Digital Commons Network^™

Effects Of Dc Electric Field On Particle Transportation And Deposition In Evaporating Droplets, Akshay Pratap Singh

Theses

Microfluidics(uF) is the science of manipulating and controlling the fluids usually in the range of microliters (10-6L) to picolitres (10-12L). Physical parameters, such as surface tension and contact angle do not play a significant effect on macro scale but play a crucial role at the microscopic level. Microfluidics is viewed as an essential tool for life science research and flexible electronics. A deeper understanding of physical parameters of microfluidics would result in more efficient and lower cost devices (‘Lab-on-a-Chip’ devices) and foldable electronics. In short, the concepts of microfluidics can be used to reduce the cost, size, and ease of …

Disaster Site Structure Analysis: Examining Effective Remote Sensing Techniques In Blue Tarpaulin Inspection, Madeline G. Miles

Theses

This thesis aimed to evaluate three methods of analyzing blue roofing tarpaulin (tarp) placed on homes in post natural disaster zones with remote sensing techniques by assessing the different methods- image segmentation, machine learning (ML), and supervised classification. One can determine which is the most efficient and accurate way of detecting blue tarps. The concept here was that using the most efficient and accurate way to locate blue tarps can aid federal, state, and local emergency management (EM) operations and homeowners. In the wake of a natural disaster such as a tornado, hurricane, thunderstorm, or similar weather events, roofs are …

Improving Asteroid Remote Sensing By Examining Past Martian Methods, James Dean King

Theses

Deep Space Remote Sensing is an ever-evolving field. The very first missions into deep space were explorations that utilized trial and error, as humanity faced a new frontier of unknowns. Over these 70 years of deep space exploration, much attention has been given to our three nearest celestial neighbors: the Moon, Venus, and Mars. Mars, in particular, has been the target of much observation and study due to it being a target for future colonization. Meanwhile, the areas beyond Mars have had comparatively less focus. Asteroids and objects beyond Mars offer many new horizons for humanity to study. By using …

Cryptic Hybridization In The Temperate Bamboos: Is Pleioblastus Simonii A Species Of Hybrid Origin?, Morgan Brown

Theses

Japanese river bamboo (Pleioblastus simonii, ‘medake,’‘kawadake’) is an ecologically important species of temperate bamboo native to Japan. This species is widely known and historically important in Japanese rural farm life. Based on morphological data, Japanese river bamboo is classified in Pleioblastus section Medakea (Poaceae: Bambusoideae) along with five other Japanese species, which are collectively considered to represent a phylogenetically distinct lineage. However, recent studies suggest that Japanese river bamboo may have arisen as a result of previously undetected hybridization (i.e., cryptic hybridization), while also calling into question the diversity of section Medakea. The role of hybridization in natural plant populations …

The Mindful App: Usability Report, Jocelyn Sands

Theses

Methodology

The primary focus of this research is looking at the effects of qualitative & quantitative methodologies during the creation of a user-centered designed application. Through this process, I conducted product research on applications currently on the market. I also conducted user interviews and surveys to understand user needs.

Research Process

Throughout this process, I have used qualitative and quantitative information to gain knowledge of what users may need while using this app. I used qualitative and quantitative methodology to screen participants by conducting testing in a variety of ways. This ensures users are able to effectively discuss their thoughts …

The Role Of Physical Geographic Features In Video Games, Dexter Ferguson

Theses

This thesis examines how physical geographic features affect individuals when interacting with video game environments. There are very few studies on the geography of video games. I aim to bridge the gap between game studies and geography, a naturally occurring link. The observation of elements such as the geography of an area is critical when exploring an individual’s perception of a video game environment. Individuals interact with the geography of their location on a day-to-day basis, whether it be physical or human geography; how they can relate a video game’s geography to the real world dramatically affects their immersion. An …

Single-Input Signature Register-Based Time Delay Reservoir, David Pastuch

Theses

Machine learning continues to play a critical role in our society. The ability to automatically identify intricate relationships in large volumes of data has proven incredibly useful for problems such as automatic speech recognition and image processing. In particular, neural networks have become increasingly popular in a wide set of application domains, given their ability to solve complex problems and process high-dimensional data. However, the impressive performance of state-of-the-art neural networks comes at the cost of large area and power consumption for the computation resources used in training and inference. As a result, a growing area of research concerns hardware …

Semi-Supervised Video And Image In-Painting, Rajiv Mandya Nagaraju

Theses

Human brain is inherently good at pattern recognition. AI researchers have always struggled to emulate such levels of performance in machine vision algorithms. Building as an extension of the pattern recognition, humans are also exceptional in selectively learning and bridging the gap when there is missing data. Even when the missing data is in complex images and videos formats. Human brain is able to surmise and comprehend the scene with reasonable certainty given enough contextual information. We believe that selective learning aids in selectively filling the missing data. To this end we experiment with partial convolutions, and the networks can …

Robust L1-Norm Singular-Value Decomposition And Estimation, Duc H. Le

Theses

Singular-Value Decomposition (SVD) is a ubiquitous data analysis method in engineering, science, and statistics. Singular-value estimation, in particular, is of critical importance in an array of engineering applications, such as channel estimation in communication systems, EMG signal analysis, and image compression, to name just a few. Conventional SVD of a data matrix coincides with standard Principal-Component Analysis (PCA). The L2-norm (sum of squared values) formulation of PCA promotes peripheral data points and, thus, makes PCA sensitive against outliers. Naturally, SVD inherits this outlier sensitivity. In this work, we present a novel robust method for SVD based on a L1-norm (sum …

Tidal Disruption And Accretion Of Planets And Brown Dwarfs Inside Giant Stars, Gabriel Guidarelli

Theses

A significant fraction of isolated white dwarfs host strong magnetic fields that range from a few to a thousand Megagauss. These high-field magnetic white dwarfs (HFMWDs) comprise ∼10% of all isolated white dwarfs. Remarkably, not a single close and detached binary system that is composed of a white dwarf and a low-mass-main-sequence star contains a HFMWD. If the origin of magnetic fields in white dwarfs were independent of binary interactions, then the observed distribution of isolated white dwarfs should be similar to those in detached binaries, yet they are not. Unless there is a mechanism by which distant companions prevent …

Unveiling Buried Agn In Oh Megamaser Galaxies, Liza Maria Matrecito Salcedo

Theses

Ultra-luminous/Luminous Infrared Galaxies, (U)LIRGS, dominate the bright end of the galaxy luminosity function in the nearby universe. They are preferentially found in gas-rich mergers and are known for hosting starbursts (SBs) and active galactic nuclei (AGN), frequently in the same system. Approximately 20\% of (U)LIRGS contain highly luminous hydroxyl masers (OHMs). This OHM emission can be used to trace galaxy merger rates and associated processes of the system. OHMs are produced by the amplification of a background radio continuum source and require high column densities of molecular gas and a source of IR pumping radiation. Both SBs and AGN contain …

Exploration Of The Use Of Digital Micromirror Devices For Highly Multiplexed Spectroscopy Applications In Astronomy, Kathleen Oram

Theses

Highly multiplexed spectroscopic capabilities are critical to future astronomy space missions. Such capabilities enable large samples of spectral data to be collected in an efficient manner. The individual mirrors of a Digital Micromirror Device (DMD) can serve as slits in a multi-object spectrograph (MOS). This work explores several areas vital to the inclusion of DMDs in future astronomy missions: space qualification, optical performance, and the implementation of Hadamard Transform Spectral Imaging (HTSI). While DMDs were not designed for space, this work reports on testing that demonstrates that the devices can withstand the environmental conditions of a space mission. The optical …

Deep Feature Learning And Adaptation For Computer Vision, Abu Md Niamul Taufique

Theses

We are living in times when a revolution of deep learning is taking place. In general, deep learning models have a backbone that extracts features from the input data followed by task-specific layers, e.g. for classification. This dissertation proposes various deep feature extraction and adaptation methods to improve task-specific learning, such as visual re-identification, tracking, and domain adaptation. The vehicle re-identification (VRID) task requires identifying a given vehicle among a set of vehicles under variations in viewpoint, illumination, partial occlusion, and background clutter. We propose a novel local graph aggregation module for feature extraction to improve VRID performance. We also …

Using Machine Learning In Disaster Tweets Classification, Humaid Alhammadi

Theses

People share real-time updates on social media platforms (i.e. Twitter) when disaster occurs, this information is very valuable for disaster relief and response teams as it can alert them immediately in order to prioritize tasks. Text mining and Machine learning algorithm can scan the huge generated unstructured data on social media platforms such as Twitter, to spot such information through keywords and phrases that refers to disasters. One challenge that the algorithm might face is whether a tweet text is talking about a real disaster or uses those keywords as a metaphor, which can lead to huge mislabeling of tweets. …

Text Analysis Of Airline Tweets, Essa Altamimi

Theses

By acting as a succinct summary, keywords and key phrases can be a useful tool for swiftly assessing enormous amounts of textual material. A "keyword" is defined as a "word that briefly and accurately characterises the subject, or an aspect of the subject, presented in a text," according to the International Encyclopaedia of Information and Library Science (Bolger et al., 1989) (Feather et al., 1996). People are more likely to complain when they are anxious, according to research (Bolger et al., 1989)(Meier et al., 2013), and moods are affected by time (Ryan et al., 2010). Due to this study, airlines …

Mineral Nutritional Status Of Plants Of A Public Park Under Long-Term Irrigation With Treated Sewage Effluent, Chandana Chakraborty

Theses

Treated sewage water is widely used for irrigation of urban greenery in UAE, and it contains significant number of elements that serve as nutrients for plants. The crucial unresolved question that remains, is regarding its long-term impact on the nutritional status of plants. Sulaimi Park of Al Ain was chosen as the study site. The main objective was to examine if the nutrient supply was adequate for plants. N, P, K levels were expected to exceed plant demands and micronutrient supply was assumed to be below plant requirements. To assess this, soil pH, annual nutrients input with water and elemental …

Assessment Of Natural Hazards Impact On Heritage Sites In The United Arab Emirates (Uae) Using Geographic Information System (Gis), Abdulla Salem Ahmed Saeed Alyammahi

Theses

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) pays significant attention to preserving its heritage sites and archaeological finds and treats them as a vital part of its culture, history, and economy. In recent years, the field of archaeology in the UAE has witnessed tangible and significant developments, with many government initiatives being devoted to establishing archaeological departments in all emirates. The firmly stated policy of these institutions is to preserve the UAE heritage sites and educate the public about their importance. However, these sites are vulnerable to natural hazards, considered one of the most critical threats to the UAE heritage sites. In …

Authenticated Key Establishment Protocol For Constrained Smart Healthcare Systems Based On Physical Unclonable Function, Abdalla Saleh Elkushli

Theses

Smart healthcare systems are one of the critical applications of the internet of things. They benefit many categories of the population and provide significant improvement to healthcare services. Smart healthcare systems are also susceptible to many threats and exploits because they run without supervision for long periods of time and communicate via open channels. Moreover, in many implementations, healthcare sensor nodes are implanted or miniaturized and are resource-constrained. The potential risks on patients/individuals’ life from the threats necessitate that securing the connections in these systems is of utmost importance. This thesis provides a solution to secure end-to-end communications in such …

Exploring Cycle 2 English Teachers’ Beliefs Toward Assessment Practices In The United Arab Emirates, Othaiba Salem Al Dhaheri

Theses

The new language assessment policies in the UAE necessitate that English language teacher need to be cognizant about the new language assessment. The inseparable connection between learning and teaching is at the center of assessment today. This study tries to explore cycle 2 English language teachers’ beliefs toward their assessment practices in the UAE. The study seeks to understand teachers’ assessment practices, beliefs, and obstacles through two means: a semi-structured interview followed by a self-report questionnaire. The study employs an exploratory sequential mixed method design. In the first phase, a semi-structured interview is conducted with 6 cycle 2 English language …

Molecular Cloud Properties In High-Mass Star Forming Regions, Mohammed Essa Abdulla Ali Ahli

Theses

Using high spatial resolution observation of ¹²CO (2−1) and ¹³CO (2−1) emissions, I present the molecular cloud properties of N42 in the Small Magellanic Cloud. The observations were taken using the Atacama Large Millimeter Array observations. I conducted a thorough analysis of molecular gas properties to understand how the cloud properties of N42 differ from those of Galactic clouds. My analysis shows that, in N42, the majority of CO emission appears clumpy, while molecular cores with YSOs exhibit greater linewidths and masses. Massive clump cores are associated with YSOs. Virial analysis of the ¹²CO and ¹³CO …

An Analysis Of State Level Legislation Aimed At Reducing Pharmaceutical Prices: Are They Enough?, Braedon Williams

Theses

The rising cost of pharmaceuticals has been an issue of growing concern in many countries both developing and developed. In the United States, high pharmaceutical prices cause significant financial stress to patients and create barriers to access, causing treatable conditions to deteriorate. Many legislative attempts have been attempted on various levels to control prices, but in the United States it has been mostly left to states to address the issue. In this comparative case study, pharmaceutical utilization data and sentiment data are analyzed from three states to represent various approaches: South Dakota to represent states with little legislation, Rhode Island …

Towards Efficient Lifelong Machine Learning In Deep Neural Networks, Tyler L. Hayes

Theses

Humans continually learn and adapt to new knowledge and environments throughout their lifetimes. Rarely does learning new information cause humans to catastrophically forget previous knowledge. While deep neural networks (DNNs) now rival human performance on several supervised machine perception tasks, when updated on changing data distributions, they catastrophically forget previous knowledge. Enabling DNNs to learn new information over time opens the door for new applications such as self-driving cars that adapt to seasonal changes or smartphones that adapt to changing user preferences. In this dissertation, we propose new methods and experimental paradigms for efficiently training continual DNNs without forgetting. We …

Lightness, Brightness, And Transparency In Optical See-Through Augmented Reality, Lili Zhang

Theses

Augmented reality (AR), as a key component of the future metaverse, has leaped from the research labs to the consumer and enterprise markets. AR optical see-through (OST) devices utilize transparent optical combiners to provide visibility of the real environment as well as superimpose virtual content on top of it. OST displays distinct from existing media because of their optical additivity, meaning the light reaching the eyes is composed of both virtual content and real background. The composition results in the intended virtual colors being distorted and perceived transparent. When the luminance of the virtual content decreases, the perceived lightness and …

It’S Not That Serious, Drew M. Slickmeyer

Theses

This writing is intended to analyze, document, and examine the success of my efforts to develop and execute concepts that incorporate humor utilizing furniture, sculpture, painting, arrangement, found objects, repetition, tromp-lœil, itemization, numerals, transposition, and written word. These efforts are done within a gallery setting established as the main presentation method. Goals, intentions, origins, inspiration and execution of each specific piece, as well as the body of work as a whole will be discussed. The language used throughout this document is intended to be concise and direct, as to dictate concepts and analysis as clearly as possible in order to …

Functional Evolutionary Adaptation Of Binding Dynamics In The Sars-Cov-2/Ace2 Interface From Bats To Humans, Madhusudan Rajendran

Theses

The COVID-19 pandemic highlights the substantial public health, economic, and societal consequences of virus spillover from a wildlife reservoir. Widespread human transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) also presents a new set of challenges when considering viral spillover from people to naïve wildlife and other animal populations. Here, we used molecular dynamic (MD) simulations to understand the transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus from bats to humans and investigate the evolution of the various human variants. More specifically, we used MD simulations to understand the atomic fluctuation dampening at the receptor-binding domain (RBD)/ angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) interface …

Sustainability In Design: The Exploration Of Using Digital Design As A Tool To Promote Environmental Conservation And Sustainable Practice, Kaitlyn Maxwell

Theses

The final website deliverable functions not only as a means of presentation, but as a jumping off point for digital designers to build off of, using the carefully curated resources and informational findings that are included in, and crafted specifically for, this project. By focusing on three main aspects of how to answer the research question 1) creating awareness, 2) making a case for caring, and 3) effective messaging methods, a framework has been created that the audience can expand upon without being overwhelmed by a question with many potential routes to travel down. A digital designer can promote sustainable …

Creating Engaging Online Curriculum In A Secondary Graphic Design Class, Berea Moss

Theses

This project focuses on how to improve online learning courses leading to increased student engagement. This project examines a variety of online tools and course structures such as Padlet, introductory videos, and prompt teacher feedback to engage a variety of learners throughout the online course. Prior research conducted on proper online course design was used in the development of an online unit of instruction. The unit created consists of four lessons with an emphasis on proper course layout, student-teacher interactions, and engaging online tools. The project studies the engagement of seventy-eight seventh and eighth grade graphic design students during the …

Performance Assessment Of Existing Rc Bridges Equipped With Seismic Risk Mitigation Systems, Homam Mohamad Ghazal

Theses

Many bridges built before adopting current design standards may be at risk as they do not meet the latest seismic performance objectives. Bridges are vital infrastructure components required to be serviceable after earthquakes to avoid negative consequences on daily traffic. Previous seismic hazard studies considered the United Arab Emirates an earthquake-prone region subjected to two scenarios: (i) near-field events, and (ii) far-field earthquakes. Therefore, the vulnerability of pre-seismic code bridges in the UAE should be carefully assessed, and retrofit techniques should be proposed to mitigate possible earthquake losses. This study is thus devoted to assessing the seismic vulnerability of a …

Multi-Scale Architectures For Human Pose Estimation, Bruno Artacho

Theses

In this dissertation we present multiple state-of-the-art deep learning methods for computer vision tasks using multi-scale approaches for two main tasks: pose estimation and semantic segmentation. For pose estimation, we introduce a complete framework expanding the fields-of-view of the network through a multi-scale approach, resulting in a significant increasing the effectiveness of conventional backbone architectures, for several pose estimation tasks without requiring a larger network or postprocessing. Our multi-scale pose estimation framework contributes to research on methods for single-person pose estimation in both 2D and 3D scenarios, pose estimation in videos, and the estimation of multiple people’s pose in a …

Role Of Group Work In Promoting Student To Student Interaction And Motivation In The Efl Classroom, Iman Duw Suwassi

Theses

This thesis is concerned with group work and collaborative learning and teaching in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom in the UAE. This study aims to discover the role of group work and collaborative learning in promoting student to student interaction and motivation in the English Language Classroom. Three tools were used in this study to collect data. An online student questionnaire and an online student survey were conducted with 15 high school students during a distance learning lesson on Microsoft Teams. The third tool was an online interview conducted via Zoom with the high school English Teacher. …