Digital Commons Network^™

Development Of Digital Bathymetry Maps For Lakes Azuei And Enriquillo Using Sonar And Remote Sensing Techniques, Michael Piasecki, Mahrokh Moknatian, Fred Moshary, Jorge Gonzalez

Publications and Research

This article presents an improved algorithm for optimization and development of a digital bathymetric model (DBM) for Lake Azuei (LA) (Haiti) and Lake Enriquillo (LE) (Dominican Republic) using the ANUDEM method. Both sonar data and contour lines of the lakes’ layout extracted using Landsat imagery were compiled for bathymetry development. We show that the performance of the ANUDEM method was strongly dependent on the density and irregularity of the spatial distribution of the data. Changing the resolution of the output grids and deriving auxiliary topographically corrected contours improved the ANUDEM performance and minimized the systematic errors of the method. Statistical …

What Does It Mean To Be Human?, Natasha Phillips

Publications and Research

This Poster will go in depths of the different elements, that will allow readers to understand from the author’s perspective on the question, what does it mean to be human? Various elements that will be discussed will include the following: wealth, social media, and religion. These three elements alone play a huge role in the lives of individuals all across the world. Furthermore, while discussing these elements, there will be critical concepts that readers will be able to think about based on additional facts being provided about each component. Lastly, the different types of resources that will be discussed in …

Simulation As A Predictor In Probability, Xiaona Zhou

Publications and Research

In this study, we simulate bivariate normal data. We gain intuition about the bivariate normal distribution by comparing the generated data to the associated bivariate normal density surface. We also get results about covariance and correlation. We will use tools from linear algebra to discuss transformations of random normal vectors, and the use of contours.

A Comparative Study Of Incidence Of Domestic Violence Between Immigrant And Non-Immigrant Women In The United States Of America, Nadia A. Gordon, Urmi Ghosh-Dastidar, Janet Liou-Mark, Shamita Dasgupta

Publications and Research

Immigrant women in the USA come from various socio-economic, cultural, and religious backgrounds. Some of these women suffer from domestic violence; however, due to their strict cultural or social structure, they often stay quiet and rarely report these incidents to the authorities. Additionally, since these immigrant women face more challenges than their non-immigrant peers, they are more reluctant or unlikely to leave their abusive partners. An analysis was completed using published data as an attempt to establish if any statistically significant differences exist between reported incidences among immigrant women and non-immigrant women. A chi-square analysis (χ² = 14.53; p-value …

The Impact Of Peer-Led Workshops In An Intermediate Algebra Course For Women, Minorities, And First-Generation College Students, Malika Ikramova

Publications and Research

The implementation of the Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL) instructional model have shown to increase student pass rates and decrease failure and withdrawal rates in foundational mathematics courses. New York City College of Technology has implemented mandatory PLTL workshops in selected sections of MAT 1275: Intermediate Algebra and Trigonometry. Students spend an hour working collaboratively with their classmates guided by peer leader. Results from this study showed gender, ethnicity, and first-generation college student differences in their responses on the effectiveness of peer supported groups in this fundamental mathematics course.

Understanding Water Consumption And Energy Trends In New York City, Wen Yong Huang, Johann Thiel

Publications and Research

In this study, we will be using the NYC Open Data website to examine publicly available data sets on water and energy consumption in New York City. In particular, we will use various scientific programming and machine learning modules in Python to analyze and visualize trends in water and energy usage within the five boroughs.

Exploration Of The Lessons Learned By Students Attending Peer-Led Workshops, Fahmida Akhter

Publications and Research

The study is conducted with students attending an additional one-hour a week peer-led workshop associated with their Pre-Calculus class. The study focuses on the following research questions: Do peer-led workshops help students become better at problem solving? What are the lessons learned from peer-led workshops that can be useful and applicable in future courses? Data will be collected through administrating surveys to the students in the peer-led workshop. The data will be organized, analyzed and presented at the poster session.

Students' Perspective On Enjoyment In Mathematics Classes, Yasmine A. Soofi, Miralia Moreou, Nadia Kennedy

Publications and Research

The project will focus on students’ perspective of enjoyment in mathematics. The research questions that will be explored are: 1) Do students enjoy math classes? If so, what aspects of the classes they find enjoyable and why? If not, what aspects they do not enjoy and why? and 2) What do students think would make the math classes more enjoyable? Data will be collected by administrating surveys to students from two mathematics courses. The data will be organized, analyzed and presented at the poster session.

The Dionysus Project: Classifying & Monitoring Vineyards With Satellite Remote Sensing & Image Analysis, Evelin Perez-Flores, Nicole Flores, Rachel Zinberg, Dionne Huston, Aaron Davitt, Kyle Mcdonald

Publications and Research

Climate change is expected to impact the wine industry by shifting suitable growing regions away from established regions and increasing the demand for freshwater supplies to maintain vineyard health. This creates challenges for maintaining vineyards since the grapevines need to be appropriately stressed to produce quality grapes for quality wine. This requires precision management of freshwater application and canopy management to produce a grape that has the appropriate concentration of flavors and sugars. Vineyards in the U.S. are typically monitored by vineyard managers at the large scale, lacking the resolution needed to identify grapevine growth at the subfield level. Vineyard …

Understanding The Impact Of Peer-Led Workshops On Student Learning, Afolabi Ibitoye, Nadia Kennedy, Armando Cosme

Publications and Research

As students we often wonder why some subjects are easy to understand and requires not much effort in terms of re-reading the material, for us to grasp what it entails. One subject seems to remain elusive and uneasy for a vast majority of learners at all levels of education; that subject is Mathematics, it is one subject that most learners finds difficult even after doubling the amount of time spent on studying the material. My intention is to explore ways to make Mathematics easier for other students using feedback from students enrolled in NSF mathematics peer leading workshops, and use …

Titanium Dioxide Sensitized With Porphyrin Dye As A Photocatalyst For The Degradation Of Water Pollutants, Kevin Reyes, Ivana Jovanovic

Publications and Research

TiO2 was sensitized with a porphyrin, Tetra(4-carboxyphenyl) porphyrin(TCPP) and used as photocatalyst under visible light for degradation of aqueous solutions of methylene blue (MB) dye. The quantification of the degradation of MB was assessed by UV-Vis spectroscopy. The results of this procedure showed the decrease in concentration of MB over time when reaction is exposed to visible light. The TiO2-TCPP complex was tested as well for the recovery of metals from the AgNO3 aqueous solution. The reduction of silver cations to silver metal was observed through formation of black precipitate.

Corequisite Mathematics Remediation: Results Over Time And In Different Contexts, Alexandra W. Logue, Daniel Douglas, Mari Watanabe-Rose

Publications and Research

Traditional mathematics remediation is based on the theory that traditional mathematics remedial courses increase students’ subsequent academic performance. However, most students assigned to these courses do not pass them, and thus cannot graduate. An alternative approach, corequisite remediation, assigns students instead to college-level quantitative courses with additional academic support, often aligned to a student’s major. Here we report the longer-term results of a randomized controlled trial comparing corequisite remediation (with statistics) and traditional algebra remediation (297 students per group). The corequisite group not only demonstrated significantly higher quantitative course pass rates, but also success in many other disciplines, as well …

Ligand Selectivity In The Recognition Of Protoberberine Alkaloids By Hybrid-2 Human Telomeric G-Quadruplex: Binding Free Energy Calculation, Fluorescence Binding, And Nmr Experiments, Nanjie Deng, Junchao Xia, Lauren Wickstrom, Clement Lin, Kaibo Wang, Peng He, Yunting Yin, Danzhou Yang

Publications and Research

The human telomeric G-quadruplex (G4) is an attractive target for developing anticancer drugs. Natural products protoberberine alkaloids are known to bind human telomeric G4 and inhibit telomerase. Among several structurally similar protoberberine alkaloids, epiberberine (EPI) shows the greatest specificity in recognizing the human telomeric G4 over duplex DNA and other G4s. Recently, NMR study revealed that EPI recognizes specifically the hybrid-2 form human telomeric G4 by inducing large rearrangements in the 50-flanking segment and loop regions to form a highly extensive four-layered binding pocket. Using the NMR structure of the EPI-human telomeric G4 complex, here we perform molecular dynamics free …

Synchronicity: The Role Of Midbrain Dopamine In Whole-Brain Coordination, Jeff A. Beeler, Jakob Kiskye Dreyer

Publications and Research

Midbrain dopamine seems to play an outsized role in motivated behavior and learning. Widely associated with mediating reward-related behavior, decision making, and learning, dopamine continues to generate controversies in the field. While many studies and theories focus on what dopamine cells encode, the question of how the midbrain derives the information it encodes is poorly understood and comparatively less addressed. Recent anatomical studies suggest greater diversity and complexity of afferent inputs than previously appreciated, requiring rethinking of prior models. Here, we elaborate a hypothesis that construes midbrain dopamine as implementing a Bayesian selector in which individual dopamine cells sample afferent …

Squarefree Totients P-1 And Primitive Roots, Nelson A. Carella

Publications and Research

This note determines an effective asymptotic formula for the number of squarefree totients $p-1$ with a fixed primitive root t u 6= ±1, v2

Densities For The Repeating Decimals Problems, Nelson A. Carella

Publications and Research

Let \(p\geq 2\) be a prime, and let $1/p=0.\overline{x_{w-1} \ldots x_1x_0}$, $x_i \in \{0,1, 2, \ldots , 9\}$. The period $w\geq 1$ of the repeating decimal $1/p$ is a divisor of $p-1$. This note shows that the counting function for the number of primes with maximal period $w=p-1$ has an effective lower bound $\pi_{10}(x)=\# \{ p\leq x:\ord_p(10)=p-1 \}\gg x/ \log x$. This is a lower bound for the number of primes \(p\leq x\) with a fixed primitive root \(10 \bmod p\) for all large

numbers \(x\geq 1\). An extension to repeating decimal $1/p$ with near maximal period $w=(p-1)/r$, where $r …

The Modeling, Design, Fabrication, And Application Of Biosensor Based On Electric Cell-Substrate Impedance Sensing (Ecis) Technique In Environmental Monitoring, Xudong Zhang, William Wang, Sunghoon Jang

Publications and Research

In this research, the modeling, design, fabrication, and application of ECIS sensors in environmental monitoringare studied. The ECIS sensors are able to qualify the water toxicity through measuring the cell impedance. A novel mathematical model is proposed to analyze the distribution of electric potential and current of ECIS. This mathematical model is validated by experimental data and can be used to optimize the dimension of ECIS electrodes in order to satisfy environmental monitors. The detection sensitivity of ECIS sensors is analyzed by the mathematical model and experimental data. The simulated and experimental results show that ECIS sensors with smaller radius …

Neuromeasure: A Software Package For Quantification Of Cortical Motor Maps Using Frameless Stereotaxic Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, Michael B. Gerber, Alasdair C. Mclean, Samuel J. Stephen, Alex G. Chalco, Usman M. Arshad, Gary W. Thickbroom, Josh Silverstein, K. Zoe Tsagaris, Amy Kuceyeski, Kathleen Friel, Taiza E. G. Santos, Dylan J. Edwards

Publications and Research

The recent enhanced sophistication of non-invasive mapping of the human motor cortex using MRI-guided Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) techniques, has not been matched by refinement of methods for generating maps from motor evoked potential (MEP) data, or in quantifying map features. This is despite continued interest in understanding cortical reorganization for natural adaptive processes such as skill learning, or in the case of motor recovery, such as after lesion affecting the corticospinal system. With the observation that TMS-MEP map calculation and quantification methods vary, and that no readily available commercial or free software exists, we sought to establish and make …

Validation Of A Lottery, Xiaona Zhou

Publications and Research

The NY Pick 4 lottery consists of four "randomly" chosen digits from 0 to 9. For this to be fair, each digit should be equally likely to occur. To determine whether this is the case, a Chi-squared goodness of fit test will be applied to historical data. This provides a quantitative way of measuring how well the observed frequency of digits matches our expectations of a fair lottery. We also explore the "Lucky Sum", which is also a part of the Pick 4. We determine which sum is most likely to occur, and what the odds of winning are if …

Racism In Modern Information And Communication Technologies, Jessie Daniels

Publications and Research

These are the remarks given at a keynote address at the United Nations, before the 10th session of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Elaboration of Complementary Standards to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, Geneva, Switzerland.

Deep Learning Enables Robust Assessment And Selection Of Human Blastocysts After In Vitro Fertilization, Pegah Khosravi, Ehsan Kazemi, Qiansheng Zhan, Jonas E. Malmsten, Marco Toschi, Pantelis Zisimopoulos, Alexandros Sigaras, Stuart Lavery, Lee A. D. Cooper, Cristina Hickman, Marcos Meseguer, Zev Rosenwaks, Olivier Elemento, Nikica Zaninovic, Iman Hajirasouliha

Publications and Research

Visual morphology assessment is routinely used for evaluating of embryo quality and selecting human blastocysts for transfer after in vitro fertilization (IVF). However, the assessment produces different results between embryologists and as a result, the success rate of IVF remains low. To overcome uncertainties in embryo quality, multiple embryos are often implanted resulting in undesired multiple pregnancies and complications. Unlike in other imaging fields, human embryology and IVF have not yet leveraged artificial intelligence (AI) for unbiased, automated embryo assessment. We postulated that an AI approach trained on thousands of embryos can reliably predict embryo quality without human intervention. We …

Who Can Excel In Mathematics?, Marla A. Sole

Publications and Research

Students may erroneously believe that mathematics ability is largely innate and fixed (Kimball and Smith 2013). The evidence seems to support these mistaken beliefs. Women and minorities score lower on the mathematics section of the SAT (College Board 2017). When assessing students’ mathematics college readiness, a larger percentage of women, African Americans, and Hispanics fell below the benchmark (ACT 2017); and, in general, in science, engineering, math, and technology (STEM) fields, the gender and racial gaps in interest, performance, and degrees awarded have not closed (Neuhauser 2015). Persistent performance gaps can serve to reinforce students’ mistaken belief that women and …

Results For Nonwieferich Primes, Nelson A. Carella

Publications and Research

Let $v\geq 2$ be a fixed integer, and let $x \geq 1$ be a large number. The exact asymptotic counting function for the number of nonWieferich primes $p\leq x$ such that $ v^{p-1}-1 \equiv 0 \bmod p^2$ in the interval $[1,x]$ is proposed in this note. The current results in the literature provide lower bounds, which are conditional on the $abc$ conjecture or the Erdos binary additive conjecture.

The Living Archive In The Anthropocene, Nora Almeida, Jen Hoyer

Publications and Research

This paper presents the concept of the living archive as a system which reflects how social behavior and cultural production are part of the Anthropocene. The authors explore how dominant narratives of both the Anthropocene and the archive work to consolidate power and maintain cultural and disciplinary divisions. The authors refute conceptions of the Anthropocene as a purely biophysical phenomenon that is alienated from cultural practice and of the archive as a comprehensive and nostalgic space. They then introduce the living archive as an alternative representational, creative, and reactive space and illustrate how the living archive can intervene in ecological …

Exploring A Practical Development Of Quantum Computing, Juliano A. Everett, Andrea N. Zambrano, Carlos Aguayza

Publications and Research

Tasked with describing a Quantum architecture (Superconducting loops), we additionally explored how the chosen architecture is used, developed, and how one could get started in understanding the way in which some quantum algorithms work with this architecture through Python and IBM's tools (Qiskit and IBM Q Experience).

Comparative Clinical Outcomes Between Direct Oral Anticoagulants And Warfarin Among Elderly Patients With Non-Valvular Atrial Fibrillation In The Cms Medicare Population, Alpesh Amin, Oluwaseyi Dina, Allison Keshishian, Amol Dhamane, Anagha Nadkarni, Eric Carda, Cristina Russ, Lisa Rosenblatt, Jack Mardekian, Huseyin Yuce, Christine L. Baker

Publications and Research

Atrial fibrillation (AF) prevalence increases with age; > 80% of US adults with AF are aged ≥ 65 years. Compare the risk of stroke/systemic embolism (SE), major bleeding (MB), net clinical outcome (NCO), and major adverse cardiac events (MACE) among elderly non-valvular AF (NVAF) Medicare patients prescribed direct oral anticoagulants (DOACs) vs warfarin. NVAF patients aged ≥ 65 years who initiated DOACs (apixaban, dabigatran, and rivaroxaban) or warfarin were selected from 01JAN2013-31DEC2015 in CMS Medicare data. Propensity score matching was used to balance DOAC and warfarin cohorts. Cox proportional hazards models estimated the risk of stroke/SE, MB, NCO, and MACE. 37,525 …

Optical Detection And Storage Of Entanglement In Plasmonically Coupled Quantum-Dot Qubits, M. Otten, S.K. Gray, German Kolmakov V

Publications and Research

Recent proposals and advances in quantum simulations, quantum cryptography, and quantum communications substantially rely on quantum entanglement formation. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that dissipation destroys quantum coherence, coupling with a dissipative environment can also generate entanglement. We consider a system composed of two quantum-dot qubits coupled with a common, damped surface plasmon mode; each quantum dot is also coupled to a separate photonic cavity mode. Cavity quantum electrodynamics calculations show that upon optical excitation by a femtosecond laser pulse, entanglement of the quantum-dot excitons occurs, and the time evolution of the g(2) pair correlation function of the cavity photons …

Cctv Surveillance For Crime Prevention. A 40-Year Systematic Review With Meta-Analysis, Eric L. Piza, Brandon C. Welsh, David P. Farrington, Amanda L. Thomas

Publications and Research

Research Summary: We report on the findings of an updated systematic review and meta-analysis of the effects of closed-circuit television (CCTV) surveillance cameras on crime. The findings show that CCTV is associated with a significant and modest decrease in crime. The largest and most consistent effects of CCTV were observed in car parks. The results of the analysis also demonstrated evidence of significant crime reductions within other settings, particularly residential areas. CCTV schemes incorporating activemonitoring generated larger effect sizes than did passive systems. Schemes deploying multiple interventions alongside CCTV generated larger effect sizes than did schemes deploying single or no …

Proceedings Of The Cuny Games Conference 5.0, Robert O. Duncan, Joe Bisz, Julie Cassidy, Kathleen Offenholley, Carolyn Stallard, Deborah Sturm, Anders A. Wallace

Publications and Research

The CUNY Games Network is an organization dedicated to encouraging research, scholarship and teaching in the developing field of games-based learning. We connect educators from every campus and discipline at CUNY and beyond who are interested in digital and non-digital games, simulations, and other forms of interactive teaching and inquiry-based learning. The CUNY Games Conference distills its best cutting-edge interactive presentations into a two-day event to promote and discuss game-based pedagogies in higher education, focusing particularly on non-digital learning activities that faculty can use in the classroom every day. The conference will include workshops lead by CUNY Games Organizers on …

A Multi-Criteria Gis Model For Suitability Analysis Of Locations Of Decentralized Wastewater Treatment Units: Case Study In Sulaimania, Iraq, Ako Rashed Hama, Rafea Hashim Al-Suhili, Zeren Jamal Ghafour

Publications and Research

Sulaimania is a City located in Kurdistan region in the north of Iraq. The city is facing a lack of water, and it will reach a very critical condition shortly. One of the potential solutions is to reuse the treated wastewater for non-direct human uses such as irrigation, washing, firefighting, groundwater recharging, and others. There is no sewage treatment plant in the city. The wastewater flows into a stream through some sewer outlets, and that causes big environmental issues. Decentralized wastewater treatment units (DTUs) are suggested to solve the issue. The treated wastewater will be used for the irrigation of …