Digital Commons Network^™

1-Norm Support Vector Machine On Single-Trial Eeg And Ecg Data To Identify Neural Oscillatory Features In The Ketamine Model For Schizophrenia, Xiao Yang

Master's Theses

Ketamine provides a useful model for studying the physiopathology of schizophrenia as it induces and exacerbates schizophrenic symptoms in healthy individuals and patients, respectively. However, it remains unclear how ketamine affects neural oscillations across frequency bands and the extent to which changes in cortical firing are independent from ketamine’s cardiovascular effects. The present study used 1-norm support vector machine (SVM) as a classification approach to determine sources of psychophysiological signal, considering both EEG and ECG, characterizing primary effects of ketamine administration. EEG and ECG recordings of 11 participants were collected before (saline) and after the ketamine (0.5 mg/kg) intravenous infusion …

“Flowing Along The Wall”: Anarcha-Feminist Bioethics And Resistance In Octavia E. Butler’S Dawn 2019., Theresa Mendez

Master's Theses

Science fiction (sf) texts conversant with the temporal play between past, present, and future push readers to imagine the extremes of human and environmental existence, interaction, and potential. Simultaneously, despite the sf genre’s tendency to traffic in extremes, these texts provoke readers to consider the ways in which these imagined worlds are grounded in history as well as in the contemporary social moment. As Donna Haraway has argued, “the boundary between science fiction and social reality is an optical illusion” (306). This illusory boundary must continue to be traversed in order to consider how sf literatures, particularly those which imagine …

Nekton Usage Of High Marsh Habitats In Connecticut Salt Marshes, With Emphasis On The Genus Fundulus, Amanda L. Tucker

Master's Theses

Large scale habitat use patterns of salt marsh nekton are fairly well understood, but small-scale patterns within marsh habitats are not as well known, including the genus Fundulus, an important salt marsh species. This is an area of study that needs more research, particularly in light of increases in salt marshes loss within the last several decades. Salt marshes are a primary habitat for Fundulus species. Sea level rise and urbanization have been major contributors to salt marsh loss and alteration.

Salt marshes are highly variable habitats both spatially and temporally due to tidal cycles, high and low marsh areas …

A Machine Learning Technology For Rapid Detection Of Carbon Nanotubes/Dna Hybridization In Biosensor Healthcare Applications, Steven K. Ang

Master's Theses

In molecular biology, the term “DNA hybridization” generally refers to the process of forming a double stranded nucleic acid from joining two complementary strands of DNA. The degree of genetic similarity of the DNA resulting from hybridization can be detected ei ther by using the chemical characteristics of DNA samples or by utilizing reliable biosensors which transform the chemical characteristics into a source of electrical measurements. In past research about such sensors, known as DNA Hybridization Detection Systems, the thermal and electrical characteristics of carbon nanotubes are utilized to detect whether hybridization takes place or not. However, human interpretation of …

Characterizing Vegetative Communities Across The Salt Marsh To Upland Ecotone In Connecticut: Indications Of Tidal Inundation Stress In The High Marsh, Matthew J. Ormrod

Master's Theses

The viability of Connecticut’s future salt marshes remains uncertain as pressure from multiple anthropogenic stressors and accelerated relative sea level rise continue to undermine the dynamic ecogeomorphic mechanisms that allow these landscapes to persist in times of environmental change. Observed rates of relative sea level rise in the Long Island Sound estuary appear to be accelerating since recording began in the early 1930s. Furthermore, as much as 90% of the land parcels expected to undergo habitat change as marine ecosystems migrate landward are privately owned and managed. This finding suggests that, in addition to these intrinsic ecogeomorphic feedbacks that make …

Dynamic Shifting Of Virtual Network Topologies For Network Attack Prevention, Lenoy Avidan

Master's Theses

Computer networks were not designed with security in mind, making research into the subject of network security vital. Virtual Networks are similar to computer networks, except the components of a Virtual Network are in software rather than hardware. With the constant threat of attacks on networks, security is always a big concern, and Virtual Networks are no different. Virtual Networks have many potential attack vectors similar to physical networks, making research into Virtual Network security of great importance. Virtual Networks, since they are composed of virtualized network components, have the ability to dynamically change topologies. In this paper, we explore …

Mapping Sex Offenders And Treatment Centers In Relation To Social Disorganization, Amber Amin

Master's Theses

Research shows that the clustering of Registered Sex Offenders (RSOs) is connected to social disorganization. Residential patterns disrupt the reintegration of the RSO population. Utilizing data from Queens and the Bronx, NYC, this study examines RSO clustering in the two boroughs and explores the proximity of community resources to RSO addresses that may assist reintegration. Using data from the New York Megan’s Law and census data for Queens and Bronx Counties, maps were created to study the residential patterns of RSOs. The results show clustering of RSOs in areas with variables pertaining to high social disorganization and a lack of …

Benchmarking Oecd Countries’ Sustainable Development Performance: A Goal-Specific Pca Approach, Shyam Lamichhane

Master's Theses

In this thesis, the current status of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries’ sustainable development performance towards reaching the recently announced 2030 Agenda (17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)) was investigated. Over 90 social, economic and environmental sustainability indicators were considered for the performance assessment of OECD countries towards reaching the targeted SDGs. The current weighted averaging approach used in the recent SDG Index and Dashboards Report was used as the benchmark and its limitations were discussed. To overcome the limitations, a novel Goal Specific Principal Component Analysis (GS-PCA) approach was proposed to create composite sustainability index …

Determining The Interference Of Lactate And Lactate Dehydrogenase In An Ethanol Enzyme Assay, Julia Liebl

Master's Theses

Enzymatic ethanol assays are widely used to determine blood alcohol content for individuals admitted to a hospital. In some instances, this hospital data is later used as evidence in a court of law, most commonly in DUI cases. As the enzymatic assay targets, but does not exclusively measure ethanol, it is theoretically possible that interference could occur and produce a falsely elevated result, leading to wrongful convictions or other consequences. This project examined the potential of clinically relevant levels of one potential interferant, lactate and the hepatic enzyme lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) to cause significant and falsely elevated results. Threshold levels …

A Framework To Analyze Energy Efficiency Of Multi-Band Spectrum Sensing Algorithms, Jay Bhadresh Patel

Master's Theses

Cognitive radio (CR) is a device which can detect wireless communication channels that are not in use and adapt its parameters intelligently. Networks with CRs use the available frequency bands much more efficiently and hence have higher data rates compare to traditional radios. Spectrum sensing is the class of techniques used by CRs to understand its wireless environment. Recent research on evaluating multi-band spectrum sensing algorithms is limited to only algorithm complexity and optimization; therefore, the primary goal of the study is to devise a novel framework that analyzes a multi-band spectrum sensing algorithm in terms of energy consumption and …

A Spatial Optimization Model For Resource Allocation For Wildfire Suppression And Resident Evacuation, Siqiong Zhou

Master's Theses

Wildland-urban interface wildfires have been a significant threat in many countries. This thesis presents an integer two-stage stochastic goal programming model for comprehensive, efficient response to wildfire including firefighting resource allocation and resident evacuation. In contrast to other natural disasters, the progression of wildfires depends on not only the probabilistic fire spread scenarios but also decisions made during firefighting. The proposed model optimizes the resource preparations before the fire starts and resource allocation decisions during the fire event. This model takes into account different wildfire spread scenarios and their impact on high-risk areas. The two objectives considered are minimizing the …

Scl: A Lattice-Based Approach To Infer Three-Dimensional Chromosome Structures From Single-Cell Hi-C Data, Hao Zhu

Master's Theses

In contrast to population-based Hi-C data, single-cell Hi-C data are zero-inflated and do not indicate the frequency of proximate DNA segments. There are a limited number of computational tools that can model the three-dimensional structures of chromosomes based on single-cell Hi-C data.

We developed SCL (Single-Cell Lattice), a computational method to reconstruct three-dimensional (3D) structures of chromosomes based on single-cell Hi-C data. We designed a loss function and a 2D Gaussian function specifically for the characteristics of single-cell Hi-C data. A chromosome is represented as beads-on-a-string and stored in a 3D cubic lattice. Metropolis-Hastings simulation and simulated annealing are used …

Gogo: An Improved Algorithm To Measure The Semantic Similarity Between Gene Ontology Terms, Chenguang Zhao

Master's Theses

Measuring the semantic similarity between Gene Ontology (GO) terms is an essential step in functional bioinformatics research. We implemented a software named GOGO for calculating the semantic similarity between GO terms. GOGO has the advantages of both information-content-based and hybrid methods, such as Resnik’s and Wang’s methods. Moreover, GOGO is relatively fast and does not need to calculate information content (IC) from a large gene annotation corpus but still has the advantage of using IC. This is achieved by considering the number of children nodes in the GO directed acyclic graphs when calculating the semantic contribution of an ancestor node …

Detecting Coastal Marsh Change From Aerial Imagery Using Spectral And Textural Methods: Pascagoula River Estuary, Mississippi, 1955-2014, Margaret Claire Bell Waldron

Master's Theses

As sea level rise accelerates, coastal marsh ecosystems are increasingly vulnerable. Vertical accretion rates must exceed or keep pace with rates of sea level rise to prevent transition to open water or inland migration of marsh vegetation. While some marsh systems along the northern Gulf of Mexico coast have remained stable, others, e.g., the marshes of the Louisiana Gulf Coast, have experienced high rates of conversion to open water. This study examined the historical extent of intertidal marsh at the mouth of the Pascagoula River in Jackson County, Mississippi to determine whether marsh extent changed during the period 1955-2014 and …

A Machine Learning Approach To Network Intrusion Detection System Using K Nearest Neighbor And Random Forest, Ilemona S. Atawodi

Master's Theses

The evolving area of cybersecurity presents a dynamic battlefield for cyber criminals and security experts. Intrusions have now become a major concern in the cyberspace. Different methods are employed in tackling these threats, but there has been a need now more than ever to updating the traditional methods from rudimentary approaches such as manually updated blacklists and whitelists. Another method involves manually creating rules, this is usually one of the most common methods to date.

A lot of similar research that involves incorporating machine learning and artificial intelligence into both host and network-based intrusion systems recently. Doing this originally presented …

Investigating Diel Periodicity In Export Flux In The Gulf Of Mexico Using A Particulate Imaging System, Justin Edward Blancher

Master's Theses

To estimate the diurnal periodicity in the biological pump, a floating array with a marine snow camera system at 150 m depth was used, and particles were imaged at a 40 second interval for a 24 to 30 hour period at five sites in the Gulf of Mexico in June 2017. Each image was processed to identify and size all the particles within the frame, which was then processed to determine diameter, an estimated volume, and settling speed for each particle. Using these parameters, particle mass was estimated using algebraically rearranged calculations for settling speed. Each hour during the deployment …

A Linear Approach To John Adams' Recent Works, Olivia Maynard

Master's Theses

This paper presents and demonstrates a linear approach to works from John Adams’ most recent compositional period (1991–). Existing research into this period primarily focuses on specific surface-level events, with little examination of deeper large-scale structures within the works. Chapter 1 reviews the existing research, as well as relevant research into minimalist music and post-tonal analysis, and some existing approaches are then incorporated into the methodology presented in Chapter 2. The methodology is presented in three stages: identifying formal structure, identifying linear structures through salient pitches, and determining harmonic support for those salient pitches. The methodology is demonstrated in greater …

Tropicalization Of Canonical Curves, Adhitya Saran Mohan

Master's Theses

A fundamental result in the classification of nonsingular projective curves is the canonical embedding. Our goal is to investigate how this canonical embedding interacts with the process of tropicalization. We first give an overview of classical algebraic geometry, beginning with affine varieties. We highlight several important tools used for the construction of maps from algebraic varieties to projective space, namely divisors and differentials, extracting the main properties necessary for the canonical embedding. For illustration, we explicitly describe the image of a certain genus six curve under the canonical embedding. We then transition to tropical geometry, with a brief overview of …

Comparison Of Lqr And Lqr-Mrac For Linear Tractor-Trailer Model, Kevin Richard Gasik

Master's Theses

The United States trucking industry is immense. Employing over three million drivers and traveling to every city in the country. Semi-Trucks travel millions of miles each week and encompass roads that civilians travel on. These vehicles should be safe and allow efficient travel for all. Autonomous vehicles have been discussed in controls for many decades. Now fleets of autonomous vehicles are beginning their integration into society. The ability to create an autonomous system requires domain and system specific knowledge. Approaches to implement a fully autonomous vehicle have been developed using different techniques in control systems such as Kalman Filters, Neural …

Classification Of Hyperspectral Colon Cancer Images Using Convolutional Neural Networks, Sean Joseph Mobilia

Master's Theses

Hyperspectral images are 3-D images, which contain data in hundreds of spectral bands as opposed to 2-D images, which contain data in at most 3 bands (red, green, and blue). Hyperspectral imagery was initially developed for remote sensing; however, recently, researchers have started to see its potential in medical diagnosis and cancer detection. Hyperspectral images provide massive amounts of data about the objects they are studying, and this causes challenges during information processing. Machine learning tools, such as convolutional neural networks (CNNs), are known to be successful in extracting features and classifying traditional 2-D images. This thesis proposes CNN architectures …

Investigations And Analysis Of Dynamical And Steady State Properties Of Chemical Reaction Systems, Diego Ortega Hernandez

Master's Theses

In this paper, we investigate results from chemical reaction network theory and a list of techniques to test for the reaction-coordinates dynamical system to have a partial order induced by a positive orthant cone. A successful result from one of these tests guarantees mono-stationarity (and indeed convergence). We also investigate a recently published algorithmic and computational approach to determine whether a reaction network establishes mono- or multi-stationarity. We test new reactions that have not been previously introduced in the literature for mono- or multi-stationarity using this approach. This includes the two-site phosphorylation reaction network and a modified double phosphorylation reaction …

Combining Blockchain And Swarm Robotics To Deploy Surveillance Missions, Ardalan Razavi

Master's Theses

Current swarm robotics systems are not utilized as frequently in surveillance missions due to the limitations of the existing distributed systems' designs. The main limitation of swarm robotics is the absence of a framework for robots to be self-governing, secure, and scalable. As of today, a swarm of robots is not able to communicate and perform tasks in transparent and autonomous ways. Many believe blockchain is the imminent future of distributed autonomous systems. A blockchain is a system of computers that stores and distributes data among all participants. Every single participant is a validator and protector of the data in …

Zero And Low Energy Thresholds In Quantum Simulation, Yun Xuan Shi

Master's Theses

Quantum simulation is the process of simulating a quantum mechanical system using either a quantum or a classical computer. Because quantum mechanical systems contain a large number of entangled particles, they are hard to simulate on a classical computer. It is the task of computational complexity theorists to estimate the amount of resources to do the same number of operations on either classical or quantum devices. This report first summarizes the state of the art in the field of quantum computing, and gives an example of a model of quantum computer and examples of quantum algorithms that are currently being …

Pedagogies Of Play: An Ethnographic Analysis Of Activity-Based Learning In Two Elementary Classrooms, Chelsea Lynn Halliwell

Master's Theses

In this document I discuss the relationship between education standards for curriculum and structured play in the elementary classroom. I discuss the various forms of teacher-initiated structured play, and student-initiated informal play and resistance strategies - through participant observation, digital analysis, spatial analysis, semi-structured ethnographic interviews, and unstructured conversations - to understand the full range of learning strategies in elementary classroom settings. I analyze how these strategies relate to curricular standards, or how they might deviate from or transform those standards, which are partially shaped by federal and state education policy. I also outline and develop two hypotheses in an …

A Systematic Theoretical Study Of Topological Insulator Bi₂Se₃, Thomas Reid

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.

Model-Based Medium-Voltage Induction Machine Insulation Material Characterization, Arshiah Yusuf Mirza

Master's Theses

The voltage and frequency handling capability of power converter modules have tremendously increased with the penetration of wide-band-gap (WBG) semiconductor technology in power electronics. However, very little is known about the effect of the high-voltage high-frequency transients exerted by WBG power electronics on insulation materials. This thesis investigates the effect of high-voltage, high-frequency transients on aging and breakdown characteristics of insulation materials. The aim of this research was to analyze this breakdown and develop the behavioral model of the breakdown time when such insulation materials are used in inverter-fed medium-voltage induction machines. As a part of this research, a series …

Improving The Accuracy Of A Finite Element Based Manufacturing Simulation: A Case Study Of Laser-Induced Bending In A Thin Metal Sheet, Joseph Johanson

Master's Theses

Finite element analysis (FEA) has become an increasingly popular tool used by researchers and professionals for comparing experimental data to theoretically expected values. Its use can prove to be an invaluable resource when analyzing or designing a system by giving the user the ability to understand the process being modeled at a much deeper level. However, finite element analysis it is still prone to generating inaccurate results if not used properly. When simulating certain physical processes, such as those found during manufacturing, the obtained results are sometimes prone to error when compared with their experimentally obtained counterparts.

The present work …

Topology Optimization Of Space Frames Via Geometry Projection, Manal Tahhan

Master's Theses

There is growing interest in space agencies to design lunar habitats for different stages of habitation. In this work, we present a topology optimization method to design a class of these structures consisting of rigid space frames with elements transported from earth and assembled in situ. Since the space frame must be made of stock material for ease of transportation and assembly, this work employs the geometry projection method, which is a topology optimization technique that render designs made exclusively of geometric primitives. This work makes three contributions to the geometry projection method that are necessary for the design of …

Relevance Analysis For Document Retrieval, Eric Labouve

Master's Theses

Document retrieval systems recover documents from a dataset and order them according to their perceived relevance to a user’s search query. This is a difficult task for machines to accomplish because there exists a semantic gap between the meaning of the terms in a user’s literal query and a user’s true intentions. Even with this ambiguity that arises with a lack of context, users still expect that the set of documents returned by a search engine is both highly relevant to their query and properly ordered. The focus of this thesis is on document retrieval systems that explore methods of …

Experimental Study And Modeling Of The Gm-I Dependence Of Long-Channel Mosfets, Michael Fong Cheng

Master's Theses

This thesis describes an experimental study and modeling of the current-transconductance dependence of the ALD1106, ALD1107, and CD4007 arrays. The study tests the hypothesis that the I-gm dependence of these 7.8 µm to 10 µm MOSFETs conforms to the Advanced Compact Model (ACM). Results from performed measurements, however, do not support this expectation. Despite the relatively large length, both ALD1106 and ALD1107 show sufficiently pronounced ‘short-channel’ effects to render the ACM inadequate. As a byproduct of this effort, we confirmed the modified ACM equation. With an m factor of approximately 0.6, it captures the I-gm dependence with sub-28% maximum error …