Digital Commons Network^™

Sustainability Reporting On Dublin Airport: A Case Study, Laura Zizka, Doreen Mcgunagle, Patti Clark

Publications

The purpose of the study is to examine the quantity and quality of Sustainability Reporting (SR) by Dublin Airport in a case study on Dublin Airport in Ireland. It uses content analysis to examine the use of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and the UN’s SDG categories. The study considers stakeholder theory in sustainability reporting studies. The study finds a pattern of disclosures in all three areas of sustainability – economic, environmental and social.

Federated Variational Learning For Anomaly Detection In Multivariate Time Series, Kai Zhang, Houbing Song, Yushan Jiang, Lee Seversky, Chengtao M. Xu, Dahai Liu

Publications

Anomaly detection has been a challenging task given high-dimensional multivariate time series data generated by networked sensors and actuators in Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). Besides the highly nonlinear, complex, and dynamic nature of such time series, the lack of labeled data impedes data exploitation in a supervised manner and thus prevents an accurate detection of abnormal phenomenons. On the other hand, the collected data at the edge of the network is often privacy sensitive and large in quantity, which may hinder the centralized training at the main server. To tackle these issues, we propose an unsupervised time series anomaly detection framework …

Options And Experiences For Online Chemistry Laboratory Instruction, Emily Faulconer, Matt Morgan

Publications

While online course offerings have been on the rise for many years, there was a rapid transition to online courses due to campus closures and social distancing protocols associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. This has caused significant disruption in traditional chemistry laboratory activities. In this chapter, features of various distance laboratory approaches options are presented, including wet chemistry and dry laboratory options. Because the existing research comparing effectiveness of these strategies is scarce, no attempt is made to argue the effectiveness of one modality over the other, but rather advantages and disadvantages of each method are presented and discussed. The …

Salesperson Attributes That Influence Consumer Perceptions Of Sales Interactions, Maria Petrescu

Publications

Purpose

This paper aims to examine how modern, digital era customers in a business-to-consumer (B2C) setting prioritize salesperson-customer orientation attributes when evaluating their expectations regarding interactions with salespeople, as well as their impact on positive and negative word-of-mouth. In addition, the research further investigates which negative salesperson attributes have an impact on overall customer experience and satisfaction.

Design/methodology/approach

Role theory and expectancy-disconfirmation theory form the theoretical foundation for two mixed-method studies. Study 1 is an exploratory content analysis of online consumer reviews and social media word-of-mouth related to consumer experiences with salespeople. Study 2 is a three-round Delphi study investigating …

Contributory Factors Of Fatigue Among Collegiate Aviation Pilots: An Ordinal Regression Analysis, Flavio A. C. Mendonca, Julius Keller, Daniel Kwasi Adjekum

Publications

Fatigue is a pervasive safety hazard in aviation affecting several aspects of a pilot's’ ability to safely perform their jobs. Several factors can contribute to fatigue, including inadequate sleep, stress, long work hours, excessive workload, and inadequate nutritional habits. In addition to flight training, some factors including academic, social, part-time work, and emerging time management skills are unique for Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part 141 collegiate aviation pilots. By utilizing the Collegiate Aviation Fatigue Inventory (CAFI-II) at eight flight programs (n = 422), the current study examined factors such as fatigue training received, time spent working/studying and …

Learning To Detect: A Data-Driven Approach For Network Intrusion Detection, Zachary Tauscher, Yushan Jiang, Kai Zhang, Jian Wang, Houbing Song

Publications

With massive data being generated daily and the ever-increasing interconnectivity of the world’s Internet infrastructures, a machine learning based intrusion detection system (IDS) has become a vital component to protect our economic and national security. In this paper, we perform a comprehensive study on NSL-KDD, a network traffic dataset, by visualizing patterns and employing different learning-based models to detect cyber attacks. Unlike previous shallow learning and deep learning models that use the single learning model approach for intrusion detection, we adopt a hierarchy strategy, in which the intrusion and normal behavior are classified firstly, and then the specific types of …

Observations And Validation Of Plasma Density, Temperature, And O+ Abundance From A Langmuir Probe Onboard The International Space Station, Shantanab Debchoudhury, Aroh Barjatya, Joseph I. Minow, Victoria N. Coffey, Michael O. Chandler

Publications

The Floating Potential Measurement Unit (FPMU) has been operational on board the International Space Station (ISS) since 2006. One of the instruments in the FPMU suite is a spherical wide-sweeping Langmuir probe, referred to as the WLP, which is sampled at a temporal cadence of 1 s giving in-situ measurements of the plasma density and electron temperature. In this study we present our refinements to the Langmuir probe analysis algorithm that address the uncertainties associated with photoelectron emission current from the metal probe. We also derive the fraction of O⁺ ions as a secondary data product, which shows decrease …

A Ranking Method To Prioritize Vfr Airports To Be Provided Instrument Approach Procedures, Marcelo Soares Leão, Fábio Rodrigues Paukoski Fernandes, Gustavo Ortegal Leal, Leila Halawi

Publications

The primary purpose of this work is to investigate the necessity of a more comprehensive and systematic method to prioritize airports to be provided with instrument approaches and landing procedures in the Brazilian air transportation landscape. First, an overview of the main contributors to risks associated with the approach and landing phases is provided, covering the most critical aspects of unstable approaches and controlled flight into terrain (CFIT) events. Second, considering the emergence of Terrain Awareness and Alerting Systems (TAWS), the role of its contribution to safety is discussed and the certification context related to the design, installation, and operation …

Remote Elementary Education: A Comparative Analysis Of Learner Development (Part1), Stefan Kleinke, David Cross

Publications

Purpose – The purpose of this two-part research was to investigate the effect of remote learning on student progress in elementary education. Part one, presented in this paper, examined achievement differences between learners in a fully remote learning environment and those in a hybrid setting. Design/methodology/approach – A quantitative, quasi-experimental study with factorial design was used to investigate group differences in student achievement between the different learning environments. Ex-post-facto data from standardized test scores were utilized to examine in which ways the learning environment may have affected learner progress in two distinct subject areas crucial to elementary education: English language …

Teaching A Social Science Course On Climate Change: Suggestions For Active Learning, Leslie A. Duram

Publications

Previous research indicates the importance of interdisciplinary approaches when teaching about climate change. Specifically, social science perspectives allow students to under-stand the policy, economic, cultural, and personal influences that impact environmental change. This article describes one such college course that employed active-learning techniques. Course topics included community resilience, environmental education, historical knowledge timeline, climate justice, social vulnerability, youth action, science communication, hope versus despair, misinformation, and climate refugees. To unify these concepts, engaging activities were devel-oped that specifically address relevant individual, local, state, national, and international climate resilience themes. Students assessed their personal climate footprint, explored social/cultural influences, wrote policy …

Robust Nonlinear Tracking Control For Unmanned Aircraft In The Presence Of Wake Vortex, Petr Kazarin, Vladimir Golubev, William Mackunis, Claudia Moreno

Publications

The flight trajectory of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can be significantly affected by external disturbances such as turbulence, upstream wake vortices, or wind gusts. These effects present challenges for UAV flight safety. Hence, addressing these challenges is of critical importance for the integration of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) into the National Airspace System (NAS), especially in terminal zones. This work presents a robust nonlinear control method that has been designed to achieve roll/yaw regulation in the presence of unmodeled external disturbances and system nonlinearities. The data from NASA-conducted airport experimental measurements as well as high-fidelity Large Eddy Simulations of the …

Residential Water Meters As Edge Computing Nodes: Disaggregating End Uses And Creating Actionable Information At The Edge, Nour A. Attallah, Jeffery S. Horsburgh, Arle S. Beckwith Jr., Robb J. Tracey

Publications

We present a new, open source, computationally capable datalogger for collecting and analyzing high temporal resolution residential water use data. Using this device, execution of water end use disaggregation algorithms or other data analytics can be performed directly on existing, analog residential water meters without disrupting their operation, effectively transforming existing water meters into smart, edge computing devices. Computation of water use summaries and classified water end use events directly on the meter minimizes data transmission requirements, reduces requirements for centralized data storage and processing, and reduces latency between data collection and generation of decision-relevant information. The datalogger couples an …

Online Prehealth Advising: Impact Analysis Spring 2017 To Fall 2020, Alasdair Ekpenyong, Mykel Beorchia

Publications

At Utah State University, various online, Canvas-based advising programs complement the traditional in-person advising program. The online prehealth advising service assists students who are considering health professions graduate school.

This report explored the association between online prehealth advising participation and student persistence to the next term at Utah State University.

The Effect Of Price-Based Demand Response On Carbon Emissions In European Electricity Markets: The Importance Of Adequate Carbon Prices, Markus Fleschutz, Markus Bohlayer, Marco Braun, Gregor Henze, Michael D. Murphy

Publications

Price-based demand response (PBDR) has recently been attributed great economic but also environmental potential. However, the determination of its short-term effects on carbon emissions requires the knowledge of marginal emission factors (MEFs), which compared to grid mix emission factors (XEFs), are cumbersome to calculate due to the complex characteristics of national electricity markets. This study, therefore, proposes two merit order-based methods to approximate hourly MEFs and applies them to readily available datasets from 20 European countries for the years 2017–2019. Based on the calculated electricity prices, standardized daily load shifts were simulated which indicated that carbon emissions increased for 8 …

Residual Life And Reliability Assessment Of Underground Rc Sanitary Sewer Pipelines Under Uncertainty, Himan Hojat Jalali, Moein Ebrahimi

Publications

Prioritization of limited funding for pipelines maintenance is a major issue that concerns municipalities nationwide. Conducting a probabilistic assessment can provide a complete characterization of the performance of structural elements and systems along with optimizing the limited resources. The most widely used probabilistic performance indicator is reliability, a measure of the probability of failure corresponding to a particular limit state (e.g., ultimate strength or serviceability). Reliability methods can be used to identify which pipeline sections within a particular system require the most urgent inspection or repair. To this end, an automated data-driven framework for large diameter reinforced concrete pipes (RCPs) …

Utilizing Uas To Support Wildlife Hazard Management Efforts By Airport Operators, Flavio A. C. Mendonca, Ryan Wallace, Anthony Chimino, Jose Cabrera Jr, Robert Sliwinski

Publications

Purpose of our Study:

To investigate how UAS technologies could be safely and effectively applied to identify hazardous wildlife species to aviation operations as well as potential wildlife hazard attractants within the airport jurisdiction.

The Invasive Bank Vole (Myodes Glareolus): A Model System For Studying Parasites And Ecoimmunology During A Biological Invasion, Andrew Mcmanus, Celia V. Holland, Heikki Henttonen, Peter Stuart

Publications

Animals, vol. 11, no. 9. © 2021 by the authors.

Development Of Cost-Effective High-Modulus Asphalt Concrete (Hmac) Mixtures Using Crumb Rubber And Local Construction Materials In Louisiana, Momen R. Mousa, Marwa Hassan, Ibrahim A.I.E Elnaml

Publications

One of the emerging solutions to enhance the durability of asphalt pavements is the use of a French asphalt mix known as “High-Modulus Asphalt Concrete (HMAC).” This mix uses a hard asphalt binder, high binder content (about 6%), and low air voids content as compared to Superpave mixtures. The key objective of this study was to develop a cost-effective HMAC mixture using crumb rubber and local materials in Louisiana. To achieve this objective, four HMAC mixtures were prepared using two asphalt binders (PG 82-22 and PG 76-22 plus 10% crumb rubber) and two Reclaimed Asphalt Pavement (RAP) contents (20% and …

An Automated System For Inspecting Rock Faces And Detecting Potential Rock Falls Using Machine Learning, John Stormont, Fernando Moreu, Amir Bagherieh, Roya Nasimi, Solomon Atcitty

Publications

Rockfall is a hazard in mountainous areas threatening infrastructure and human lives. Rockfall hazards are often mitigated by manual inspections using pry bars. The inspector must access the rock face, hit the rock surface, detect, and remove the loose rocks. This method is very labor demanding, unsafe, and challenging. This research presents a method that automatize the inspection of rock blocks that are prone to rockfall events. A robot is developed to replace the manual hammer tap process and collect the sound data remotely; subsequently, the sound signal is used to identify different types of the discontinuity in rocks in …

Preventing Struck-By Hazards: Defying Risk-Habituation Via Virtual Accident Simulation, Changbum Ahn

Publications

Repeated exposure to struck-by hazards in road work zones generates workers’ habituation to risks related to those hazards, a key contributor to accidents in road work zones. Thus, analyzing the development of risk habituation and providing proper intervention are crucial to preventing accidents in road work zones. In this context, this study employs a virtual reality (VR) environment as a behavioral intervention tool to investigate its effect on mitigating a decline in workers’ vigilance with habituation to hazards in workplaces. A virtual environment that simulates a road maintenance task was developed and used to repeatedly expose subjects to struck-by hazards …

Splash: Learnable Activation Functions For Improving Accuracy And Adversarial Robustness, Mohammadamin Tavakoli, Forest Agostinelli, Pierre Baldi

Publications

We introduce SPLASH units, a class of learnable activation functions shown to simultaneously improve the accuracy of deep neural networks while also improving their robustness to adversarial attacks. SPLASH units have both a simple parameterization and maintain the ability to approximate a wide range of non-linear functions. SPLASH units are: (1) continuous; (2) grounded (f(0)=0"); (3) use symmetric hinges; and (4) their hinges are placed at fixed locations which are derived from the data (i.e. no learning required). Compared to nine other learned and fixed activation functions, including ReLU and its variants, SPLASH units show superior performance across three datasets …

Framing The Guides Transforming Libguides Creation Through Conceptual Integration With The Acrl Framework, Brooke Duffy, Kelleen Maluski, Gina Levitan

Publications

This chapter will discuss how one small liberal arts school utilized the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, a year after it was filed, to build LibGuides as they adopted the software for the first time. The goal being to create guides that would not simply be topical lists of resources but conceptual starting points for discipline-specific research that also integrated the ACRL Framework. As work on the guides continued and staffing transitions occurred the intention to utilize guides as instructional tools was solidified so that they could be used as a way to introduce threshold concepts in …

Multimedia Networks And Communications, Houbing Song

Publications

Sight and sound is a type of correspondence that joins distinctive substance structures like content, sound, pictures, liveliness, or video into a solitary show, rather than customary broad communications, like written word or sound chronicles. Famous instances of interactive media incorporate video web recordings, sound slideshows and animated videos. Multimedia can be recorded for playback on PCs, workstations, cell phones, and other electronic gadgets, either on request or progressively (streaming). In the early long stretches of sight and sound, the expression "rich media" was inseparable from intuitive mixed media. Over the long run. Improved degrees of intuitiveness are made conceivable …

Peer-Led-Team Learning In Introductory Engineering Courses: An Analysis Of An Interventional Method Of Support For Underrepresented Students At A Two-Year, Hispanic-Serving Public Institution, Kimberly T. Luthi, Lisa Macon, Mohua Kar

Publications

The three-year project entitled Engagement in Engineering Pathways funded by the National Science Foundation Improving Undergraduate STEM education grant explored the conditions that led to increased academic outcomes and non-cognitive factors related to persistence of nontraditional undergraduate students in engineering education. The study was conducted at a multicampus, federally-designated, Hispanic-serving, public, two-year college in the southeast United States. This paper presents one aspect of the effects of peer-led team learning (PLTL) on academic success through the inclusion of active learning modules in introductory undergraduate engineering course. The researchers found that PLTL introduced in engineering courses, to include statics and dynamics, …

Telemedicine Security: Challenges And Solutions, Crystal Fausett, Joseph R. Keebler, Megan C. Christovich, Jarod M. Parker, John M. Baker

Publications

The proliferation of telemedicine spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic has come with a variety of human factors challenges. Such challenges include mitigating potential risks associated with the quick transition to virtual care. We identify challenges and solutions related to telemedicine security, and analyze our results using Schlarman’s People, Policy, Technology framework (2001). Our systematic literature review synthe-sizes gray literature (white papers, news articles, and blog posts) in addition to formal (published) litera-ture. This methodology closes the gap between academic research and professional practice and aids in providing timely, practical insights related to cybersecurity and safety in virtual care environments. As …

Trends Of Non-Fatal Hems Accident-Related Injuries, Richard J. Simonson, Joseph R. Keebler, Alex Chaparro

Publications

We conducted an investigation into non-fatal helicopter emergency medical service accidents from January 26, 1991 to April 26, 2018 via the National Transportation Safety Board aviation accident database. Over this 28-year timeframe 247 accidents results in 251 fatalities and 179 non-fatal injuries. Exploratory analysis of the data indicate that more non-fatal injuries occurred in September compared to any other month during the study timeframe. Exploratory correlational analysis via elastic net logistic regression concluded that no linear relationship of NTSB accident database data provide insights into what factors are correlated with an increased likelihood of non-fatal injuries. Further, no linear relationships …

An Open Source Cyberinfrastructure For Collecting, Processing, Storing And Accessing High Temporal Resolution Residential Water Use Data, Camilo J. Bastidas Pacheco, Joseph C. Brewer, Jeffery S. Horsburgh, Juan Caraballo

Publications

Collecting and managing high temporal resolution residential water use data is challenging due to cost and technical requirements associated with the volume and velocity of data collected. We developed an open-source, modular, generalized architecture called Cyberinfrastructure for Intelligent Water Supply (CIWS) to automate the process from data collection to analysis and presentation of high temporal residential water use data. A prototype implementation was built using existing open-source technologies, including smart meters, databases, and services. Two case studies were selected to test functionalities of CIWS, including push and pull data models within single family and multi-unit residential contexts, respectively. CIWS was …

Necessity To Integrate Operational Business During M&A: The Effect Of Employees’ Vision And Cultural Openness, Ralf Bebenroth, Robert A. Goehlich

Publications

This research investigates the impact of target-firm employees’ vision and cultural openness to integrate their operational business into a bidder firm. Our empirical analyses are performed on a sample of 176 employees of a medium-sized German engineering firm in the waste power plant industry taken over by a Japanese steelmaker. The questionnaire results show that, not the vision of German employees but their cultural openness positively correlates to the perceived need of integration. However, culturally open employees with a clear, articulated vision perceive less need to integrate their operational business into the Japanese bidder firm. This research contributes to understanding …

Learning-To-Dispatch: Reinforcement Learning Based Flight Planning Under Emergency, Kai Zhang, Yupeng Yang, Chengtao Xu, Dahai Liu, Houbing Song

Publications

The effectiveness of resource allocation under emergencies especially hurricane disasters is crucial. However, most researchers focus on emergency resource allocation in a ground transportation system. In this paper, we propose Learning-to- Dispatch (L2D), a reinforcement learning (RL) based air route dispatching system, that aims to add additional flights for hurricane evacuation while minimizing the airspace’s complexity and air traffic controller’s workload. Given a bipartite graph with weights that are learned from the historical flight data using RL in consideration of short- and long-term gains, we formulate the flight dispatch as an online maximum weight matching problem. Different from the conventional …

Covid-19 Pandemic Leadership A Case For Return To Platonic Values, Richard Runyon, Daryl Watkins

Publications

In western education, Plato is often cited as a foundational thinker for education of leaders. 2,395 years later, many leaders in governments of the world are struggling to address the COVID-19 global pandemic. The 2019–2021 global pandemic has provided academics with a wonderful opportunity to evaluate government leadership at many levels. All the different forms of governance as well as theoretical economic systems are being tested in real-time. Success can be measured on a government’s ability to reduce both deaths and spread of the COVID-19 virus among their citizens. This article will discuss these concepts focused on successful government leadership.