Digital Commons Network^™

Electromagnetic Mems Safety And Arming Devices, Fatima Rashed Alnuaimi

Theses

This thesis aims to investigate the design of safety and arming devices within artillery fuzes, which rely on the spin velocity and setback acceleration of the weapon. These systems consist of two critical components: the spin lock and the inertia lock. The spin velocity and setback acceleration of the weapon induce deformations in these components, serving as key criteria for determining whether the weapon is in an armed or safe state.

The primary objective of this thesis is to comprehensively analyze and assess the design of both the spin lock and inertia lock. The research will delve into multiple factors …

Learning To Learn From Sparse User Interactions, Krishna Prasad Neupane

Theses

The ability to learn from user interactions provides an effective means to understand user intent through their behaviors that is instrumental to improve user engagement, incorporate user feedback, and gauge user satisfaction. By leveraging important cues embedded in such interactions, a learning system can collect key evidence to uncover users’ cognitive, affective, and behavioral factors, all of which are critical to maintain and/or increase its user base. However, in practical settings, interactive systems are still challenged by sparse user interactions that are also dynamic, noisy, and highly heterogeneous. As a result, both traditional statistical learning methods and contemporary deep neural …

Self-Assembling Peptide-Based High-Relaxivity Prostate-Cancer-Targeted Mri Contrast Agents, Andrew O'Brien

Theses

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is a widely used, highly effective imaging method for diagnosing cancer and guiding treatment. MRI contrast agents enhance image quality, with higher relaxivity (r1) contrast agents providing the best utility. Attaching a cancer-specific-targeting group enhances the image further. Therefore, a high-relaxivity cancer-targeted contrast agent is a highly desirable tool for diagnosis and treatment. Our group previously synthesized a peptide-based MRI contrast agent with the Ala(Gd-DO3A) chelator that targeted the prostate cancer biomarker PSMA using the small-molecule ligand DCL. While this agent displayed nominal relaxivity, it was serendipitously found that the relaxivity of a synthetic intermediate containing …

The Development Of A One-Shot Learning Machine Learning For Industrial Use With Predictive Maintenance, Conor O Brien

Theses

With the advent of Industry 4.0, Manufacturing operations have become more connected and automated. Modern industrial monitoring technology can monitor the performance of both the sensor utilised and the material under monitoring. This has led to a trend where legacy machines without this technology are being removed from production and/or not included in new reconfigurations of production lines, well before their productive lifespan had ended. A key driver for this is the difficulty in retrofitting Predictive Maintenance (PdM) systems to legacy machines, in part due to the machine-to-machine variation present in older machines. Accounting for this variation in PdM systems …

The Combination Approaches For One Class Classifier Ensembles For Software Defect Datasets, Maitha Mohammed Alkalbani

Theses

The classification of imbalanced datasets poses significant challenges, becoming a crucial topic in ML, particularly when standard algorithms struggle with accurate classification. In OCC, classifiers may encounter objects from ensembles of one class, leading to outlier scores generated at different scales. Additionally, there is a lack of a unified combination method, with many experiments resorting to using an average as the combination method. The thesis aims to investigate the effectiveness of normalization and unnormalized outlier scores on OCC ensembles. Furthermore, we conducted a comparative study of different types of combination methods. We used k-means clustering as OCC model, and the …

Enhancing Autism Education: Exploring Interactive Videos And Ai Integration For Effective Teaching, Fatima Ahmed Alraeesi

Theses

This research focuses on enhancing autism education by integrating interactive videos and AI solutions to improve teacher training. As the number of autistic students rises, it becomes crucial for special education teachers to employ effective teaching strategies tailored to individual needs. The most effective teaching methods for autistic students involve understanding the condition and incorporating customized instruction strategies, such as adapting assignments to suit the student's needs, assisting those with difficulty speaking, and employing visual aids for better organization. The proposed solution involves utilizing interactive video technology to train teachers, bridging the gap between research and practical implementation of educational …

Human Error Assessment In Software Engineering, Benjamin S. Meyers

Theses

Software engineers work under strict constraints, balancing a complex, multi-phase development process on top of user support and professional development. Despite their best efforts, software engineers experience human errors, which manifest as software defects. While some defects are simple bugs, others can be costly security vulnerabilities. Practices such as defect tracking and vulnerability disclosure help software engineers reflect on the outcomes of their human errors (i.e. software failures), and even the faults that led to those failures, but not the underlying human behaviors. While human error theory from psychology research has been studied and applied to medical, industrial, and aviation …

Predicting Payment Defaults In Customs Authorities, Ahmed Fayed Elnahel

Theses

As the global economy continues to expand, international trade is growing at an unprecedented rate, resulting in a surge of cargo movements across borders. With so much activity taking place, it's imperative that customs systems operate intelligently to identify potential risks in every transaction and highlight any potential fraud or manipulation that may be occurring. Customs play a crucial role in supporting legitimate trade, protecting society, and promoting sustainable economic development. However, it is unfortunate that some companies take advantage of the facilities provided by customs departments to avoid paying their duties or engaging in smuggling from the free zone …

Tabula Rasa, Yaoxuan Liu

Theses

"We often talk about “seeing through the eyes of a child,” but if we think back to how we saw the world when we were kids, it feels an awful lot like the way we “see” things now. As children, the stakes felt as high, the triumphs as monumental, and the fears certainly just as real. If anything, we remember the imaginings of our childhood being more potent — the veil between what we imagined and what was so much flimsier." (April Daniels Hussar, Janet Manley, and Anne Vorrasi, July 16, 2019.) While growing up, we are constantly learning new …

A Study On The Impact Of Nonlinear Effects On Hyperspectral Sub-Pixel Target Detection, Colin J. Maloney

Theses

In the realm of hyperspectral (HS) sub-pixel target detection, the Linear Mixing Model (LMM) proposes that the macroscopic interaction between incident light and materials in a scene may be modeled as linear. For individual pixels in hyperspectral data which contain multiple materials, this means that they may be accurately represented by a linear combination of the spectra of those pure materials, which are often called endmembers. However, when nonlinear mixing, such as shadowing and adjacent reflections, are present, the foundational assumptions of the LMM are violated and its accuracy in predicting target detection performance is reduced. This thesis aims to …

What Is The Best Way To Develop A Website?, Nahomy Julieta Calderon Lopez

Theses

This project is centered around empowering individuals with the knowledge and resources necessary for effective website development. The culmination of Thesis/Directed Project II is a user-friendly website designed to distill and present the insights gathered during Thesis/Directed Project I. This website features an engaging interactive quiz, aimed to help the users identify what is the best way, for them, to develop a website. The quiz has multiple questions, each with three distinct response options, the quiz guides users towards one of three key approaches for website development: Website Builders, Content Management System platforms, or Coding. Upon receiving their quiz results, …

Using Ml To Understand The Factors Impacting Diabetes In Diabetic Patients, Marwa Ahmed Almarzooqi

Theses

Diabetes, a well-known medical condition since ancient times, has become a prevalent and significant health concern in recent decades. The rising incidence of diabetes has necessitated early diagnosis and effective treatment. Machine learning (ML) innovations have revolutionized disease prediction and decision-making by utilizing massive datasets. This study aims to develop and compare machine learning (ML) models for diabetes prediction using a preprocessed dataset of 532 instances obtained from Kaggle. Important variables included in the data set are Pregnancies, Glucose, Blood Pressure, Skin Thickness, Insulin, BMI, Diabetes Pedigree Function, Age, and Outcome. The correlation analysis revealed a strong positive association between …

Dual-Site Photoplethysmography Sensing For Noninvasive Continuous-Time Blood Pressure Monitoring Using Artificial Neural Network, Anas Mohmmad Rabab’Ah

Theses

Millions of people worldwide struggle from high blood pressure, often known as hypertension, and it is a major health concern that can lead to serious cardiovascular diseases, including heart attacks and many other consequences. Blood pressure monitoring that is reliable and accurate is crucial to the detection and management of hypertension. Although invasive techniques, such as arterial catheterization, are considered to be the most accurate means of evaluating blood pressure, they can be painful, time-consuming and carry a risk of complications.
/="/">This thesis presents the development of a real time non-invasive blood pressure monitoring system based on commercially available …

Robust Weakly Supervised Learning For Real-World Anomaly Detection, Hitesh Sapkota

Theses

Anomaly detection has attracted increasing attentions from diverse domains, including medicine, public safety, and military operations. Despite its wide applicability, anomaly detection is inherently challenging as abnormal activities are usually rare and unbounded in nature. This makes it difficult and expensive to identify all potential anomalous events and label them during the training phase so that a detection model can provide robust prediction on unseen event data. Unsupervised and semi-supervised learning models have been explored, which achieve a decent detection performance with no or much less annotations. However, these models can be highly sensitive to outliers (\ie normal samples that …

Investigating The Rheological Behavior Of A Simple Yield Stress Fluid Under Shear Flows, Francesco Accetta

Theses

Many soft materials display unique and complex rheological behavior characterized by a transition from a solid-like to a fluid-like state upon the application of a force that exceeds the threshold to flow, known as the yield stress. Yield stress fluids are found in a wide range of commonly encountered materials including microgels, emulsions, and foams, and have been widely studied by rheologists over the last several decades. Carbopol is a popular polymeric microgel system as it displays simple, non-thixotropic rheological behavior and is typically seen as an ideal yield stress fluid. Previous research has demonstrated the reproducible behavior of shear …

Comparison Of The Effects Of Catchment Land Use/Land Cover On Freshwater Macroinvertebrate Communities And Water Quality In Three Rivers Of The Dingle Peninsula, Brooke Elizabeth Chesler

Theses

The Dingle Peninsula, a dynamic coastal ecosystem in the southwest of Ireland, provides an appropriate location to study the delicate balance that exists between human activities i.e., tourism, agriculture, and forestry, and their resulting impacts on the environment. Thus, the adjacent Feohanagh, Milltown, and Owenmore catchments were analysed via three-minute kick-samples divided proportionally by substrata for macroinvertebrate community composition, in-situ physico-chemical measurements for water quality parameters, and CORINE classification of land use and land cover (LULC). The overall goal was to identify the effect of LULC on water quality using macroinvertebrates as bioindicators. The presence of sensitive or tolerant macroinvertebrates …

Impact Of Digital Transformation On Achieving Sustainability In Utility Sector Of Uae, Abdulrahman Salem Alsaleh

Theses

The central focus of the current study is to understand the impact of digital technology on sustainable practices in a utility sector within the UAE. The research examined whether AI, blockchain, and big data can improve sustainability in the company to completely understand how digital technologies influences sustainable practices in the county’s utility sector. Data were gathered using the survey data collection method for a quantitative review. The reliability of the data was examined using Cronbach’s Alpha, and the strength of the relationships between the variables was investigated using correlation analysis. The extent to which the adoption of AI, big …

Design And Implementation Of Environmental Management System (Ems) Using Iso 14001:2015 Standard In A Medical/Healthcare Organization, Mohammed Rizwan Mirajkar

Theses

Environmental Management Systems (EMS) have been widely implemented by organizations across various industries since late 1980s. The system comprises of policies, procedures, processes, and various documents and formats that are essential not only to attain governance within organizations but also establish a robust management system. In the last decade, the need to enhance environmental performance and achieve sustainability objectives has become a business imperative for organizations across the world. Organizations are mandated to comply with environmental requirements and regulations through contractual agreements between customers and their business partners. Globally, the ISO 14001:2015 standard in its current version is the most …

Modifying Attention Away From Food Cues: The Utility Of Attentional Bias Modification Training Among Emotional Eaters, Moet Aita

Theses

The current study (N=153) was designed to explore the relationships between emotional eating and emotion regulation, attentional biases, and food consumption. Emotional eating describes the tendency to eat in response to emotional experiences, especially negative emotions, and is associated with the consumption of high-fat, sugary foods. The present study explored whether food intake could be modified among a sample of emotional and non-emotional eaters by shifting attention away from high-calorie pictorial food stimuli using the attentional bias modification (ABM) training paradigm. Participants were randomly assigned to either the attentional-training group, placebo-training group, or control group. Following the training, participants underwent …

Reduction In The Thermal Budget Of Sputtered Indium Tin Oxide (Ito) To Potentially Broaden Its Use In Microelectronic Devices, Zachary Flowers

Theses

Indium tin oxide, ITO, is a transparent conducting oxide widely known for its low resistivity and high transmission in the visible spectrum. It is most commonly used as a contact in optoelectronic devices, where its transmission is paramount to the function of the device. In this work, a low thermal budget process to sputter ITO films to potentially expand its applications in the RIT cleanroom was developed. The baseline process utilized a dielectric In2O3:SnO2 sputter target and a 2 hour, 400◦C post deposition anneal step to achieve a high quality film. This work achieved films with similar properties, but with …

Improving The Environmental Density Mapping Of Galaxies At Redshift 0.5 < Z < 1.7 Using The Candels-Herschel Environmental Spectroscopic Survey (Chess), Jitrapon Lertprasertpong

Theses

Numerous studies show that galaxies in dense environments often exhibit a decline in their star formation rates (SFR) which can be observed in the SFR-density relation, referred to as "environmental quenching." However, at redshift z > 1, there exists tension among different studies regarding the evolution of the SFR-density relation. One source of this uncertainty arises from the lack of spectroscopy of galaxies at z > 1, which can result in inaccurately estimating the environmental density of galaxies in extragalactic fields. To address this issue, we present the CANDELS-Herschel Environmental Spectroscopic Survey (CHESS) designed to increase the spectroscopic completeness in CANDELS COSMOS, …

Optimization Of Alternative Mask Absorber Materials For Euv Lithography, Rajiv Naresh Sejpal

Theses

In efforts to continuously scale feature dimensions in semiconductor manufacturing, the industry has moved from refractive optical lithography to reflective extreme ultra-violet lithography (EUVL). The latter provides a significant improvement in the resolution by illuminating mask patterns using 13.5nm source wavelength at oblique chief ray angles (CRA). A typical EUVL mask consists of a multilayer Bragg mirror topped with a 55-70nm Tantalum-based (Ta-based) absorber stack to obtain layout patterns. This current three-dimensional (3D) mask architecture in combination with a small source wavelength and oblique illumination angles results in mask 3D (M3D) effects such light shadowing, pitch dependent best focus variations, …

Spherical Harmonic Analysis And Filtering Of Weyl Scalar Ψ4, Jackson Bates

Theses

Numerical Relativity simulations play an important role in the Astrophysics community through their ability to create templates and test specific solutions to Einstein’s Field Equations. As Gravitational Wave Astronomy has grown over the past decades, the need for accurate and efficient codes has grown as well. Binary Black Hole Merger simulations provide the template needed by modern Gravitational Wave Detectors (LIGO/Virgo) to verify the integrity of detected symbols.

Improvement of these merger simulations aids both the experimental and numerical sides of physics, as well as verifying the theoretical side. A major issue that arises from any numerical simulation of a …

Understanding Image Quality For Deep Learning-Based Computer Vision, Austin Bergstrom

Theses

Extensive research has gone into optimizing convolutional neural network (CNN) architectures for tasks such as image classification and object detection, but research to date on the relationship between input image quality and CNN prediction performance has been relatively limited. Additionally, while CNN generalization against out-of-distribution image distortions persists as a significant challenge and a focus of substantial research, a range of studies have suggested that CNNs can be be made robust to low visual quality images when the distortions are predictable. In this research, we systematically study the relationships between image quality and CNN performance on image classification and detection …

Purli: A Better Way To Brush, Aldyn Savage

Theses

Maintaining good oral hygiene is crucial for a healthy life, and properly tooth brushing stands out as a fundamental defense against dental issues. Unfortunately, many people do not brush their teeth properly and there is very limited technology available to assist them in compliance with the standard toothbrushing procedure. In the realm of technological innovation, augmented reality stands out as a powerful tool with boundless possibilities. Leveraging the potential of this transformative technology, we aim to utilize mirrors as a unique medium to design a captivating 3D projected model of teeth. This innovative approach aims to inspire and motivate users …

A Morphological Analysis Of High Redshift Galaxy Mergers Using Machine Learning, Caitlin Rose

Theses

Galaxy mergers play an important role in the formation and evolution of galaxies. However, identifying mergers can be difficult, especially at high redshift, due to effects such as: cosmological surface brightness dimming, poor resolution of images, the shifting of optical light to the infrared, and the inherently more irregular morphologies of younger galaxies. The advent of JWST and new deep, high-resolution near-infrared NIRCam images from the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science Survey (CEERS) will help mitigate some of these problems to better detect high redshift merger features. Simultaneously, sophisticated machine learning analysis techniques have the po- tential to more accurately …

Analyzing The Impact Of Process-Oriented Technology In Programming Education, Kate Arendes

Theses

Currently, there exist several factors in programming education that deter novice programmers. Computer science students are often significantly penalized for programs that do not compile, reflecting how current teaching standards are focused on the product of the student’s efforts, rather than the independent pieces of code that would otherwise execute properly. Novice programmers struggle with interpreting error messages that identify where and why a program failed, but are written with the assumption that the author already has mastered the fundamental concepts that they are trying to implement. In the classroom, educators may show presentations with pre-written code or perform live …

Commissioning The Tomographic Ionized-Carbon Mapping Experiment, Benjamin James Vaughan

Theses

Line intensity mapping is a novel technique that traces the evolution of cosmological structure sourcing a particular emission line through measurements of the aggregate emission of all galaxies along a line of sight. The Tomographic Ionized-carbon Mapping Experiment (TIME) is a far infrared waveguide imaging spectrometer that operates from 183-323 GHz, allowing it to trace the emission of the singly ionized carbon fine structure line ([CII], 157.7 µm) from redshift 5 to 9 to probe the infrared emission from star formation during the Epoch of Reionization. Further, TIME will also perform line intensity mapping observations of several carbon monoxide rotational …

3d Computational Modeling Of Multiphase Phenomena In Boiling Heat Transfer, Winston O. James Iii

Theses

Boiling heat transfer is used in industrial processes, such as heat exchangers, nuclear reactors, and high-powered electronics. There is a need to generate effective heat dissipation techniques to increase the operation limits of these technologies. To enhance heat dissipation with boiling flows, it is important to study boiling phenomena from a fundamental perspective to identify the relation between the fluid and heat transfer behavior near the interface during bubble growth. Boiling simulations have been used as a tool to visualize and quantify the heat transfer mechanisms near the interface. However, challenges exist in modeling bubble growth with a sharp interface …

Glass: The Augmented Reality Glass Blowing Assistant, John Bechtold

Theses

Many people desire to learn a new skill or craft, but having access to a mentor available to provide one on one feedback can be expensive or inaccessible to many. Learning a new skill can bring meaning and added value to a person’s life. Glasses explores bridging the physical and digital world through augmented reality tools that assist in the hand making of products and the learning of a new craft. Though Glasses specifically focuses on glass blowing, the concept could just as easily be applied to any form of craftsmanship such as woodworking, metalsmithing or welding. The product helps …