Digital Commons Network^™

Advancing Discourse Analysis In Multiparty Meetings: Comprehensive Classification Of Argument And Relation Types, Vishal Vaitla

Master's Projects

In multi-party meetings, accurately analyzing dialogue is crucial for enhancing communication effectiveness and decision-making. However, the informal and dynamic nature of these discussions presents complex challenges for computational analysis. Dialogues in such settings often include non-standard language, interruptions, and rapid topic changes, making it difficult to extract useful information with conventional text analysis tools. To tackle this challenge, two specific methods were developed:

Argument Classification: We use machine learning models like Gradient Boosting to identify and categorize the main points people make in their discussions. This helps us understand what each person is trying to say, making it easier to …

Posttraumatic Symptoms As Predictors Of Mobile App Engagement: An Evaluation Of Usage Data From Public Users Of An App For Military Sexual Trauma, Shilpa Hampole

Master's Theses

Veterans who have experienced military sexual trauma (MST) often face barriers to help-seeking. Mental health mobile applications (apps) such as Beyond MST, developed by the National Center for PTSD, can expand access to evidence-based coping tools, psychoeducation, and resources. However, user engagement is crucial for these apps to be effective. Researchers are exploring factors impacting app engagement, with emerging evidence suggesting that symptom severity may play a key role. This study examined whether the severity of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms and posttraumatic negative cognitions, as well as level of well-being, are associated with app engagement. Anonymous app usage data …

Suburban Bay Area City Approaches To Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion (Dei), Arianna Bush

Master's Projects

The ultimate goal of government is to serve the community for the greater good. Creating an inclusive and representative environment for those working in government and for the population they serve will improve many aspects of public service. In recent decades, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) have been increasingly prioritized as America has become increasingly diverse. However, this effort intensified in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests. “Three years after Floyd's death and the movement hit the streets, 74% of Black executives said they saw positive change in hiring, retention, and …

Zookeeper Through The Ages: A Comparative Performance Analysis Of Evolutionary Versions, Ashish Khanchandani

Master's Projects

The rise in the need for scalable, fault-tolerant, and high-performance systems is the primary factor driving the developments in distributed computing. However, the proliferation of distributed computing creates significant difficulties. In an internet- scale setting where errors and network delays are frequent, coordinating distributed applications presents difficulties that ZooKeeper attempts to solve. It ensures several crucial characteristics that guarantee reliability and consistency. However, performance and latency play a huge part when it comes to dealing with systems built for handling very high loads. ZooKeeper has very low latency for read-heavy workloads, making it suitable for real-time applications. These factors contribute …

A Censorship Resistant News Website Using The Ethereum Blockchain, Hoang Lai

Master's Projects

Misleading information, false claims, and fabricated news articles not only misguide readers but also undermine the trustworthiness of the news platforms themselves. The blockchain provides decentralized, immutable data storage and offers a promising solution to prevent censorship on news websites. Compared to traditional news websites, a decentralized application (dApp) offers benefits such as greater stability and resistance to information manipulation. A decentralized web app is harder to attack than centralized servers since the database is stored across a blockchain network. Moreover, blockchain prevents censorship by letting readers check data across all blocks in the Blockchain, which is good for a …

Advancing Phishing Protection: Employing Sophisticated Methods For Precise Url Evaluation, Abbhinav Reddie Nomuiia

Master's Projects

In short, the incidence of phishing - the illegal act of people pretending to be well-known companies to secure personal information - has skyrocketed in the past few years. In 2022 alone, 300,000 consumers in the United States were captured by scammers using phishing techniques, losing in all over $50 million. In the span of two weeks, over 510 million attempts occurred in a variety of sectors, particularly instant messaging platforms, package delivery businesses, and digital currency trading. Since most businesses have recognized that they are prone to these exposure cases, there has been a sixty percent increase in businesses …

Emotion Detection Using Ensemble Learning, Priya Harika Yerapothu

Master's Projects

Emotion detection is gaining exponential necessity in today’s technological age. This research seeks to delve into ways conversational AI could be enhanced by integrating emotional intelligence using an ensemble learning approach. Traditional machine learning along with advanced neural network architectures are implemented to improve the understanding and intricacies of emotion detection from textual data. The dataset we use is GoEmotions dataset, annotated with 27 emotional labels, to conduct a detailed analysis of emotion recognition. Various machine learning models, such as HistGradientBoosting, LightGBM, CatBoost, and MLP, will be evaluated side by side with advanced models of Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (BiLSTM) …

Deciphering Speech Through Vision: A Deep Learning Lip Reading System, Srujith Rao Ambati

Master's Projects

Lip-reading, a ubiquitous field between computer vision and speech processing, focuses on identifying what spoken words a person generates depending on their uttering lip movements. This paper presents a streamlined lip-reading solution that employs machine learning and deep learning. First, Our work utilizes the Multi-Task Cascaded Convo- lutional Networks to detect facial “landmarks,” including the face and lips region, and the aligns the face. The aligned faces are segmented to get the lip images. Lip images are preprocessed using the Real-Enhanced Super Resolution Generative Adversarial Network to enhance image resolution to identify subtle lip movement in video images: a critical …

Image Segmentation By Convolutional Neural Networks In Coral Resilience Research, Jennifer Benbow

Master's Projects

As ocean temperatures rise, coral bleaching is becoming more frequent and severe. Selective breeding experiments show promise for enhancing coral resilience, but scaling these projects is hindered by the labor-intensive nature of taking numerous time series measurements as corals grow. Automating this process with computer vision is one solution to this bottleneck, and to our knowledge, no such tool exists at present. To fill this gap, we have trained a set of machine learning models, based on the Mask R-CNN framework, for segmenting juvenile corals in lab-based coral resilience research. This work shows that retraining the Mask R-CNN architecture through …

Leveraging Large Language Models For Transforming Student Information Into Actionable Data, Sree Hari Karri

Master's Projects

Admission season places significant demands on university committees, necessitating the review of vast arrays of documents to assess students’ competence. This project advances the development of an automated system designed to streamline this process by evaluating application materials such as Letters of Recommendation (LoRs), Statements of Purpose (SoPs), and resumes. Utilizing a variety of advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques, the system compares the performance of several Large Language Model (LLM) approaches. It also experiments with different data handling strategies, including the use of vector stores versus traditional context-based processing, to optimize model efficiency and accuracy. Special attention is given …

An Attributed And Diverse Encoder-Decoder Processing Technique For Anomaly Detection., Kenneth Antony John

Master's Projects

Attributed graphs are graphs that contain extra information about the attributes of nodes and edges. They can be used to model a plethora of real-world scenarios like social networks, bank transactions, and even academic citation data. Anomalies in such graphs can be irregularities or unusual patterns that are observed in the attributes or the structure of the graph. Anomaly detection in attributed networks is a crucial task, aiming to identify such anomalies. Existing methodologies use various deep learning techniques using graph neural networks, graph encoder-decoder architectures, and multi-layer perceptions. This study proposes a new approach to improve the existing methods …

Roundtable On Warhol V. Goldsmith: An Introduction To Warhol V. Goldsmith, Amy Adler, Lionel Bently, Susan Bielstein, Johanna Burton, Martha Buskirk, Noam M. Elcott, Jane Ginsburg, Branden W. Joseph, Joan Kee, Liz Linden, Rebecca Tushnet, Graeme Williams, Winnie Wong

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

No abstract provided.

Lessons From A Professional Learning Community: Navigating Tensions While Moving Between Theory And Practice In Teaching Chemistry For Social Justice, Kathryn Ribay

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Maintaining a commitment to social justice teaching can be especially challenging when navigating the bureaucratic systems and ever-spiraling responsibilities of the education system. To better understand how social-justice-oriented educators navigate these tensions, this paper uses qualitative methods to investigate the social justice problems of practice identified by five chemistry teachers in a year-long professional learning community. By analyzing the challenges described in their problem-posing segments, I identify seven major themes that represent key sources of tension and possibility as teachers move from theory to practice in teaching chemistry for social justice. These findings indicate that the practical considerations of day-to-day …

Evaluating The Influence Of Marine Protected Areas On Surf Zone Fish, M. L. Marraffini, S. L. Hamilton, J. R. Marin Jarrin, M. Ladd, G. Koval, J. R. Madden, I. Mangino, L. M. Parker, K. A. Emery, K. Terhaar, D. M. Hubbard, R. J. Miller, J. E. Dugan

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Marine protected areas (MPAs) globally serve conservation and fisheries management goals, generating positive effects in some marine ecosystems. Surf zones and sandy beaches, critical ecotones bridging land and sea, play a pivotal role in the life cycles of numerous fish species and serve as prime areas for subsistence and recreational fishing. Despite their significance, these areas remain understudied when evaluating the effects of MPAs. We compared surf zone fish assemblages inside and outside MPAs across 3 bioregions in California (USA). Using seines and baited remote underwater videos (BRUVs), we found differences in surf zone fish inside and outside MPAs in …

Episodic Memory Assessment: Effects Of Sex And Age On Performance And Response Time During A Continuous Recognition Task, James O. Clifford, Sulekha Anand, Franck Tarpin-Bernard, Michael F. Bergeron, Curtis B. Ashford, Peter J. Bayley, John Wesson Ashford

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Introduction: Continuous recognition tasks (CRTs) assess episodic memory (EM), the central functional disturbance in Alzheimer’s disease and several related disorders. The online MemTrax computerized CRT provides a platform for screening and assessment that is engaging and can be repeated frequently. MemTrax presents complex visual stimuli, which require complex involvement of the lateral and medial temporal lobes and can be completed in less than 2 min. Results include number of correct recognitions (HITs), recognition failures (MISSes = 1-HITs), correct rejections (CRs), false alarms (FAs = 1-CRs), total correct (TC = HITs + CRs), and response times (RTs) for each HIT and …

Is Knowledge Management (Finally) Extractive? – Fuller’S Argument Revisited In The Age Of Ai, Norman Mooradian

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Aim/Purpose The rise of modern artificial intelligence (AI), in particular, machine learning (ML), has provided new opportunities and directions for knowledge management (KM). A central question for the future of KM is whether it will be dominated by an automation strategy that replaces knowledge work or whether it will support a knowledge-enablement strategy that enhances knowledge work and uplifts knowledge workers. This paper addresses this question by re-examining and updating a critical argument against KM by the sociologist of science Steve Fuller (2002), who held that KM was extractive and exploitative from its origins. Background This paper re-examines Fuller’s argument …

Rescaling: Change Agency And The Emerging Geography Of Economic Relationships, Markus Grillitsch, Björn Asheim, Nichola Lowe, Sophie Kelmenson, Lea Fünfschilling, Karl Johan Lundquist, Yahia Mahmoud, Mikhail Martynovich, Pauline Mattsson, Magnus Nilsson, Johan Miörner, Torben Schubert

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

In this paper, we propose a theoretical and conceptual framework for articulating and studying changes in the global economic landscape and illustrate this framework in the current context. The framework pivots around the notion of rescaling, which is interpreted from a human agency perspective. We disentangle three theoretically distinct dimensions of rescaling and show how they play together using concrete examples. The theoretical and conceptual framework links the intended and unintended consequences of globalisation to current rescaling efforts, and allows us to investigate when, why, and how changes to the geography of economic relationships occur.

[Review Of] Abolition Geography, By Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Jennifer Rycenga

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

No abstract provided.

A Practical Framework For Component-Level Structural Health Monitoring Of The Gerald Desmond Bridge, Mehran Rahmani, Vesna Terzic, Andrea Calabrese, Brittany Cambell

Mineta Transportation Institute

Bridges serve as critical transportation infrastructure, but traditional maintenance inspection to ensure their safety is time-consuming, costly, and labor-intensive, especially for larger and more complex structures. This study presents a practical framework for the instrumentation, data acquisition, and remote condition assessment of the Gerald Desmond Bridge, California’s largest cable-stayed bridge. The framework aims to establish a foundation for real-time or near real-time remote health monitoring of the bridge’s critical elements. The study highlights the advantages of remote monitoring in terms of efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and early detection of damage.

Enhancing Medical Chatbots With Image Diagnosis, Swatisri Chavali

Master's Projects

Medical chatbots, at the conjunction of artificial intelligence and healthcare, are the very cornerstone of a transformative force in diagnostic capabilities and communication channels for healthcare professionals. The history of this journey, from early chatbot models to sophisticated systems, is born out of a relentless pursuit of accuracy and contextual understanding. This proposal acknowledges the critical role played by NLTK in raising the interpretability and communicative capabilities of intelligent systems, meeting challenges that arise from varying writing styles and accommodating the standards of the medical field. The integration of NLTK is a linchpin, bridging the gap between sophisticated technological architectures …

Ensemble Model With Meta-Learning For Ddos Attack Classification In Sdn, Ankith Indrakumar

Master's Projects

In response to the security threats posed by Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, this paper presents an intrusion detection framework with a high-accuracy multi-class classification model. In addition to detecting the existence of DDoS attacks, our framework aims to identify the type of attack (e.g., protocol or message type) so that the system can select the most appropriate countermeasure against the DDoS type. We leverage a meta-learner to build an ensemble model of multiple machine learning models such as LSTM, RF, and KNN to enhance detection and classification accuracy. Tested on the CIC-DDoS 2019 dataset, the proposed model achieves …

Building Lean Standalone Web Servers, And Routing Engine, Ajita Shrivastava

Master's Projects

As a result of advancement in technology the web and email servers have greatly expanded in size.
This has created a need for miniaturization, and people are trying to minimize technology whilst
making it fast and efficient. This report discusses the development of a set of servers aligned with
the miniaturization trend: Atto servers. These are simple to use single file PHP servers created for
moderate usages including web traffic and email tasks. The purpose of this project is to develop
small server solutions which could act as working counterparts of products like Apache or Nginx.
It makes the server …

Leading From The Middle: Arts Administrators' Beliefs About The Impact Of Arts Education On High-Needs Students, Sofia Fojas

Dissertations

Research on arts education notes the positive impact of arts education on educational outcomes for students, particularly students of color, students in poverty, and students needing additional academic support. Students living in low-income communities receive different educational opportunities than those in high-wealth districts. This disparity is especially true for highly mobile and high-needs students of color. Arts education has made positive differences in student outcomes. This qualitative study examined the beliefs of county arts leads, leaders in the middle, situated between the California Department of Education and their local school districts, and how they can be empowered to be change …

Transformational Leadership Of Library Chiefs And Its Mediating Effect On Job Satisfaction And Quality Of Work-Life, Catherine Era, Estela Dequito

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

In this study, chief librarians in the Province of South Cotabato were asked to assess the mediating role that transformational leadership played in the relationship between job satisfaction and quality of work-life. This work used descriptive correlational and mediation techniques in a non-experimental quantitative research design. The researcher questionnaires utilized in the research were adjusted to the goals of the investigation. Through stratified sampling, 83 librarians were chosen to participate in the survey. The statistical techniques used to analyze and interpret the data are mean and Pearson's r. The researcher utilized Google Forms, an online survey tool, to collect the …

Influence Of User Satisfaction On Library Patronage Among Postgraduate Students In Ladoke Akintola University Of Technology, Ogbomoso, Oyo State, Nigeria, Adeola Adesoji Arinola Ph.D, Olatundun Oluwatoyin Oyewunmi Phd, Adewale Joel Sobalaje, Ezekiel Tubosun Olatunji

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

This study investigated the correlation between user satisfaction and library patronage among postgraduate students at Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomoso, Oyo State, Nigeria. A questionnaire was developed for data collection and validated, demonstrating a good reliability, with a coefficient of 0.847 (84.7%) for library patronage and 0.823 (82.3%) for user satisfaction. 120 responses were obtained and analyzed based on descriptive statistics (percentage, mean, average mean, and standard deviation) as well as inferential (Pearson Product Moment Correlation) statistics. The findings revealed a significant correlation between library patronage and user satisfaction (r= 0.000c, N = 120, P < 0.05) among postgraduate students of the University. The study concluded that adequate library customer care services and prioritizing meeting the essential needs of postgraduate students would enhance their satisfaction and consequently increase their library patronage. It was recommended that the university administration, in collaboration with the library management, address the issues that hinder effective utilization of the university library.

Prospects And Challenges Of Library Collaboraton In Changing World, Eze Onwuzurike Jane

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

The paper investigates the prospects and challenges of library collaboration in the era of global change. It delved into the purpose of establishing libraries and concept of library collaboration. The paper evaluate collaboration as a process where two or more libraries work together to achieve common goals. It analyses collaboration as a global trend where libraries share open resources and engaged in networking activities. It discusses rationale to collaboration by drawing examples from stakeholder engagement, feasibility study, capacity building, people, organization and change. The paper examines prospects of collaboration among libraries which includes application of ICT in collaboration, cost saving, …

Impact Of Staff Training On Library Development, Joseph Owuraku Agyeiku, Ayishatu Iddrisu Ms

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

The study examines the ongoing effects of staff training to integrate library development. The study takes a conceptual approach, thematically focusing on the impact of staff training on library development. The rationale of the study was to establish the relationship between the training of library staff and the development of libraries, leading to the effective and efficient provision of library and information services. Through a systematic literature review and thematic analysis of extant literature, the paper concludes that managers of libraries must pragmatically integrate staff training into their annual budgets: it recommends the establishment of training and development programmes for …

Library Factors And User Education As Determinants Of Library Use By Undergraduates In Two Universities In Oyo State, Nigeria, Abdulahi Mayowa Olaniyi, Olalekan Abiola Awujoola Dr.

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

University libraries play a crucial role in supporting the goals and values of universities across the globe. As a service provider, the university library needs to be used by members of the university community such as undergraduates. University libraries however have been observed to suffer adequate use by undergraduates probably because of the poor library factors or lack of adequate user education undergraduates. This study, thus, examines library factors and user education as determinants of library use by undergraduates in two universities in Oyo State, Nigeria. The study adopted a descriptive survey research design. The population of the study comprised …

Robotics And Artificial Intelligence In Libraries, Prince Chibuzor Eke, Nkechi Mercy Egesimba, Nnam Mills Ezebuike

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

This research was borne out of the desire to discover the robotics and artificial intelligence technology which is rapidly spreading in libraries as modern tools for innovation. Conventionally, robotics and artificial intelligence involves programming computers to do things which if done by humans, would say to require intelligence. The application of robotics and artificial intelligence in library has become pervasive. They include expert systems for reference services, book reading and shelf-reading robots, virtually reality for immersive learning among others. Meanwhile, the incorporation of robotics and artificial intelligence in libraries can be perceived to alienate librarians from their users, it will …

Deep-Learning Approaches To Predict Remaining Useful Life Of Hard Disks, Rohan Mohapatra

Master's Projects

On a daily basis, data centers process huge volumes of data using inexpensive hard disks. Data stored in these disks serve a range of critical functional needs from financial, and healthcare to aerospace. As such, premature disk failure and consequent loss of data can be catastrophic. To mitigate the risk of failures, cloud storage providers perform condition-based monitoring and replace hard disks before they fail. By estimating the remaining useful life (RUL) of hard disk drives, one can predict the time-to-failure of a particular device and replace it at the right time, ensuring maximum utilization whilst reducing operational costs. We …