, streamflow metrics critical to salmonid life cycles were quantified for water years 2014 to 2023. Watersheds with greater storage capacity, such as Redwood, exhibited muted hydrologic responses, including delayed flow activation, lower peak flows, slower recession rates, …

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Genetic And Environmental Determinants Of Streaming And Aggregation In Myxococcus Xanthus, Trosporsha T. Khan, Patrick Murphy, Jiangguo Zhang, Oleg A. Igoshin, Roy D. Welch Dec 2025

Genetic And Environmental Determinants Of Streaming And Aggregation In Myxococcus Xanthus, Trosporsha T. Khan, Patrick Murphy, Jiangguo Zhang, Oleg A. Igoshin, Roy D. Welch

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Under starvation conditions, a spot of a few million Myxococcus xanthus cells on agar will migrate inward to form aggregates that mature into dome-shaped fruiting bodies. This migration is thought to occur within structures called ‘streams,’ which are considered crucial for initiating aggregation. The prevailing traffic jam model hypothesizes that intersections of streams cause cell crowding and ‘jamming,’ thereby initiating the process of aggregate formation. However, this hypothesis has not been rigorously tested, in part due to the lack of a standardized, quantifiable definition of streams. To address this gap, we captured time-lapse movies and conducted fluorescent cell tracking experiments …

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Same Data, Different Analysts: Variation In Effect Sizes Due To Analytical Decisions In Ecology And Evolutionary Biology, Elliot Gould, Hannah S. Fraser, Timothy H. Parker, Shinichi Nakagawa, Simon C. Griffith, Peter A. Vesk, Fiona Fidler, Daniel G. Hamilton, Robin N. Abbey-Lee, Jessica K. Abbott, Luis A. Aguirre, Carles Alcaraz, Irith Aloni, Drew Altschul, Kunal Arekar, Jeff W. Atkins, Joe Atkinson, Christopher M. Baker, Meghan Barrett Dec 2025

Same Data, Different Analysts: Variation In Effect Sizes Due To Analytical Decisions In Ecology And Evolutionary Biology, Elliot Gould, Hannah S. Fraser, Timothy H. Parker, Shinichi Nakagawa, Simon C. Griffith, Peter A. Vesk, Fiona Fidler, Daniel G. Hamilton, Robin N. Abbey-Lee, Jessica K. Abbott, Luis A. Aguirre, Carles Alcaraz, Irith Aloni, Drew Altschul, Kunal Arekar, Jeff W. Atkins, Joe Atkinson, Christopher M. Baker, Meghan Barrett

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Although variation in effect sizes and predicted values among studies of similar phenomena is inevitable, such variation far exceeds what might be produced by sampling error alone. One possible explanation for variation among results is differences among researchers in the decisions they make regarding statistical analyses. A growing array of studies has explored this analytical variability in different fields and has found substantial variability among results despite analysts having the same data and research question. Many of these studies have been in the social sciences, but one small “many analyst” study found similar variability in ecology. We expanded the scope …

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An Exploration Of Image Segmentation Techniques For Real-Time Product Detection, Andrew C. Dunton Nov 2025

An Exploration Of Image Segmentation Techniques For Real-Time Product Detection, Andrew C. Dunton

Master's Theses

Recent progress in LLMs enables advanced multimodal understanding, but their high computational cost necessitates monetization strategies like interactive advertising. While bounding boxes show promise for this concept, they can lack precision and visual appeal. Image segmentation offers a superior solution but faces a dual problem: traditional models demand scarce, costly training data, and open-vocabulary segmentation models like SAM are class-agnostic, unable to semantically identify a "consumer product" object class. In this research, we address these limitations by: 1) developing the Prompt-Guided Inpainting Framework (PGIF), which injects negative prompts to generate robustly annotated synthetic segmented product images; 2) investigating the Class-Agnostic …

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Climatology Of Northeast Winds In Northern And Central California: A New Characterization Of The Diablo Wind, Alana R. Macken Nov 2025

Climatology Of Northeast Winds In Northern And Central California: A New Characterization Of The Diablo Wind, Alana R. Macken

Master's Theses

Diablo winds in northern California are known for driving some of the most destructive wildfires in state history. The Camp Fire of 2018, which caused at least 85 civilian fatalities, is just one example of the devastating outcomes associated with these rapidly developing downslope windstorms. While they are known to occur most frequently from fall through spring, much about the structure, evolution, and full spatial extent of these events remains poorly understood. Most previous studies have focused on a limited number of high-impact cases or have defined events using humidity-based thresholds in isolated regions such as the North Bay. As …

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Forecasting Pediatric Emergency Department Arrivals: Evaluating The Role Of Exogenous Variables Using Deep Learning Models, Egbe Etu Etu, Jordan Larot, Kindness Etu, Joshua Emakhu, Sara Masoud, Imokhai Tenebe, Gaojian Huang, Satheesh Gunaga, Joseph Miller Nov 2025

Forecasting Pediatric Emergency Department Arrivals: Evaluating The Role Of Exogenous Variables Using Deep Learning Models, Egbe Etu Etu, Jordan Larot, Kindness Etu, Joshua Emakhu, Sara Masoud, Imokhai Tenebe, Gaojian Huang, Satheesh Gunaga, Joseph Miller

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Background Forecasting pediatric emergency department (ED) demand remains a critical challenge in healthcare operations. This study aimed to identify exogenous variables influencing pediatric ED visits and evaluate the performance of different forecasting models. Method Using a retrospective observational design, we analyzed 192,347 pediatric ED visits across nine hospitals in Southeast Michigan between 2017 and 2019. Patient data were aggregated into daily arrival counts and enriched with exogenous variables such as weather, air quality, pollen, calendar, Google search trends, and chief complaints. Feature selection was performed using XGBoost and SHapley Additive exPlanations to identify the most influential predictors. Three forecasting models …

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Molecular Fluctuations Inhibit Intermittency In Compressible Turbulence, Ishan Srivastava, Andrew Nonaka, Weiqun Zhang, Alejandro Luis Garcia, John B. Bell Nov 2025

Molecular Fluctuations Inhibit Intermittency In Compressible Turbulence, Ishan Srivastava, Andrew Nonaka, Weiqun Zhang, Alejandro Luis Garcia, John B. Bell

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

In the standard picture of fully developed turbulence, highly intermittent hydrodynamic fields are nonlinearly coupled across scales, where local energy cascades from large scales into dissipative vortices and large density gradients. Microscopically, however, constituent fluid molecules are in constant thermal (Brownian) motion, but the role of molecular fluctuations in large-scale turbulence is largely unknown, and with rare exceptions, it has historically been considered irrelevant at scales larger than the molecular mean free path. Recent theoretical and computational investigations have shown that molecular fluctuations can impact energy cascade at Kolmogorov length scales. Here, we show that molecular fluctuations not only modify …

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Broadening Workforce Participation In Transportation: Challenges And Strategies, Jodi Godfrey, Stephanie Ivey Nov 2025

Broadening Workforce Participation In Transportation: Challenges And Strategies, Jodi Godfrey, Stephanie Ivey

Mineta Transportation Institute

Attracting and retaining a diverse, skilled workforce remains one of the most pressing challenges in the transportation industry. A new MTI-led California State University Transportation Consortium report examines why workforce participation gaps persist and identifies practical strategies organizations can implement to address them. Drawing on an extensive literature review, a nationwide industry survey with 996 respondents, and in-depth interviews with 15 transportation professionals, the study highlights both the barriers and the solutions to workforce participation. The findings emphasize that open dialogue, intentional investment, and inclusive workplace policies can help transform industry culture, making transportation careers more appealing to a broader …

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Semi-Automated Extraction Of Active Fire Edges From Tactical Infrared Observations Of Wildfires, Christopher C. Giesige, Eric Goldbeck-Dimon, Andrew Klofas, Mario Miguel Valero Oct 2025

Semi-Automated Extraction Of Active Fire Edges From Tactical Infrared Observations Of Wildfires, Christopher C. Giesige, Eric Goldbeck-Dimon, Andrew Klofas, Mario Miguel Valero

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Highlights: What are the main findings? This article presents an image processing method to semi-automatically track wildfire progression. The algorithm was successfully applied to aerial infrared imagery acquired during tactical fire management operations. What are the implications of the main finding? These results illustrate how tactical data can be used in fire behavior studies. The proposed method may facilitate real-time analysis of tactical information during wildfire emergencies. Remote sensing of wildland fires has become an integral part of fire science. Airborne sensors provide high spatial resolution and can provide high temporal resolution, enabling fire behavior monitoring at fine scales. Fire …

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Spartan Daily, October 22, 2025, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications Oct 2025

Spartan Daily, October 22, 2025, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily, 2025

Volume 165, Issue 26

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High-Stakes Exams Inflate A Gender Gap And Contribute To Systematic Grading Errors In One Introductory Physics Series, David J. Webb, Cassandra Paul Oct 2025

High-Stakes Exams Inflate A Gender Gap And Contribute To Systematic Grading Errors In One Introductory Physics Series, David J. Webb, Cassandra Paul

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Previous research has suggested that changing the percentage of the course grade associated with exam grades in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics courses can change the gender gap in the course. It has also been shown that high-stakes assessments yield the lowest (relative) scores for female students. Previous research by the authors has shown that implementing retake exams can eliminate the gender gap in introductory physics courses. This paper explores several different hypotheses for why retake exams are associated with a zeroed gender gap. Two independent measurements comparing exams with different stakes are used in support of the argument that …

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Exploring The Role Of Culture And Bilingualism In Programming Activities: Lessons From African Educators, Emma R. Dodoo, Katharine Childs, Ethel Tshukudu Oct 2025

Exploring The Role Of Culture And Bilingualism In Programming Activities: Lessons From African Educators, Emma R. Dodoo, Katharine Childs, Ethel Tshukudu

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

The delivery of culturally relevant content in K-12 computing education is widely recognized as essential for engaging students and fostering meaningful learning experiences. However, in many African contexts, K-12 computing teachers feel unprepared to address this need. Course materials often fail to reflect the cultural and linguistic diversity of the students they serve. In this study, we conducted participatory design sessions with education stakeholders, including primary and secondary school teachers, to develop culturally relevant programming activities for a national programming outreach initiative in Botswana. Our findings emphasize the importance of relatable examples and a balanced approach to integrating cultural elements …

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