Digital Commons Network^™

Design And Optimization Of Devices And Architectures For Neuromorphic Silicon Photonics, Matthew Van Niekerk

Theses

Neuromorphic photonics is an exciting field at the intersection of neuroscience, integrated photonics, and microelectronics. To realize large-scale neural network-inspired systems, we must have a toolbox of linear and nonlinear operators. Here, we review state of the art for integrated photonic linear operators, which can perform linear operations using interference or wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) techniques, and nonlinear operators, which perform nonlinear operations with a combination of photodetection and modulation. We present some devices that fit into the needed toolbox. A new type of directional coupler, using skin depth engineering of electromagnetic waves, suppresses optical crosstalk and eliminates the need for waveguide …

Phylogeny And Taxonomy Of Genus Physaria In North America, Binoshi Hettihewa

Theses

Physaria is a genus of ~108 species belonging to family Brassicaceae that is predominantly distributed in Western North America, but one species occurs in Arctic Russia and Northern Canada and several species occur in South America. Regardless of the vast number of species in the genus, the genus lacks a well-resolved phylogeny representing many taxa, partially because phylogeny reconstruction is complicated by the fact that many species of Physaria vary in chromosome numbers and ploidy levels. In chapter 1, we review how polyploids are formed and become established and summarize what is known about variation in chromosome number and ploidy …

Focus Calibration And Point Spread Function Analysis For The Cosmic Infrared Background Experiment-2, Mike Parra Ortiz

Theses

The Epoch of Reionization is the period in the evolution of the Universe that spans the birth of the first stars and galaxies. During this time early UV-bright galaxies ionized the neutral intergalactic medium, leaving an imprint on the extra-galactic background light (EBL). The Cosmic Infrared Background ExpeRiment (CIBER-1) was designed to measure the EBL in the near-infrared (NIR) at redshifts z > 6 to observe the signal from reionizing sources. CIBER-1 measured excess radiation at NIR wavelengths when compared to expectations. The Cosmic Infrared Background ExpeRiment-2 (CIBER-2) was designed to better constrain the excess radiation observed by CIBER-1. Having the …

The Effect Of Heating Area And Wheatstone Bridge Materials On A Thermally Actuated Mems Viscosity Sensor, Connor Michael Levine

Theses

Being able to accurately measure oil viscosity in real time is critical for multiple applications. It can ensure that the oil being used to protect and lubricate gears and other mechanical elements is good. To do this a thermally actuated micro electromechanical systems (MEMS) based sensor has been previously developed. The sensor is able to measure viscosity by having the fluid couple with the oscillating diaphragm and monitoring the frequency, amplitude and quality factor of the waveform. To improve the accuracy of the sensor, 5 different versions were created to study the effects of heating area and the sensing material …

Lidar Voxel Segmentation Using 3d Convolutional Neural Networks, Yuval H. Levental

Theses

Light detection and ranging (lidar) forest models are important for studying forest composition in great detail, and for tracking objects in the understory. In this study we used DIRSIG, a first-principles and physics-based simulation tool, to turn the lidar data into voxels, towards classifying forest voxel types. A voxel is a 3D cube where the dimension represents a certain distance. These voxels are split into categories consisting of background, leaf, bark, ground, and object elements. Voxel content is then predicted from the provided simulated and real National Ecological Observation Network (NEON) data. The inputs are 3D neighborhood cubes which surround …

Efficient Synchronous Byzantine Consensus, Nibesh Shrestha

Theses

With the emergence of decentralized technologies such as Blockchains, Byzantine consensus protocols have become a fundamental building block as they provide a consistent service despite some malicious and arbitrary process failures. While the Byzantine consensus problem has been extensively studied for over four decades under various settings, many challenges and open problems still exist. Improving the communication complexity and the latency or round complexity are the two key challenges in the design of efficient and scalable solutions for the Byzantine consensus problem. This thesis focuses on improving the communication complexity and the round complexity of the synchronous Byzantine consensus problem …

Large Dry Metal Electrodes For Physiological Monitoring, Krittika Goyal

Theses

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the United States. In-home physiological monitoring systems have a potential to track daily changes in cardiovascular health and to provide health care professionals data about the recovery or deterioration of their patient’s cardiac health. Various in-home monitoring systems have been designed to capture physiological signals from both standard (chest, wrist) and non-standard (palms, buttocks) locations. Unfortunately, most in-home monitoring systems provide poor signal quality due to the use of dry electrodes. Dry electrodes have an unstable electrochemical interface that results in high and variable contact impedance and poor signal quality. The …

Artificial Games, Jake Johnson

Theses

This thesis project is an attempt to create an integration of augmented reality (AR) technology and tabletop board games, with a focus on tackling the challenge of maintaining engagement and capturing the attention of modern audiences who are often drawn to more interactive forms of entertainment like movies and video games. Specifically, the project explores the concept of augmenting older tabletop games with a combination of futuristic digital graphics and overlays with original physical game elements. The project sees and recognizes the problem, which is that the disparity between the level of engagement offered by traditional tabletop games and the …

Find A Way To Hug: A Multi-Discipline Design For Mother-Daughter Relationship, Jinyi Liao

Theses

The project Find a Way to Hug, or FWH for short is a personal project that tries to think about the influence of the mother-daughter relationship on the author's growth. The author's relationship with her mother changed dramatically after she came to the United States from China, prompting a re-examination of this relationship and inspiring this project. The author tries to tell a story of a mother and daughter looking for the possibility of understanding, forgiveness, and moving forward after going through various situations through multidisciplinary design. She presents this story of personal experiences and reflections in the form of …

Development And Validation Of Epidemiological Models For Informing Intervention Strategies And Preventing Critical Resource Shortages, Kimberly A. Dautel

Theses

Epidemiological models have been used to measure, understand, and respond to infectious disease outbreaks. Both model development and model validation are important when utilizing models to help inform public health responses. The goal of this work is to advance mathematical modeling efforts of infectious diseases of current worldwide importance through model development and validation. The model development portion focuses on modeling interventions strategies for two infectious diseases. The first model formulated captures education campaign as the collective effort aimed at educating the public about the nature of the Ebola virus, its transmission routes, and the importance of early detection and …

Outness Among Transgender And Non-Binary Adults: Effects Of Identity And Agency On Mental Health, Beau M. Gibbs

Theses

The present study investigated binary transgender (BT) and non-binary (NB) individuals both as an entire transgender non-binary (TNB) group and as two separate groups to examine entire group mental health trends and discern differences in mental health problems between groups. Outness, agency, experiences of transgender identity based microaggressions, and internalized transphobia in particular were investigated in relation to mental health. This study was conducted via an online survey and included 34 BT participants and 58 NB participants (92 participants in total). The correlation matrices and ANCOVAs revealed that none of the study hypotheses were supported. However, it was found that …

Coach Goggles Thesis, Christopher Dell' Aquila

Theses

This thesis project describes a Head User Display for athletic swimmers who have trouble perfecting their techniques without the aid of a coach. In any sport, athletes always have improved technique and speed because there is always an instructor, advisor, and coach to give wisdom, critiques, and advice for the pros and cons. However, there are some cases where an athlete will have to train on their own without the aid of their coach. The problem especially for swimming, is that in some sports athletes will not be aware of the mistakes they are making while performing the drills. Without …

Rf Device Characterization Of Graphene Transistors, Mohit Moitra

Theses

Radio Frequency performance of field-effect transistors has been explored in depth, experimented and industrially in use since a long time. Whenever one thinks of transistors which could take us to the regime of more than 1 THz in frequency it would always be the High Electron Mobility Transistors (HEMTS) as the perfect solution to that. The Graphene transistors have been very much in research from 2010 and promise equal results due to their huge potential in mobility. In the Semiconductor Manufacturing And Fabrication Laboratory at the Rochester Institute Of Technology our research group has been designing, fabricating and characterizing the …

Cast Iron Repair Through Directed Energy Deposition And Ancillary Processing Modes, Jakob D. Hamilton

Theses

A cast iron repair process that restores above 80% of the original tensile strength without thermal pre-conditioning is presented. Cast iron, an integral alloy to transportation and agricultural sectors, is a difficult alloy to repair owing to the presence of discrete graphite flakes and the tendency to form brittle iron-carbide phases and porosity. Preheating and post-process annealing assist in preventing premature fracturing but are economically and environmentally impractical for large castings. Thus, methods that circumvent these limitations while avoiding defect formation are crucial. Laser-based directed energy deposition (DED) offers a highly controllable method of remanufacturing cast iron and high carbon …

The Implications Of Venus In The Interwar Oeuvre Of James Guy, Emily Cooper

Theses

American Social Surrealist James Guy was a Communist proletarian artist who created works of art that depicted the social inequities he witnessed and experienced during the Great Depression. As a working-class artist, Guy painted images of daily life with recognizable and accessible iconography that allowed his fellow manual laborers to relate to the depicted scene. Guy distorted commonplace experiences through the filter of Surrealism to create absurd, illogical, and nightmarish environments to critique contemporary society. Guy worked to spark the realization of the viewer that they were subjected to the same injustices as the figures in his paintings. In this …

Stacking The Deck In The Learner's Favor: Behavioral Skills Training Improves Safmeds Implementation, Lauren Olsen

Theses

“Say All Fast Minute Every Day Shuffled” (SAFMEDS) is a structured, evidence-based protocol for using flashcards. The protocol is a sequence of steps that are designed to promote accurate and quick responding to learn the information presented on flashcards. Although the benefits of using SAFMEDS have been well-documented, much of the literature fails to adequately describe the methods used to train participants on how to use the protocol. In addition, few studies measure participant procedural integrity (i.e., the extent to which the protocol is implemented as planned). To date, no study has systematically examined the effects of different training methods …

Inter-Procedural Program Synthesis For Automatic Architectural Tactic Implementation, Ali Shokri

Theses

Software architectural tactics are design decisions made by software architects to address important quality attributes of software systems such as security, availability, and reliability. Software developers incorporate API of software frameworks, as building blocks, for implementing architectural tactics in a software system to achieve the mentioned quality attributes. The correct implementation of such tactics is a challenging and error-prone task, especially for novice programmers. Component-based program synthesis aims to help such programmers by automatically constructing a code snippet from a given set of components, e.g., APIs, as well as the specification of the desired code. However, despite the advances in …

Diffractive Light And Solar Sails, Prateek Ranjan Srivastava

Theses

In the realm of space exploration, humanity has achieved remarkable feats like landing humans on the moon. However, our progress in venturing beyond our solar system has been limited. Light sails, which utilize photon momentum from laser or solar radiation, o↵er a promising propulsion technology. Unlike traditional rockets, light sails carry no fuel and can achieve high velocities and precise orbital maneuvers. In this research, we propose using an elementary space variant di↵ractive film to design passively stable light sails propelled by laser radiation. We also explore applying this concept to solar sails, enabling spiral trajectories and high orbital inclination …

Designing Automatic Speech Recognition Technologies To Improve Accessibility For Deaf And Hard-Of-Hearing People In Small Group Meetings, Matthew Shoji Seita

Theses

Deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) individuals face several barriers to communication in the workplace, particularly in small-group meetings with their hearing peers. The impromptu nature of these meetings makes scheduling sign-language interpreting or professional captioning services difficult. Recent advances in Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) technology could help remove some of these barriers that prevent DHH people from becoming involved in group meetings. However, ASR is still imperfect, and it contains errors in its output text in many real-world conversation settings. This research investigates whether there are benefits in using ASR technology to aid understanding and communication among DHH and …

An Evolutionary Comparative Study Of Congenital Stationary Night Blindness-Associated Trpm1 Genetic Variants Of Uncertain Significance In Horses And Humans Utilizing Caenorhabditis Elegans, Gabrielle Davis

Theses

Congenital stationary night blindness (CSNB) is a heterogeneous collection of genetic diseases affecting the eyes and vision in horses and humans. Current research has implicated several genetic mutations impacting different genes involved in phototransduction and signal transmission, including TRPM1. In horses, genetic mutations in TRPM1 also result in a leopard spotting pattern or leopard complex. The goal of this study is to examine the potential impact of CSNB associated TRPM1 missense variants of uncertain significance (VUS). Previous research in Caenorhabditis elegans have revealed an orthologous TRPM1 gene known as gon-2 that allows for comparative studies. The evolutionary relationship of …

Technology Takeover And Transformation: Humans Vs. Technology, Mikayla Tjeerdsma

Theses

When looking at the history of the fashion industry up to the present day, technology can easily distinguish the progress of fashion throughout the ages. The direction of this research is to gain insight and a deeper realization of how technology is taking over and transforming those in and revolving around fashion by slowly taking over and replacing human involvement or presence. Statistics and research show due to the adverse effects of COVID-19, technological development within fashion has seen a significant increase. COVID-19 was either the final push towards making technological ideas a reality or was the birth of new …

Being Authentic On Social Media With Generation Z, Soyombo-Erdene Ariunbold

Theses

This paper discusses the evolving landscape of social media and the significance of authenticity on social media platforms for Generation Z. It emphasizes the rise of social media platforms, shedding light on their authenticity and the profound influence they have on users' mental well-being. The paper also highlights the necessity for content creators and brands to adapt by incorporating more unpolished content on social media platforms.

The final deliverable will include a detailed survey analysis of the content authenticity on BeReal application. The findings of this study will offer valuable insights into the increasing demand for authenticity on social media …

Characterization Of Antimicrobial Properties Of Excrement And Functional Microbiome Of Black Vultures (Coragyps Atratus), Bridgette Gray

Theses

Black vultures, Coragyps atratus, are obligate scavenging birds that consume and dispose of decaying carcasses and carrion. They fulfill a key ecological niche in the environments in which they live. It has been observed that these vultures sometimes excrete bodily waste onto their legs. This adaptive behavior could help aid them in controlling bacteria and other microbes they encounter while stepping into a carcass to eat. This study directly examined the antimicrobial properties of the excrement of black vultures across various bacterial species utilizing a zone of inhibition test and a nematode species utilizing a survival assay. The black vulture …

Generating Adversarial Malware Examples Using Particle Swarm Optimization, Sirapat Thianphan

Theses

Adversaries develop adversarial malware examples that are designed to evade detection systems, which can significantly decrease the performance of malware classifiers. To defend against adversarial malware examples, a technique called adversarial training is implemented by additionally train the detection models with adversarial examples, making the models more robust to such attacks. This thesis discusses an approach to generating adversarial examples using Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). We explore a technique called AdversarialPSO proposed by Rayan Mosli [1], which crafts adversarial malware examples by replacing API calls with alternative APIs that have equivalent functionality leveraging PSO to navigate substitutions. In this thesis, …

Fsmlock: Sequential Logic Locking Through Encryption, Matthew Krebs

Theses

As the technology node size for integrated circuit (IC) designs decreases, the cost of building and maintaining an IC foundry rapidly increases. Companies unable to afford local manufacturing have become reliant on outsourcing the physical manufacturing process. This introduces confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity security vulnerabilities into the IC design lifecycle. Even companies that manufacture in-house and use field-programmable gate array (FPGA) chips may require third-party system integrators to assemble the final product. When said product is sent to a third-party foundry or system integrator, the embodied IC/FPGA circuitry is susceptible to IP theft, Trojan insertion, and reverse engineering (RE) attacks. …

Applying Homomorphic Encryption To A Cross Domain Problem, Cheyenne Dailey

Theses

The Cross Domain Problem (CDP) strives to ensure protected data transference across varying security domains. In order to accomplish this, a Cross Domain Solution (CDS) is needed. A common method to protect data is to focus on risk management between trusted parties; however, untrusted parties pose ongoing concern. The problem is determining a method that transfers classified data through various security domains without exposing any information to intermediary parties. Attempts to mitigate this problem have been made utilizing Homomorphic Encryption (HE), a type of encryption that allows for computations to be executed on encrypted data without needing to decrypt it. …

Continual Domain Adaptation Through Knowledge Distillation, Georgi Thomas

Theses

Domain Adaptation (DA) techniques aim to overcome the domain shift between a source domain used for training and the target domain used for testing and deployment. Domain adaptation methods assume the entire target domain is accessible during the adaptation process. We use efficient architectures in the continual data-constrained DA paradigm where the unlabeled data in the target domain is received continually in batches. In recent years, Vision Transformers have emerged as an alternative to traditional Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) as the feature extraction backbone for image classification and other computer vision tasks. Within the field of DA, these attention-based architectures …

A Privacy Safeguarding Framework For The Smart Grid, Gaurav Shivaji Wagh

Theses

The smart grid is an outcome of integrating communication technologies with traditional electrical systems. This enables the collection of granular metering data from the customer domain for providing grid and billing functionalities. However, the data collection process exposes the grid to various cyberattacks, posing a significant threat to customer privacy. This is a critical concern for the smart grid community and has hindered the global adoption of the smart grid technology. Although aggregation-based frameworks show promise for sharing metering data with the Electrical Service Provider while maintaining customer privacy, existing aggregation-based frameworks have several limitations. Some of these limitations include …

Cybersecurity Attacks Detection For Mqtt-Iot Networks Using Machine Learning Ensemble Techniques, Sahar Mohamed Bukhari Abdelbasit

Theses

The Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the technical advancements that is progressing swiftly. which promises to be revolutionary soon. IoT systems are convenient due to its device centralized and computerized control. This technology allows various physical devices, home applications, vehicles, appliances, etc., to be interconnected and exposed to the Internet. On the other hand, it entails the fundamental need to protect the network from adversarial and unwanted alterations. Machine-to-machine protocols like Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) are typically used by IoT devices to communicate. Numerous techniques to attack networks employ the lightweight messaging protocol known as MQTT (Message …

موقف القانون الإماراتي من الصياغة النموذجية للعقود, سعيد علي الدرعي

Theses

Standard form contracts are widely used in various economic transactions, which contributes to a convenient and time saving method to create agreements that are compatible with contractual terms. The importance of this study is that when the consumer wants to obtain a good or service, the seller will offer him a standard form contract to sign, and this consumer may be forced to enter into this contract to satisfy his needs, even if this good or service is not one of the basics for society as a whole, but it is necessary for him as an individual.

Additionally, this study …