Digital Commons Network^™

Introducing Handwriting Into A Multimodal Latex Formula Editor, Yancarlos Diaz

Theses

Handwriting has been shown to be a useful input modality for math. However, math recognizers are imperfect, especially when recognizing complex expressions. Instead of improving the recognizer itself, we explore ways to best visualize the recognizer's output to help the user fix recognition mistakes more efficiently. To do this, we propose changes to the visual editing operations in MathDeck, a math-aware search engine and formula editor, as well as the addition of an n-best list of results for each symbol in the recognizer's output. We present two experiments to help us find good ways to help users fix errors in …

Characterization Of Si-Mosfets For Terahertz Detection: Development For A Potential Future Astrophysical Sensor Technology, Katherine E. Seery

Theses

Terahertz (THz) commonly refers to a region of the electromagnetic spectrum with frequencies ranging between 0.1 to 10 THz (wavelengths of 3 mm to 30 μm). The technology available for detection and generation in this spectral region has been less developed than in the adjoining infrared and visible domains. For the astronomy community, THz observation provides information related to various phenomena including, for example, the study of cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR), emission from proto-planetary disks, and planetary atmospheric remote sensing. Many molecules have emission and absorption spectral features in the THz regime whose observation provides the ability to extract …

Using Advanced Analytics To Predict Vehicle Registrations And Help In Business Continuity Planning, Khalid Ibrahim Alzarouni

Theses

Dramatic changes happen in the world. People and organizations face problems with these changes. The ones who have everything planned in case of emergencies; survive, and the ones who do not plan it right, have a chance of falling. Today, a lot of organizations suffer because of the Covid-19 global pandemic, even the largest organizations in Dubai like Roads and Transport Authority. Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) is one of the largest government entities and the sole planner and executer of all transport, road, and traffic projects in Dubai. It has happiness centers which register all the cars that are …

An Empirical Study Of Offensive Language In Online Interactions, Diptanu Sarkar

Theses

In the past decade, usage of social media platforms has increased significantly. People use these platforms to connect with friends and family, share information, news and opinions. Platforms such as Facebook, Twitter are often used to propagate offensive and hateful content online. The open nature and anonymity of the internet fuels aggressive and inflamed conversations. The companies and federal institutions are striving to make social media cleaner, welcoming and unbiased. In this study, we first explore the underlying topics in popular offensive language datasets using statistical and neural topic modeling. The current state-of-the-art models for aggression detection only present a …

Modeling The Mechanistic Behavioral Logic Supporting Adherence To Hormone Therapy In Breast Cancer Patients, Gina Kersey

Theses

This project proposed that given a basic model of the decisional logic driving stable adherence it might be possible to reliably anticipate increased vulnerability to discontinuation and use such a mode to design behavioral interventions that are specifically tailored to deliver course corrections that are temporally and contextually optimal. A logistic regression was coded and run using the core model predicted by the experts as a base for how the variables interact to make predictions. Then a logistic regression with stepwise selection was coded and run using the core model as a base for how the variables interact and to …

Android Malware Detection Using Predictive Analytics., Amira Mohammed Albalooshi

Theses

The growth of android applications is causing a threat and a serious issue towards Android’s security. The number of malware targeting the Android operating system is increasing daily. As a result, in recent days the traditional ways that are being used to detect malware are not able to defend alone against the rapid development of hackers attacking techniques and novel malware. This capstone project focuses on using predictive analytics toward detecting malware from the network traffic. In this capstone project, we aim to train and test our data to find the best machine learning model with the highest accuracy of …

Who Do They Think We Are? Analyzing Misrepresentation Of Races In Netflix Original Films Using Critical Race Theory And Social Identity Theory, Jacob Osseck

Theses

In a society like today’s, racial misrepresentation can be found across a vast number of different forms of media. Racial misrepresentation has been found in television portrayals of characters within series and programs during primetime television. This sort of misrepresentation creates obstacles for certain minorities to overcome prejudice, racism, and bigotry that oppresses their ingroup. A content analysis of 20 Netflix Original films which were chosen through random purposive sampling, to include comedy and drama genres, was conducted for the research. The analysis produced results that helped explain that Netflix’s representation of minorities through inclusion has improved for Blacks, yet …

A Risk Management Framework Using Digital Transformation For The Healthcare Sector During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Mohammad Awni Khasawneh, Mohamed Alayat

Theses

Despite the many changes in the orientation of the world economy and the spotlight positioning, the healthcare sector remains one of the most important and critical sectors for its contribution in every aspect of human life. Improvements in the healthcare sector are seen and evident on a daily basis to cope with the technological and digital advancements in the world, and the recent COVID-19 pandemic has put these improvements into a faster pace. Several challenges in the health sector have risen to surface since the beginning of the pandemic; some of these challenges have been properly addressed and tackled, while …

Warrant And Non-Function: A Critique Of The Sensus Divinitatis In Plantinga's Reformed Epistemology, Lukas Merrell

Theses

In recent years, there has been a surge in attempting to demonstrate how a theistic belief can be held rationality apart from classical proofs. Championed by philosophers such as Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff. Reformed Epistemology attempts to defend a God-belief as properly basic, which is therefore justified and warranted apart from traditional argumentation. With this in view, he put forward a position of religious epistemology that attempts to show how a GB can be on par with other beliefs we have on a daily basis that are considered rational, even if devoid of argumentation. In this paper I focus …

Lost In Transit, Drishti Bhandari

Theses

“I recognize, decontextualize, reconstruct.”

"Lost in transit" is the sense of loss that we experience when our heritage and stories are passed down to us. Like a game of Telephone, every generation loses a little of its past- which gets left behind. We do not have, in all originality, what the previous generation had. As we move through time, lived experiences change. We will never know what it felt like to live in a medieval kingdom, or to live through the renaissance. We will only ever have their echoes in pictures, stories and ruins. The only common thread is that …

Representational Enactivism, Zhexi Zhang

Theses

In the literature on enactive approaches to cognition, representationalism is often seen as a rival theory. In this paper, I argue that enactivism can be fruitfully combined with representationalism by adopting Frances Egan’s content pragmatism. This representational enactivism avoids some of the problems faced by antirepresentational versions of enactivism. Most significantly, representational enactivism accommodates empirical evidence that neural systems manipulate representations. In addition, representational enactivism provides a valuable insight into how to identify representational content, especially in brainless organisms: we can identify representational content by investigating autopoietic processes.

Combinatorial And Stochastic Approach To Parallelization Of The Kangaroo Method Of Solving The Discrete Logarithm Problem, Joe Klesczewski

Theses

The kangaroo method for the Pollard's rho algorithm provides a powerful way to solve discrete log problems. There exist parameters for it that allow it to be optimized in such a way as to prevent what are known as "useless collisions" in exchange for the limitation that the number of parallel resources used must be both finite and known ahead of time. This thesis puts forward an analysis of the situation and examines the potential acceleration that can be gained through the use of parallel resources beyond those initially utilized by an algorithm so configured.

In brief, the goal in …

Methods For Generating High-Fidelity Trace Chemical Residue Reflectance Signatures For Active Spectroscopy Classification Applications, Cara Patrice Murphy

Theses

Standoff detection and identification of trace chemicals in hyperspectral infrared images is an enabling capability in a variety of applications relevant to defense, law enforcement, and intelligence communities. Performance of these methods is impacted by the spectral signature variability due to the presence of contaminants, surface roughness, nonlinear effects, etc. Though multiple classes of algorithms exist for the detection and classification of these signatures, they are limited by the availability of relevant reference datasets.

In this work, we first address the lack of physics-based models that can accurately predict trace chemical spectra. Most available models assume that the chemical takes …

Development Of A Low-Cost Eye Screening Tool For Early Detection Of Diabetic Retinopathy Using Deep Neural Network, David Mwanguo Mwasikira

Theses

It has been said that technology used in the lab does not directly transfer to what is done in healthcare. Research on the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the diagnosis of Diabetic Retinopathy (DR) has seen tremendous growth over the last couple of years but it is also true not much of that knowledge has been transferred into practice to benefit patients in need. One reason is that it’s a new frontier with untested technologies and one that is evolving too fast. Also, the Real Healthcare situation can be very complicated presenting itself with numerous challenges starting with strict …

Distfold: Distance-Guided Protein Folding, Matthew Bernardini

Theses

Protein structure prediction and its associated key sub-problems such as distance map prediction are of significance importance in biology and bioinformatics. The inter-residue distance prediction problem, or distance prediction in short, is to predict the physical distance between amino acids in a three-dimensional (3D) space, given a protein's one-dimensional sequence information. While there exist many methods to predict distance maps, there are currently no methods that can take those predicted distance maps and build 3D models from them in an ab initio way, i.e., without using any other information. This works aims to fill this gap by: a) developing a …

Family Planning Methods Among Couples Of A Selected Barangay In Tacloban City: Basis For Healthcare Program Enhancement, Ric-An Artemio S. Gadin

Theses

The increase of population affects many aspects of society, including living conditions, basic needs, employment status and most importantly the health system. It is thus imperative to adequately plan family size in order to build a stable society. But despite of the availability of family planning programs where most methods of contraception are available both in the rural and urban health centers, literatures shows that population growth is still at rise. Thus the researcher became curious of the knowledge, attitude and practices of couples in family planning. The study tried to assess the level of awareness and practices of family …

Can Feature Requests Reveal The Refactoring Types?, Sultan Fahad Almassari

Theses

Software refactoring is the process of improving the design of a software system while preserving its external behavior. In recent years, refactoring research has been growing as a response to the degradation of software quality. Recent studies performed an in-depth investigation in (1) how refactoring practices are taking place during the software evolution, (2) how to recommend refactoring to improve the design of software, and (3) what type of refactoring operations can be implemented. However, there is a lack of support when it comes to developers’ typical programming tasks, including feature updates and bug fixes. The goal of this thesis …

Automatic Speech Recognition For Low-Resource And Morphologically Complex Languages, Ethan Morris

Theses

The application of deep neural networks to the task of acoustic modeling for automatic speech recognition (ASR) has resulted in dramatic decreases of word error rates, allowing for the use of this technology in smart phones and personal home assistants in high-resource languages. Developing ASR models of this caliber, however, requires hundreds or thousands of hours of transcribed speech recordings, which presents challenges for most of the world’s languages. In this work, we investigate the applicability of three distinct architectures that have previously been used for ASR in languages with limited training resources. We tested these architectures using publicly available …

Designing A Chemotherapy Infusion Center In Buffalo, New York Using Daylighting To Aid In The Healing Process, Claire Witt

Theses

Healthcare makes up a large amount of infrastructure and while today’s designs have vastly improved over the years, incorporating more natural light can improve not only staff’s performance but also enhance a patient healing experience. Daylighting is one of the most powerful, natural product designers can use in projects. Healthcare facilities have a goal in mind when designing a hospital such as the patients healing, overall experience, and their comfort. To continue to achieve improvements in patient care, it is important to constantly evaluate current means and methods, with one element that influences the delivery of care is the design …

Api Recommendation Using Domain And Source Code Knowledge, Rana Kareem Talib Al-Rubaye

Theses

The process of migration the old retired API(Application Programming Interface) with new and most to up to date one, know as API migration. Developers need to fully understand the documentation for the retired (replaced) library and the new (replacing) library to do the appropriate migration. This manual process is complex, error-prone, and costly for companies. There have been many studies focused on the automation recommendation between different method mapping for different libraries. These studies focused on the recommendations between methods from different programming languages while non of them focused on the recommendations between methods of libraries that belong to the …

Using Advanced Analytics To Assist Stakeholders In Higher Education Institutions, Preethi Dsouza

Theses

Higher education institutions have access to a vast amount of student data that is recorded during the process of admissions and throughout the course of the program. After the outbreak of the COVID 19 pandemic most universities around the world had to either adopt a blended or a complete online mode of teaching. Students were required to access resources through a virtual learning platform and interaction with this environment also left an important trail of valuable information. Data analysis and machine learning can provide insights and predictions about students’ performances, online activities and academic progress. Advanced analytics can provide necessary …

Forensics Writer Identification Using Text Mining And Machine Learning, Saif Ali Alawar

Theses

Constant technological growth has resulted in the danger and seriousness of cyber-attacks, which has recently unmistakably developed in various institutions that have complex Information Technology (IT) infrastructure. For instance, for the last three (3) years, the most horrendous instances of cybercrimes were perceived globally with enormous information breaks, fake news spreading, cyberbullying, crypto-jacking, and cloud computing services. To this end, various agencies improvised techniques to curb this vice and bring perpetrators, both real and perceived, to book in relation to such serious cybersecurity issues. Consequently, Forensic Writer Identification was introduced as one of the most effective remedies to the concerned …

Understanding The Themes Of Disability Discourse Through Reddit Comments, Brandon Palonis

Theses

With the advent of internet forums, sharing opinions in a public sphere has never been easier, especially for those facing marginalization in their communities. Forums offer a neutral, semi-anonymous space wherein people may feel more compelled to share intimate details about the characteristics of their lives. This paper focuses on internet forums related to disabilities, specifically those found on Reddit, and uses Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) to extract topics from the corpus of 3 subreddits: r/Blind, r/ADHD, and r/Disability. The features are then put into key term groups that are defined by a key phrase. This created category taxonomy is …

Development Of Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting System For Low-Frequency Vibrations, Mai Rabie Mahmoud Ismail

Theses

Harvesting energy from vibration sources has attracted the interest of researchers for the past three decades. Researchers have been working on the potential of achieving self-powered MEMS scale devices. Piezoelectric cantilever harvesters have caught the attention in this field because of the excellent combination of high-power density and compact structure. The main objective of this thesis is to develop a novel and optimum piezoelectric harvester system using lumped parameter model (LPM) for given vibration sources. The finite element model (FEM) is used in this work as an original approach to be utilized for optimal design optimization. Three types of validations …

Production And Characterization Of Natural Date Fruit Powder (Pheonix Dactylifera L.), Fayeza Hasan

Theses

The aim of this thesis was to study the possibilities for production and the characterization of powder from ripened date fruits (Phoenix dactylifera L.). Various techniques including tray drying, freeze-drying, vacuum drying, microwave drying, convection drying were tested for their ability to dry the dates sufficiently to produce a dated powder. Six varieties of dates namely Barhi and Khalas (soft varieties), Sagi and Sukari (semi-dry varieties), and Barakawi and Gundeila (dry varieties) were evaluated for their drying characteristics. The drying parameters and the physicochemical characteristics were compared and a storage study for the date powder was conducted. It …

Levels Of Testosterone Esters In Camel Hair, Aysha Khalid Alraeesi

Theses

Doping and steroid use represent a serious threat to animal health and can even lead to their untimely and painful death. However, doping is an acute problem in today's animal racing world, particularly in camel racing. Testosterone and its ten esters (benzoate, valerate, isocaproate, hexahydrobenzoate, decanoate, undecanoate, laurate, enanthate, cypionate, and caproate) are of utmost importance because when they are administered to animals it is difficult to measure them efficiently. The levels of testosterone and its esters in camels and other animals are typically determined using urine and blood tests. The aim of this study was to develop and validate …

Pedagogical Evaluation Of Cognitive Accessibility Learning Lab In The Classroom, Saad Khan

Theses

In a study conducted by Webaim, 98.1% of sites had a detectable accessibility issue. This poses a profound challenge to the 1 billion users across the world who have a disability. This indicates that developers either are not aware of how to make the sites accessible or aware of how critical it is to make the sites usable by all users. This problem is further compounded by the lack of available resources that can educate students and future developers in making their software accessible. To address current limitations/challenges, we have developed an all-in-one immersive learning experience known as the Accessibility …

Numerical Investigation Of Mesh-Based Enhancement Of Vapor Bubble Condensation, Omar Darwish Ali Alqadi Alhammadi

Theses

The aim of this work is to study the vapor bubble condensation process and the enhancement technique via affecting bubbles dynamic using a mesh-based structure. The bubble dynamics and thermal behavior are studied by considering the heat and mass transfer through the bubble’s interface area between the vapor and liquid regions and the resulting condensation effects. The thermal characteristics of bubbles are observed considering the initial and final liquid temperatures. Additionally, the bubble dynamics are studied in terms of several parameters including the relative velocity of the bubble, bubble deformation, interfacial area, and the bubble diameters. The relation between the …

Using Ar And Vr Characters For Enhancing User Experience In A Museum, Kunal Shailesh Shitut

Theses

Museums and cultural heritage institutions have used technology to create interactive exhibits and pedagogical tools that help spark visitors’ interests. The rise of Augmented, Virtual and Mixed Reality Systems has further enabled the creation of a new generation of immersive experiences that can engage and educate visitors. These technologies can be used to develop digital characters that can serve as virtual tour guides and improve user engagement by answering questions and forming social bonds with the users. While such tour guides have been deployed as exhibits at many museums, the implementation is usually limited to a single exhibit or a …

Computational Design, Simulation Of Meshing, And Stress Analysis Of Strain Wave Gear Drives, Eloy Yague-Spaude

Theses

Strain wave gear (SWG) drives were patented in 1959 by C. Walton Musser as a coaxial, compact, and lightweight gear drive providing remarkably large gear ratios without backlash. This outstanding performance requires the use of a flexible gear, as well as a meshing process with two regions of tooth contact as opposed to traditional gear drives, which only mesh in a single region. The latter drives have been studied for centuries under the principles of solid mechanics whereas SWG drives lack strong bodies of literature, principles, and computational tools for their design.

SWG drives include three parts: wave generator, flexible …