Digital Commons Network^™

Common Pattern Generation For The Detection Of Lolbin Attacks, Alaa Abushqeir

Master's Theses

The cybersecurity environment is constantly evolving as attackers deploy progressively advanced methodologies. The utilization of Living Off the Land Binaries (LOLBins) represents a notable strategy in which normal system utilities are exploited for the purpose of executing malicious actions. This approach poses difficulties in terms of both detection and mitigation. The primary objective of this study is to examine LOLBins, which are a specific category of tactics falling under the broader concept of ”Living Off the Land” (LOL). In LOLBins, malicious actors exploit pre-existing tools in order to maintain a covert presence and circumvent security measures. Defending against LOLBins is …

Group-Invariant Reinforcement Learning, Fnu Ankur

Master's Theses

Our work introduces a way to learn an optimal reinforcement learning agent accompanied by intrinsic properties of the environment. The extracted properties helps the agent to extrapolate the learning to unseen states efficiently. Out of all the various types of properties, we are intrigued towards equivariant and invariant properties, which essentially translates to symmetry. Contrary to many approaches, we do not assume the symmetry, rather learn them, making the approach agnostic to the environment and the property. The learned properties offers multiple perspective of the environment to exploit it to benefit decision making while interacting with the environment. By building …

Electronic And Optical Properties Of 2d Materials And Their Van Der Waals Heterostructures Using Density Functional Theory, Paridhi Bisht

Master's Theses

Layered 2D materials offer unique physical and chemical properties, including high surface area-to-volume ratios, layer-dependent electronic and optical traits, and scalability. Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) represent a versatile class within 2D materials, with metals, semiconductors, insulators, and superconductors. Weak van der Waals forces between layers enable easy exfoliation and stacking for vertical heterostructures, promising electronic and optical device manipulation. This thesis investigates monolayer graphene, h-BN, MoTe2, WTe2-2H, WTe2-1T', and their heterostructures using DFT-based calculations. Results show stable heterostructures, particularly Gr/WTe2-2H as a Schottky n-type junction for FETs and magnetoresistance devices. Strain-induced bandgap modulation and redshifts offer potential for bandgap engineering …

Thinking Styles, Conspiracist Belief, And The Mediating Role Of The Dunning-Kruger Effect In Modeling Belief Change, Lucas C. Cusano

Master's Theses

Why can a person believe something for which there is no evidence and yet also fail to believe something for which there is overwhelming evidence? This study develops a structural model of belief change using the latent constructs of thinking styles and conspiracist belief while accounting for the Dunning-Kruger effect (i.e., overconfidence in one’s knowledge the less one knows about a topic) as a mediator. A combined two-hundred and twenty-six participants from both Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and the introductory psychology SONA subject pool were given two knowledge measures on topics of genetic modification and vaccination before and after reading refutational …

Crawling The Dark Web: Structural Attributes Of Child Sexual Abuse Websites On The Dark Web, Enrique Guerra

Master's Theses

Inherent encryption and anonymity of the Dark Web has facilitated its use for a variety of illegal activities, including the dissemination of child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Detection of CSAM has increasingly turned to automated tools; however, these tools’ reliance on databases of known CSAM limit their flexibility and ability to identify previously unknown CSAM. Currently, it is unknown whether the lack of countermeasures used by CSAM disseminators on the Surface Web translates to the Dark Web. Therefore, this thesis examines the structural and naming patterns of websites hosting CSAM on the Dark Web, to identify new, complimentary, detection methods. …

Automatic Presentation Slide Generation Using Llms, Tanya Gupta

Master's Theses

Presentation slides are widely used for conveying information in academic and professional contexts. However, manual slide creation can be time-consuming. Our research focuses on automated slide generation, specifically for scientific research papers. Automating the creation of presentation slides for scientific documents is a rather novel task and hence, there’s limited training data available and there also exists the token constraints of language models like BERT, with a maximum sequence length of 512 tokens. In this study, we fine-tune large language models, including Longformer-Encoder-Decoder (supporting sequences up to 16,834 tokens) and BIGBIRD-Pegasus (supporting sequences up to 4,096 tokens). We tackle this …

The Moderating Effects Of Sleep Quantity And Quality On The Relationship Between Job Stressors And Job Satisfaction, Olga A. Baryshnikova

Master's Theses

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study was the first to investigate the moderating effects of sleep quantity and sleep quality on the relationships between role overload, role ambiguity, role conflict, and interpersonal conflict with job satisfaction. In doing so, it addressed a gap in the literature on organizations and provided a new direction for future research in this sphere. Leveraging the Job Demands-Resources model as a theoretical foundation, this study looked at sleep quantity and quality as personal resources capable of counteracting the negative impacts of the aforementioned job stressors on job satisfaction. Underscoring their known detrimental …

Deep Learning In Ai Medical Imaging For Stroke Diagnosis, James Mario Guzman

Master's Theses

Enhancing medical imaging stroke diagnosis applications with artificial intelligence (AI) tools to determine lesion volume, location and clinical metadata is vital toward guiding patient treatment and procedure. A major hardship in developing stroke diagnosis AI tools is the scarcity of publicly available clinical 3D stroke datasets. Through working with Johns Hopkins University, University of Michigan’s ICPSR data repository and SJSU research, we gained access to potentially the largest 3D MRI stroke dataset with clinical metadata annotated by neuroradiologists known as ICPSR 38464. With the ICPSR 38464 dataset recently being available through institutional review board (IRB) approval or exemption, we were …

Partnering With International Peers To Promote Young Children’S Social And Emotional Learning: Students’ Experiences During An International Service Learning Program, Danica D. Mavroudis

Master's Theses

International Service Learning (ISL) has been used increasingly across fields of study in higher education to enhance student’s learning outside the classroom. ISL programs often encourage students to reflect on their experience to promote experiential and transformative learning. Previous research on ISL has found benefits to students’ professional and personal development. While the process may be helpful to participating students, there may be a lack of lasting benefit to the host community. There also is a gap in the literature of how mental wellness services could be delivered using ISL. In hopes to extend program benefits and provide mental wellness …

Optimizing Soluble Recombinant Expression Of The Aedes Aegypti Early Trypsin Protease, Neomi Millan

Master's Theses

The female Aedes aegypti mosquito is a primary vector for the transmission of blood–borne viral pathogens such as Chikungunya, Zika, Yellow Fever, and Dengue. The female mosquito will become infected with these pathogens through the uptake of a blood meal from an infected host. The midgut digestive enzymes are required to digest the blood meal to obtain necessary nutrients needed for the completion of the gonotrophic cycle. Blood meal digestion is biphasic and digestive enzymes are expressed at different time points after uptake of a blood meal. The focus of this study is on an early phase protease known as …

Interdependence Of Salt Concentration And Filler Particles On Crystallinity And Mechanical Behavior Of Peo-Litfsi Electrolytes For Lithium-Ion Batteries, Valeria Perez

Master's Theses

Developing composite polymer electrolytes is crucial for enhancing the safety, energy density, and performance of lithium-ion batteries. While it is widely accepted that introducing filler particles in PEO-based electrolytes can reduce crystallinity and enhance ionic conductivity, this conventional understanding applies primarily to electrolytes with high lithium salt concentrations. The hypothesis of this investigation is that the crystallinity change induced by LLZTO ceramic particles in PEO-LiTFSI electrolytes is contingent on the EO:Li molar ratio. This hypothesis is interrogated by measuring changes in crystallinity, spherulite morphology, and stiffness of composite polymer electrolytes with two different EO:Li molar ratios using differential scanning calorimetry, …

Detecting The Onion Routing Traffic In Real-Time By Using Reinforcement Learning, Dazhou Liu

Master's Theses

Anonymous networks have been popularly utilized to protect user anonymity and facilitate network security for a decade. However, such networks have been a platform for adversarial affairs and various network attacks including suspicious traffic generators. As a result, detecting anonymous network traffic is one critical task to defend a network against unpredictable attacks. Many new methods using machine learning and deep learning techniques have been proposed. However, many of them rely heavily on a vast amount of labeled data and have complicated architectures. Since network traffic always fluctuates under different network environments, those techniques may degrade in performance due to …

Educational Attainment And Employment Status Of Medical Cannabis Users In The Bay Area Of California, Kristi M. Sadler

Master's Theses

This research assesses whether participants’ responses align with the literature concerning cannabis use on educational attainment and employment outcomes. Mainly, cannabis use in adolescence is associated with lower educational attainment, and cannabis use in general may lead to poor employment outcomes, as described in the literature. Participants were medical cannabis dispensary patients with a California medical cannabis card residing in 11 counties in or near the San Francisco Bay Area. Data were collected via an internet survey from October to December 2017 via 32 medical cannabis dispensaries. Medical cannabis users reported having bachelor’s degrees at double the current national average. …

The Relationship Between Perceived Person-Job Fit And Affective Commitment And Organizational Citizenship Behavior: The Mediating Role Of Psychological Empowerment, Mei Shimizu

Master's Theses

Perceived person-Job (P-J) fit has become an important phenomenon to study given its impact on organizational effectiveness. However, there is still limited knowledge about how it impacts job-related attitudes and behaviors. The present study explored the mediating role of psychological empowerment as a potential mediator on the relationship between perceived person-job fit, affective commitment and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). It was hypothesized that psychological empowerment would act as a mediator of the relationship between perceived P-J fit and affective commitment and OCB. Data were obtained from a sample of 94 employed individuals. Consistent with the hypotheses, the results of the …

Micro-Scale Laser-Induced Fluorescence Thermometry For Multiphase Flow In Porous Media, Samuel J. Simmons

Master's Theses

In this thesis the use of Laser-Induced Fluorescence (LIF) thermometry was evaluated as a temperature measurement for multiphase flow in porous media. This optical temperature measurement technique utilizes the temperature-dependent emissive properties of fluorescent dyes to measure temperature. This research evaluates the accuracy, spatial resolution, and temporal resolution of LIF thermometry compared to existing temperature measurements. In this research water-soluble and oil-soluble fluorescent dyes are evaluated in terms of their temperature sensitivity. The ability of these dyes to measure temperature is compared to an Ansys FEA simulation of a fixed temperature gradient. For multiphase flow, the fluorescent dyes were both …

Distribution And Habitat Use By Western Burrowing Owls (Athene Cunicularia Hypugaea) In Alameda, Contra Costa And San Joaquin Counties, California, Jacqueline Taylor

Master's Theses

Grasslands are regularly altered for development, agriculture, and animal farming which leads to habitat destruction and fragmentation and, ultimately, a loss of wildlife species. Though degraded, grassland ecosystems – including native and non-native species - dominate the landscape in the region of the San Francisco Bay Area east of the Bay. The western burrowing owl (Athene cuncularia hypugaea) is a native grassland species of California. The breeding burrowing owl population in the San Francisco Bay Area is resident, but burrowing owls from other parts of the range migrate into the region for the winter. The breeding owl populations in the …

The Mediating Role Of Perceived Organizational Support On The Relationship Between Wellness Programs And Job Satisfaction, Andy Tran

Master's Theses

The purpose of the current study was to examine the mediating role of perceived organizational support (POS) on the relationship between wellness programs (participations and availability) and job satisfaction. A total of 83 employees participated in the study, which utilized online survey distribution. Results showed that POS fully mediated the relationship between both participation and availability of wellness programs and job satisfaction. In other words, employees who participated in a wellness program felt more supported by their organization, leading to greater job satisfaction. In addition, the results suggested that when organizations offered more wellness programs, employees were more likely to …

An Exploration Of The Low Prevalence Effect During Phising Detection, Sherry J. Wei

Master's Theses

Phishing attacks are attempts to obtain individual credentials or other private information through deception, usually in email format. As the Internet becomes increasingly intertwined with everyday lives, such attacks are on the rise, threatening individuals and businesses alike. Existing anti-phishing training measures fail to address possible prevalence effects on detection performance: in tasks where targets appear rarely, participants have heightened miss rates. This low prevalence effect could be present in phishing detection because phishing emails are observed much less frequently than legitimate emails. Emerging research has reported observing heightened miss rates as a function of phishing email rarity. This study …

Bubble Detection Under Microgravity In A Closed-Loop Microchannel Perfusion System, Max S. Kim

Master's Theses

Altered gravitational conditions result in changes in biological function. Studies in microgravity have shown irregularities in fluid redistribution within the vascular system. In order to study these irregularities, a cell culture perfusion system is necessary. Bubbles can proliferate in closed-loop systems and are detrimental to cells. However, the effects of bubbles in a closed-loop system in microgravity are unknown. Accordingly, the hypothesis of this investigation is that the absence of a constant-direction gravitational body force will exacerbate the presence of bubbles in a closed-loop microfluidic perfusion system. In order to examine the hypothesis, a closed-loop microfluidic cell culture perfusion system …

Adaptive Windowed Sinc Filter For Image Interpolation, Dang Nguyen

Master's Theses

In this thesis, an image interpolation scheme using an adaptive windowed sinc, which varies in length and frequency response guided by the Laplacian operator, is proposed to improve quality and accuracy. First, an optimization is performed to minimize the squared error for each sliding window by sweeping a range of windowed sinc filters with varying filter lengths. The relationship between the windows, filter length, and edge intensity is analyzed to determine the optimal beta value and filter length. This analysis inspires an image interpolation approach that uses the Laplacian of each sliding window to choose the optimal beta and filter …

Accident Prediction On E-Bikes Using Computer Vision, Rohith Puvvala Subramanyam

Master's Theses

Micro Mobility refers to small, confined pace range, and lightweight modes oftransportation, which include e-Bikes and e-Scooters. Micro Mobility riders are prone to harm and deadly injuries on city streets. Statistics show that on average 27 out of 82 (33%) humans, in the United States get injured every day in e-motorcycle injuries, which is rapidly increasing as compared to previous years. The current accident prediction strategies have been rather technically complicated to be incorporated onto micromobility vehicles which are lighter in weight and smaller in size. Current strategies bring key challenges to light. First, as micro-mobility vehicles are small and …

Barn Owls (Tyto Alba) And Biodiversity Near Hemp Farms And Grasslands In Oregon, Usa, Lacey Brianne Thun

Master's Theses

Extensive agriculture poses a major threat to biodiversity worldwide, although some species, such as the barn owl (Tyto alba), can thrive in many agroecosystems. Barn owls, the world's most widely distributed owl, provide rodent management, and their presence may be both an indicator of and support for ecosystem biodiversity. Little previous research documents the relationship between barn owls and adjacent crop attributes, however. In 2018, hemp (Cannabis sativa) was taken off the federal Controlled Substance Act list and permitted as an agricultural crop. Hemp is now rapidly increasing in extent in Oregon, USA. This research assessed the reproductive success and …

Motivated Reasoning In Technology Workers, Kory Feath

Master's Theses

The goal of this study is to investigate cognitive predictors for motivated reasoning, the process in which evidence evaluation is influenced by prior beliefs, in technology workers. Two hundred and twenty-one technology workers were recruited using Prolific and word-of-mouth to evaluate the conflicting evidence of social media causing digital harm. Past research has found that many individual cognitive styles do not predict motivated reasoning, but by using structural equations modeling to investigate the latent variable analytical/reflective thinking styles, I predicted that more active thinking styles will reduce motivated reasoning and be mediated by prior belief strength. A structural equations model …

Intrinsic Motivation By The Principles Of Non-Linear Dynamical Systems, Phu C. Nguyen

Master's Theses

The design of appropriate control rules for the stabilization of dynamical systems can require quite substantial domain knowledge. Modern AI methodologies, such as Reinforcement Learning, are often used to mitigate the need for such knowledge. However, these can be slow and often rely on at least some hand-designed reward structure, and thus human input, to be more effective. Here, we propose an alternative route to construct rewards requiring only minimal domain knowledge, essentially relying on the structure of the dynamical system itself. For this, we use truncated Lyapunov exponents as rewards to calculate the stabilizing controller from samples. Concretely, the …

Controllability-Constrained Deep Neural Network Models For Enhanced Control Of Dynamical Systems, Suruchi Sharma

Master's Theses

Control of a dynamical system without the knowledge of dynamics is an important and challenging task. Modern machine learning approaches, such as deep neural networks (DNNs), allow for the estimation of a dynamics model from control inputs and corresponding state observation outputs. Such data-driven models are often utilized for the derivation of model-based controllers. However, in general, there are no guarantees that a model represented by DNNs will be controllable according to the formal control-theoretical meaning of controllability, which is crucial for the design of effective controllers. This often precludes the use of DNN-estimated models in applications, where formal controllability …

Advertisement Blindness In Social Media Apps, Nora Szladovics

Master's Theses

Advertisement blindness (ad blindness) is a general term that refers to people’s tendency to automatically and unconsciously ignore advertisements. The phenomenon was originally identified in banner ads, then later in text and native ads on websites. Today, social media is an effective tool for advertisers, yet research investigating users’ interaction habits with social media ads in mobile applications (apps) is unexplored. This study expands the ad blindness concept to mobile social media apps, examining its presence and whether target position has an influence. Further, it investigates the relationship between social media use and ad blindness. Employing a novel approach, the …

Reconstructing Auditory Evoked Cortical Response With Fewer Trials, Zoey Y. Zhang

Master's Theses

Auditory evoked fields (AEF) paradigm is a common research tool to study human auditory responses by using Magnetoencephalography (MEG), a neuroimaging tool. AEF paradigm requires repetition over many trials to achieve adequate signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), but Autistic children and some other populations cannot tolerate prolonged exam time due to various reasons. To address these challenges, this project uses a novel machine learning algorithm, Champagne with baseline noise learning, to reconstruct AEF data with fewer trials (80%, 60%, 40%, 20%) but produce the same results as using all AEF trials (100%). The results show that this novel machine learning algorithm can …

Numerical Modeling Of Firebrand Transport, Antonio Q. Cervantes

Master's Theses

Firebrand showers are the fastest and most complex form of wildfire spread by generating spot fires in random locations. This randomness is due to many factors, including turbulent wind and particle shape. This work seeks to understand how small-scale turbulence affects firebrand landing distribution and develop a methodology to couple firebrand transport with wildfire simulations. Understanding transport at small scales can provide knowledge on large-scale transport in wildfire simulations. The computational domain and the mesh size in wildfire simulations are very large and do not feature small-scale turbulence. High-resolution small-scale turbulent and uniform boundary layers at various turbulence intensities are …

A Study Of The Multi-Faceted Impact Of The Second Vatican Council Upon Catholicism And Beyond, Constantin Valentin Popescu

Master's Theses

The Topic

The research analyzes the development of Catholicism in the 20th century. After the First Vatican Council (1868-1870) and the promulgation of the dogma of papal infallibility and papal primacy, the Roman Catholic Church lost much credibility and influence with Christianity, becoming increasingly isolated from the developing modern world. In this situation, Catholicism needs a revival, a reconfirmation of its long-lost authority. On the other hand, knowing that the Roman Catholic Church fulfills a very important role in biblical prophecies, we will observe, in this study, an adaptation of Catholicism to the modern world precisely to regain its credibility. …

Engagement With Ethnic Practices: How Ethnic Communities Contribute To Second-Generation Asian American Assimilation, Bảo-Trân T. Nguyễn

Master's Theses

Previous research on spatial assimilation has described ethnic enclaves as places withmany recently arrived immigrants and fewer socioeconomic resources. As immigrants become more assimilated, they move to more affluent neighborhoods in proximity to Anglos. However, recent studies on resurgent ethnicity challenge the idea of the spatial assimilation by suggesting that Asian immigrants and subsequent generations continue to live near co-ethnics, despite gaining socioeconomic status. The transition from traditional ethnic enclaves to resurgent ethnic communities or ‘ethnoburbs’ indicate shifting understandings of what ethnic communities mean to Asian Americans. Although, Asian Americans are, on average, attaining higher socioeconomic status, the emergent importance …