Digital Commons Network^™

Near-Inertial Wave Energetics Modulated By Background Flows In A Global Model Simulation, Keshav J. Raja, Maarten J. Buijsman, Jay F. Shriver, Brian K. Arbic, Oladeji Siyanbola

Faculty Publications

We study the generation, propagation, and dissipation of wind-generated near-inertial waves (NIWs) in a global 1/25° Hybrid Coordinate Ocean Model (HYCOM) simulation with realistic atmospheric forcing and background circulation during 30 days in May–June 2019. The time-mean near-inertial wind power input and depth-integrated energy balance terms are computed for the total fields and the fields decomposed into vertical modes to differentiate between the radiative and (locally) dissipative components of NIW energy. Only 30.3% of the near-inertial wind input projects onto the first five modes, whereas the sum of the NIW energy in the first five modes adds up to 58% …

Qualified Immunity, Sovereign Immunity, And Systemic Reform, Katherine Mims Crocker

Faculty Publications

Qualified immunity has become a central target of the movement for police reform and racial justice since George Floyd’s murder. And rightly so. Qualified immunity, which shields government officials from damages for constitutional violations even in many egregious cases, should have no place in federal law. But in critical respects, qualified immunity has become too much a focus of the conversation about constitutional-enforcement reform. The recent reappraisal offers unique opportunities to explore deeper problems and seek deeper solutions.

This Article argues that the public and policymakers should reconsider other aspects of the constitutional-tort system—especially sovereign immunity and related protections for …

An Integrated Network Representation Of Multiple Cancer-Specific Data For Graph-Based Machine Learning, L M. Pu, M Singha, H C. Wu, C Busch, L M. Pu, M Brylinski

Faculty Publications

Genomic profiles of cancer cells provide valuable information on genetic alterations in cancer. Several recent studies employed these data to predict the response of cancer cell lines to drug treatment. Nonetheless, due to the multifactorial phenotypes and intricate mechanisms of cancer, the accurate prediction of the effect of pharmacotherapy on a specific cell line based on the genetic information alone is problematic. Emphasizing on the system-level complexity of cancer, we devised a procedure to integrate multiple heterogeneous data, including biological networks, genomics, inhibitor profiling, and gene-disease associations, into a unified graph structure. In order to construct compact, yet information-rich cancer-specific …

Feasibility Of A Hip Flexion Feedback System For Controlling Exercise Intensity And Tibia Axial Peak Accelerations During Treadmill Walking, Nuno Oliveira, Chuang-Yuan Chiu

Faculty Publications

The ability to meet high exercise intensities is limited by the increased risk of injury in some clinical populations. Previous studies have linked large tibia peak positive accelerations resulting from running to increased risk of developing lower-extremity injury. The purpose of this study is to determine the feasibility of using a hip flexion feedback system (HFFS) to meet and maintain different exercise intensities while maintaining low tibia axial accelerations. Ten healthy participants were tested on a HFFS test and an independent walking/running test to meet exercise intensities of 40% and 60% of heart rate reserve (HRR). During the HFFS test, …

Bibliometric Analysis Of Coronavirus Disease 2019 Medical Research Production From Saudi Arabia, Amr A. Jamal, Samar Binkheder, Raniah N. Aldekhyyel, Jwaher Almulhem, Shabana Tharkar, Afaf Ali Batis, Layal Hneiny

Faculty Publications

In response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and as an attempt to fill the knowledge gap related to this topic, extensive research in this area has been published. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, as one of the countries affected by the pandemic, has contributed to the growing body of scientific literature related to COVID-19. To measure research contribution produced by Saudi Arabian affiliated researchers, we conducted a bibliometric analysis of COVID-19 research across two databases: the Web of Science and Scopus. Analysis was conducted on February 2, 2021 and included all relevant COVID-19-related publications (n = 1510). …

Learning To Cycle: A Cross-Cultural And Cross-Generational Comparison, Rita Cordovil, Cristiana Mercê, Marco Branco, Frederico Lopes, David Catela, Elina Hasanen, Arto Laukkanen, Patrizia Tortella, Guido Fumagalli, Cristina Sá, Boris Jidovtseff, Linus Zeuwts, An V. De Meester, Farid Bardid, Ricardo Fujikawa, Sanne Veldman, Silvija Zlatar, Isaac Estevan

Faculty Publications

Background: Learning to cycle is an important milestone for children, but the popularity of cycling and the environmental factors that promote the development and practice of this foundational movement skill vary among cultures and across time. This present study aimed to investigate if country of residence and the generation in which a person was born influence the age at which people learn to cycle.

Methods: Data were collected through an online survey between November 2019 and December 2020. For this study, a total of 9,589 responses were obtained for adults (self-report) and children (parental report) living in 10 countries (Portugal, …

Audio-Based Wildfire Detection On Embedded Systems, Hung-Tien Huang, Austin Downey, Jason D. Bakos

Faculty Publications

The occurrence of wildfires often results in significant fatalities. As wildfires are notorious for their high speed of spread, the ability to identify wildfire at its early stage is essential in quickly obtaining control of the fire and in reducing property loss and preventing loss of life. This work presents a machine learning wildfire detecting data pipeline that can be deployed on embedded systems in remote locations. The proposed data pipeline consists of three main steps: audio preprocessing, feature engineering, and classification. Experiments show that the proposed data pipeline is capable of detecting wildfire effectively with high precision and is …

Composite Style Pixel And Point Convolution-Based Deep Fusion Neural Network Architecture For The Semantic Segmentation Of Hyperspectral And Lidar Data, Kevin T. Decker, Brett J. Borghetti

Faculty Publications

Multimodal hyperspectral and lidar data sets provide complementary spectral and structural data. Joint processing and exploitation to produce semantically labeled pixel maps through semantic segmentation has proven useful for a variety of decision tasks. In this work, we identify two areas of improvement over previous approaches and present a proof of concept network implementing these improvements. First, rather than using a late fusion style architecture as in prior work, our approach implements a composite style fusion architecture to allow for the simultaneous generation of multimodal features and the learning of fused features during encoding. Second, our approach processes the higher …

To Stick Or Not To Stick: The Multiple Roles Of Cell Adhesion Molecules In Neural Circuit Assembly, Trevor Moreland, Fabienne E. Poulain

Faculty Publications

Precise wiring of neural circuits is essential for brain connectivity and function. During development, axons respond to diverse cues present in the extracellular matrix or at the surface of other cells to navigate to specific targets, where they establish precise connections with post-synaptic partners. Cell adhesion molecules (CAMs) represent a large group of structurally diverse proteins well known to mediate adhesion for neural circuit assembly. Through their adhesive properties, CAMs act as major regulators of axon navigation, fasciculation, and synapse formation. While the adhesive functions of CAMs have been known for decades, more recent studies have unraveled essential, non-adhesive functions …

Zintl Phase Compounds Mg3Sb2-XBiX (X=0, 1, And 2) Monolayers: Electronic, Phonon And Thermoelectric Properties From Ab Initio Calculations, Zheng Chang, Jing Ma, Kunpeng Yuan, Jiongzhi Zheng, Bin Wei, Mohammed Al-Fahdi, Yufei Gao, Xiaoliang Zhang, Hezhu Shao, Ming Hu, Dawei Tang

Faculty Publications

The Mg₃Sb_2−xBi_x family has emerged as the potential candidates for thermoelectric applications due to their ultra-low lattice thermal conductivity (K_L) at room temperature (RT) and structural complexity. Here, using ab initio calculations of the electron-phonon averaged (EPA) approximation coupled with Boltzmann transport equation (BTE), we have studied electronic, phonon and thermoelectric properties of Mg₃Sb_2−xBi_x (x = 0, 1, and 2) monolayers. In violation of common mass-trend expectations, increasing Bi element content with heavier Zintl phase compounds yields an abnormal change in K_L in two-dimensional Mg₃Sb …

High-Mobility Semiconducting Polymers With Different Spin Ground States, Xiao-Xiang Chen, Jia-Tong Li, Yu-Hui Fang, Xin-Yu Deng, Xue-Qing Wang, Guangchao Liu, Yunfei Wang, Xiaodan Gu, Shang-Da Jiang, Ting Lei

Faculty Publications

Organic semiconductors with high-spin ground states are fascinating because they could enable fundamental understanding on the spin-related phenomenon in light element and provide opportunities for organic magnetic and quantum materials. Although high-spin ground states have been observed in some quinoidal type small molecules or doped organic semiconductors, semiconducting polymers with high-spin at their neutral ground state are rarely reported. Here we report three high-mobility semiconducting polymers with different spin ground states. We show that polymer building blocks with small singlet-triplet energy gap (ΔE_S-T) could enable small ΔE_S-T gap and increase the diradical character in copolymers. …

Data Mining And Knowledge Discovery In Chemical Processes: Effect Of Alternative Processing Techniques, Luis A. Briceno-Mena, Miriam Nnadili, Michael G. Benton, Jose A. Romagnoli

Faculty Publications

Data mining and knowledge discovery (DMKD) focuses on extracting useful information from data. In the chemical process industry, tasks such as process monitoring, fault detection, process control, optimization, etc., can be achieved using DMKD. However, the selection of the appropriate method for each step in the DMKD process, namely data cleaning, sampling, scaling, dimensionality reduction (DR), clustering, clustering analysis and data visualization to obtain meaningful insights is far from trivial. In this contribution, a computational environment (FastMan) is introduced and used to illustrate how method selection affects DMKD in chemical process data. Two case studies, using data from a simulated …

Identification Of Return-Oriented Programming Attacks Using Risc-V Instruction Trace Data, Daniel F. Koranek, Scott R. Graham, Brett J. Borghetti, Wayne C. Henry

Faculty Publications

An increasing number of embedded systems include dedicated neural hardware. To benefit from this specialized hardware, deep learning techniques to discover malware on embedded systems are needed. This effort evaluated candidate machine learning detection techniques for distinguishing exploited from non-exploited RISC-V program behavior using execution traces. We first developed a dataset of execution traces containing Return Oriented Programming (ROP) exploitation on the RISC-V Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) and then developed several deep learning bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) models capable of distinguishing exploited traces from non-exploited traces, each using subsets of features from the execution traces. An objective of this …

Parenting Education For Low-Income Job Seekers: A Mixed-Methods Analysis Of The Parenting With Love And Logic Program, Bryan Spuhler, Jacob A. Esplin, Kay Bradford, Brian J. Higginbotham

Faculty Publications

Although the principles and strategies outlined in Cline and Fay’s (1990) Parenting with Love and Logic have been the foundation for several parent and educator training curricula over the last 30 years, there has been a dearth of empirical research to evaluate these programs (Fay, 2012). Prior research has documented the impact of cumulative family risk factors on parenting skills and child outcomes (Repetti et al., 2002, 2012), but few studies have examined the impact of parenting education courses within unemployed, low-income families. This study investigates perceived parental efficacy across the four program domains of connection, autonomy, regulation, and parental …

General Feature Extraction For Process Monitoring Using Transfer Learning Approaches, Wenbo Zhu, Jinhong Zhang, Jose Romagnoli

Faculty Publications

Data-driven methods have been widely used in process monitoring and fault detection areas. Despite that, most of these data-driven approaches are extremely specific, where the developed models can only be applied in the given process with the selected variables. The lack of generalization potentially limits its applications. This work mainly focuses on developing a model with better generalization ability and transferability for process data analytics. We proposed a transitional invariant feature extraction method using convolutional neural networks, which can learn features regardless of the size or sequence of the input. Such an approach allows the transfer learning so that the …

Attention/Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder In Adolescent And Young Adult Males With Fragile X Syndrome, Jessica Klusek, Shannon L. O'Connor, Alexandra Hickey, Kimberly J. Hills, Leonard Abbeduto, Jane E. Roberts

Faculty Publications

This study characterized the rates of rates of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in adolescent and young adult males with fragile X syndrome (FXS) using a multi-method approach integrating a DSM-based parent interview (Children’s Interview for Psychiatric Syndromes; P-ChIPS, Fristad et al., 1998) and a parent rating scale (Child Behavior Checklist; CBCL, Achenbach, 2001). Thirty-one males with FXS, aged 16-24 years, participated. Forty-two percent met DSM-5 criteria for ADHD and 35% exceeded the CBCL cut-offs. Agreement between the two classification methods was fair (κ=0.38). Autism symptom severity and nonverbal cognitive ability did not predict ADHD diagnoses/symptoms. Results show …

Key Stakeholder Perspectives On Challenges And Opportunities For Rural Hpv Vaccination In North And South Carolina, Laura J. Fish, Sayward Harrison, Jodi-Ann Mcdonald, Valerie Yelverton, Charnetta Williams, Emmanuel B. Walter, Lavanya Vasudevan

Faculty Publications

The objective of this study was to identify factors at the individual, provider, and systems levels that serve as challenges or opportunities for increasing adolescent vaccination—including Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination—in rural communities in the southern United States (US). As part of a broader study to increase HPV vaccine uptake in the southern US, we conducted in-depth interviews with vaccination stakeholders representing public health and education agencies in North Carolina (NC) and South Carolina (SC). Fourteen key stakeholders were recruited using purposive sampling to obtain insights into challenges and solutions to rural-urban disparities in HPV vaccination coverage. Stakeholders were also queried …

Key Stakeholder Perspectives On Challenges And Opportunities For Rural Hpv Vaccination In North And South Carolina, Laura J. Fish, Sayward Harrison, Jodi-Ann Mcdonald, Valerie Yelverton, Charnetta Williams, Emmanuel B. Walter, Lavanya Vasudevan

Faculty Publications

The objective of this study was to identify factors at the individual, provider, and systems levels that serve as challenges or opportunities for increasing adolescent vaccination—including Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination—in rural communities in the southern United States (US). As part of a broader study to increase HPV vaccine uptake in the southern US, we conducted in-depth interviews with vaccination stakeholders representing public health and education agencies in North Carolina (NC) and South Carolina (SC). Fourteen key stakeholders were recruited using purposive sampling to obtain insights into challenges and solutions to rural-urban disparities in HPV vaccination coverage. Stakeholders were also queried …

Do We Trust The Government? Attributes Of Covid-19 Vaccine Hesitancy And Acceptance In Nigeria, Osmond C. Ekwebelem, Helen Onyeaka, Ismaeel Yunusa Ph. D., Taghi Miri, Yahwedalu M. Onwuneme, Ayeni T. Eunice, Amara Anyogu, Bright Obi, Ngwogu Ada Carol

Faculty Publications

Objectives:

A significant percentage of the population must be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity. Therefore the success of a vaccination program relies on the level of acceptance. This present study seeks to understand COVID-19 vaccine acceptance and hesitancy in Nigeria by assessing the public's willingness to get vaccinated.

Study design:

This is a population-based cross-sectional study. Data were derived through a structured online survey.

Methods:

A cross-sectional study was conducted among adult residents in Nigeria in March 2021 using a structured online questionnaire. The questionnaire surveyed participants' demographic characteristics and perception of COVID-19 and the COVID-19 vaccine. Descriptive statistics and …

Chimney Identification Tool For Automated Detection Of Hydrothermal Chimneys From High-Resolution Bathymetry Using Machine Learning, Isaac Keohane, Scott White

Faculty Publications

Identifying the locations of hydrothermal chimneys across mapped areas of seafloor spreading ridges unlocks the ability to research questions about their correlations to geology, the cooling of the lithosphere, and deep-sea biogeography. We developed a Chimney Identification Tool (CIT) that utilizes a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) to classify 1 m gridded AUV bathymetry and identify the locations of hydrothermal vent chimneys. A CNN is a type of Machine-Learning model that is able to classify raster data based on the shapes and textures in the input, making it ideal for this task. The criteria that have been used in previous manual …

Controls On Buffering And Coastal Acidification In A Temperate Estuary, Christopher W. Hunt, Joseph Salisbury, Douglas Vandemark

Faculty Publications

Estuaries may be uniquely susceptible to the combined acidification pressures of atmospherically driven ocean acidification (OA), biologically driven CO2 inputs from the estuary itself, and terrestrially derived freshwater inputs. This study utilized continuous measurements of total alkalinity (TA) and the partial pressure of carbon dioxide (pCO2) from the mouth of Great Bay, a temperate northeastern U.S. estuary, to examine the potential influences of endmember mixing and biogeochemical transformation upon estuary buffering capacity (β–H). Observations were collected hourly over 28 months representing all seasons between May 2016 and December 2019. Results indicated that endmember mixing explained most of the observed variability …

Canonical Sentence Processing And The Inferior Frontal Cortex: Is There A Connection?, Nicholas Riccardi, Chris Rorden, Julius Fridriksson, Rutvik H. Desai

Faculty Publications

The role of left inferior frontal cortex (LIFC) in canonical sentence comprehension is controversial. Many studies have found involvement of LIFC in sentence production or complex sentence comprehension, but negative or mixed results are often found in comprehension of simple or canonical sentences. We used voxel-, region-, and connectivity-based lesion symptom mapping (VLSM, RLSM, CLSM) in left-hemisphere chronic stroke survivors to investigate canonical sentence comprehension while controlling for lexical-semantic, executive, and phonological processes. We investigated how damage and disrupted white matter connectivity of LIFC and two other language-related regions, the left anterior temporal lobe (LATL) and posterior temporal-inferior parietal area …

Thalamic Shape Abnormalities Differentially Relate To Cognitive Performance In Early-Onset And Adult-Onset Schizophrenia, Derin J. Cobia, Chaz Rich, Matthew J. Smith, Pedro Engel Gonzalez, Will Cronenwett, John G. Csernansky, Lei Wang

Faculty Publications

Early-onset schizophrenia (EOS) shares many biological and clinical features with adult-onset schizophrenia (AOS), but may represent a unique subgroup with greater susceptibility for disease onset and worsened symptomatology and progression, which could potentially derive from exaggerated neurodevelopmental abnormalities. Neurobiological explanations of schizophrenia have emphasized the involvement of deep-brain structures, particularly alterations of the thalamus, which have been linked to core features of the disorder. The aim of this study was to compare thalamic shape abnormalities between EOS and AOS subjects and determine whether unique behavioral profiles related to these differences. It was hypothesized abnormal thalamic shape would be observed in …

Tell Or Retell? The Role Of Task And Language In Spanish-English Narrative Microstructure Performance, Mary Claire Wofford, Jessica Cano, Lisa A. Fitton Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

Purpose:

This study examined performance of dual language learners (DLLs) on Spanish- and English-language narrative story retells and unique tells. Transcription and analysis focused on comparisons of common microstructural language sample measures in Spanish and English across tasks. Each language sample measure was evaluated for its possible convergence with norm-referenced standardized assessments for DLL children.

Method:

Spanish–English DLLs (N = 133) enrolled in English-only kindergarten or first-grade classrooms completed two-language sample tasks (one in each language), which were transcribed and analyzed using Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (Miller & Iglesias, 2017) for measures of syntactic complexity (mean length of …

A Discrete Choice Experiment Investigating Hiv Testing Preferences In South Africa, P. Chiwire, A. C. Muhlbacher, S. M. Evers, H. Mahomed, Jan Ostermann Ph.D., M. Hiligsmann

Faculty Publications

Background

South Africa (SA) has the world’s highest burden of HIV infection, with an estimated 13.7% of the population living with HIV (PLWH/Persons Living With HIV). The early identification of PLWH and rapid engagement of them in HIV treatment are indispensable tools in the fight against HIV transmission. Understanding client preferences for HIV testing may help improve uptake. This study aimed to elicit client preferences for key characteristics of HIV testing options.

Methods

A discrete-choice experiment (DCE) was conducted among individuals presenting for HIV testing at two public primary healthcare facilities in Cape Town, South Africa. Participants were asked to …

Implementation Of An Automated Grading Tool For Phonetic Transcription Training, Marisha Speights Atkins, Dallin J. Bailey, Cheryl D. Seals

Faculty Publications

Clinical phonetic transcription is regarded as a highly specialised skill requiring hours of practice for mastery. Although this skill is a critical part of students’ clinical preparation to become speech-language pathologists, students often report feeling unprepared to apply the skill in clinical practice. Previous studies suggest that increased opportunities for practice and timely feedback on transcriptions are needed in order to develop skill confidence. However, providing more opportunities for practice can be impeded by the limited resources to manage the grading of additional assignments. The purpose of this study is to show the implementation of a web-based learning management system …

Faster Intercalation Pseudocapacitance Enabled By Adjustable Amorphous Titania Where Tunable Isomorphic Architectures Reveal Accelerated Lithium Diffusivity, Wessel Van Den Bergh, Taylor Larison, Maximilliano Jesus Jara Fornerod, Prof. Stefan Guldin, Morgan Stefik

Faculty Publications

Intercalation pseudocapacitance is a faradaic electrochemical phenomenon with high power and energy densities, combining the attractive features of capacitors and batteries, respectively. Intercalation pseudocapacitive responses exhibit surface-limited kinetics by definition, without restriction from the collective of diffusion-based processes. The surface-limited threshold (SLT) corresponds to the maximum voltage sweep rate (vSLT) exhibiting a predominantly surface-limited current response prior to the onset of diffusion-limitations. Prior studies showed increased lithium diffusivity for amorphous titania compared to anatase. Going beyond prior binary comparisons, here a continuum of amorphous titania configurations were prepared using a series of calcination temperatures to tailor both amorphous …

Evaluating The Fit-Effectiveness Of Fabric-Based Reusable Face Masks On 3d Printed Niosh Headforms, Casey Stannard, Charles Freeman, Lesley Strawderman, Meagan Moore, Wayne Newhauser, Reuben Burch, Catherine Black, David Saucier

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Exposure To Negative News Stories About Vaping, And Harm Perceptions Of Vaping, Among Youth In England, Canada, And The United States Before And After The Outbreak Of E-Cigarette Or Vaping-Associated Lung Injury (‘Evali’), Katherine East, Jessica L. Reid, Robin Burkhalter, Olivia A. Wackowski, Jim Thrasher Ph.D., Ma, Ms, Harry Tattan-Birch, Christian Boudreau, Maansi Bansal-Travers, Alex C. Liber, Ann Mcneill, David Hammond

Faculty Publications

Introduction

Little is known about the international impact of E-cigarette or Vaping-Associated Lung Injury (‘EVALI’) on youth perceptions of vaping harms. Methods

Repeat cross-sectional online surveys of youth aged 16–19 years in England, Canada, and the United States before (2017, 2018), during (2019 August/September), and after (2020 February/March, 2020 August) the ‘EVALI’ outbreak (N = 63380). Logistic regressions assessed trends, country differences, and associations between exposure to negative news stories about vaping and vaping harm perceptions. Results

Exposure to negative news stories increased between 2017 and February–March 2020 in England (12.6% to 34.2%), Canada (16.7% to 56.9%), and the United …

Economic Values Of Potential Regulation Changes For The Southern Flounder Fishery In Louisiana, David R. Smith, Stephen R. Midway, Rex H. Caffey, Jerrod M. Penn

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.