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Nestview-Transforming House Hunting With Ar, Chia-An Lee Aug 2025

Nestview-Transforming House Hunting With Ar, Chia-An Lee

Theses

NestView is an augmented reality (AR) based smart glasses system which aims to facilitate the process of finding rental homes for people. Conventional rental websites bombard users with two-dimensional data and have no sense of place, which is why they're both time-consuming and mentally taxing. NestView gives the user real-time mobile listings displayed in AR right in their physical space, providing an immersive, contextually aware rental experience. Informed by a user-centered design methodology, this study examines what frustrations the renters experience, and in what ways AR applications can meet those frustrations. The system comes with proximity-driven filtering, voice interactions, an …


Enhancing Adversarial Robustness In Convolutional Neural Networks By Integrating Human Viewing Strategies, Diana Velychko Aug 2025

Enhancing Adversarial Robustness In Convolutional Neural Networks By Integrating Human Viewing Strategies, Diana Velychko

Theses

Adversarial examples pose a serious threat to the reliability of deep neural networks by subtly manipulating inputs to induce incorrect outputs. Despite progress in the field, convolutional neural networks (CNNs) remain vulnerable to such perturbations. This research proposes a novel approach to improve adversarial robustness of CNNs by incorporating human viewing behavior into both training and testing processes. To establish a baseline for comparison with models trained from scratch, an eye-tracking dataset—collected during experiments involving novel objects from the Greeble dataset—was used to capture how humans learn to classify previously unseen object categories. This study compares model saliency with human …


Amorphous Oxide Semiconductor Materials And Devices For Monolithic And Heterogeneous Integration, Eli P. Powell Aug 2025

Amorphous Oxide Semiconductor Materials And Devices For Monolithic And Heterogeneous Integration, Eli P. Powell

Theses

The expanding consumer electronics industry has spurred significant advancements in display technology. Thin-Film Transistors (TFTs) serve as active matrix switching components in LCD and OLED panels. Amorphous metal-oxide semiconductors (AOS) support large-area deposition at low temperatures and boasts an electron mobility many times greater than that of amorphous silicon. This work presents a comprehensive study on AOS materials and devices for their introduction to display, monolithic integration, and heterogeneous integration applications. Key studies have focused on advancing the state of (Indium Gallium Zinc Oxide) IGZO TFTs by addressing challenges in device uniformity, reliability, and modeling. Device uniformity was improved by …


The Case For Mass Media Communication Theories In The Study Of Artificial Intelligence: A Uses And Gratifications & Parasocial Interaction Theory Approach, Colin Farmer Aug 2025

The Case For Mass Media Communication Theories In The Study Of Artificial Intelligence: A Uses And Gratifications & Parasocial Interaction Theory Approach, Colin Farmer

Theses

This study analyzes communication and relationship building between textual generative Artificial Intelligence programs and their users through the lens of parasocial interactions and uses and gratifications. It measures loneliness, knowledge gaining, and task completion as the primary reasons motivating perceived relationship development with AI applications. Through a quantitative survey, it explores the connections between time spent using AI, as well as the previously mentioned factors and seeks to determine what influences a user’s perceived relationship with an AI chatbot program. Comparisons are also drawn between the relationships with AI and the user’s relationships with celebrities, further expanding the justification for …


Analyzing Heat Transfer Mechanisms In Tapered Microgaps And Film Boiling With Computational Modeling Incorporating Nucleation Sites And Subcooled Fluids, Divyprakash Pal Aug 2025

Analyzing Heat Transfer Mechanisms In Tapered Microgaps And Film Boiling With Computational Modeling Incorporating Nucleation Sites And Subcooled Fluids, Divyprakash Pal

Theses

Applications such as nuclear reactors, data centers, and microelectronics require an understanding of the hydrodynamic and thermal behavior of liquid and vapor phases on heated surfaces. Phase change and interfacial dynamics enhance heat transfer in evaporation and condensation systems. This study simulates film evaporation, subcooled nucleate boiling, and confined boiling in tapered microgaps using customized Ansys Fluent with user-defined functions (UDFs) for sharp interface tracking and temperature-gradient-driven mass transfer. In film evaporation, the peak local heat transfer coefficient (HTC) reached 2170 W/(m²·K) at 0.5 mm film thickness. The maximum Nusselt number was 5.69 at 0.5 mm and the minimum was …


Dyadic And Multiparty Turn-Taking In Two Deaf Preschool Classrooms, Savannah Tellander Aug 2025

Dyadic And Multiparty Turn-Taking In Two Deaf Preschool Classrooms, Savannah Tellander

Theses

Conversational turn-taking skills are needed to succeed in most conversational interactions. Timing of turn-taking is crucial for young deaf signers, who need early, accessible, and consistent input in a signed and/or spoken language. For deaf children who acquire a language in either modality, they must acquire appropriate turn-taking skills. Without these abilities, children may miss critical language input, and in a cascading effect–they may miss opportunities both for input (and thus new knowledge) and expressive language. In addition to documenting deaf children’s turn-taking skills across development, it is important to also document timing data for further understanding of cognitive language …


How Dust Impacts Galaxy Evolution In The Early Universe With Champs: Data Reduction And Source Detection, Felix Martinez Aug 2025

How Dust Impacts Galaxy Evolution In The Early Universe With Champs: Data Reduction And Source Detection, Felix Martinez

Theses

How dust impacts galaxy evolution in the early universe is largely unconstrained due to under sampling in the rest-frame far-IR. New detections of optically dark galaxies (galaxies that have no rest-frame optical counterparts) have shown that there is a population of galaxies that have largely gone undetected due to this under sampling. CHAMPS (PI: A. Faisst) is designed to study how dust impacts galaxy evolution in the early universe by complimenting MIRI and NIRCam observations from JWST in COSMOS-Web and PRIMER with new ALMA observations focused at 1.2 mm (ν = 250 GHz). This thesis presents the data reduction and …


Design That Builds Communitites: An Evaluation Method For Analyzing, Assessing, And Improving The Way We Plan And Design The Places Around Us, Devine Karas-Gonzalez Aug 2025

Design That Builds Communitites: An Evaluation Method For Analyzing, Assessing, And Improving The Way We Plan And Design The Places Around Us, Devine Karas-Gonzalez

Theses

The places around us shape and impact on the way we interact and live within our communities. As such, it is important to place greater emphasis on designing spaces which are meant to better respond to the needs and functions of a place. With an architectural design process this will result in the use of design strategies which will inform much of the design. In this research, multiple design strategies (Smart Growth, Placemaking, Place Value, and Street Experiments) are evaluated and compared using four regionally similar cities to analyze and assess how the different strategies impact the design process by …


Retrofitting An Fdm Printer For 3d Printing With Cotton Yarn: A Novel Approach And Mechanical Property Evaluation, Muhammad Aghead Al Arnaout Aug 2025

Retrofitting An Fdm Printer For 3d Printing With Cotton Yarn: A Novel Approach And Mechanical Property Evaluation, Muhammad Aghead Al Arnaout

Theses

The rapid rise of 3D printing in industry has intensified research into developing advanced and sustainable printing materials, as the properties of the feedstock directly influence the performance of the final product. This thesis investigates the integration of natural cotton yarn into PLA (Polylactic Acid) to enhance mechanical behavior while maintaining cost-effectiveness, using a standard 3D printer without any modifications. Experimental results across three phases demonstrated consistent improvements. In the first phase, cotton–PLA composites exhibited higher ductility (+22.27%) and toughness (+10.51%) than pure PLA, albeit with lower stress values and a slight decrease in Young’s modulus. In the second phase, …


Towards A Foundational Framework For Real-World Active Learning: Theory, Algorithms, And Applications, Dayou Yu Aug 2025

Towards A Foundational Framework For Real-World Active Learning: Theory, Algorithms, And Applications, Dayou Yu

Theses

While supervised learning has seen great success in the modern machine learning era, the challenge of obtaining high-quality labeled training data still exists. In many knowledge-rich domains, we still face the problem of letting machine learning models learn well using a limited number of labels. Active learning (AL) has been a prominent learning paradigm that deals with such problems. This thesis reviews the classical challenges of AL, summarizes how our prior work has advanced the field, and charts a course for adapting AL to realistic and challenging scenarios. We begin by discussing past work on standard scenarios for AL, including …


Predicting Hollywood Movie Success Using Predictive Machine Learning Algorithms, Saeed Alghabshi Hathboor Aug 2025

Predicting Hollywood Movie Success Using Predictive Machine Learning Algorithms, Saeed Alghabshi Hathboor

Theses

The Decision Trees are always simple to understand and interpret techniques, a single tree may not be enough for the model to learn the characteristics from. In this IMDb movie review prediction problem, evading all other simple mechanisms, the Random Forest, on the other hand, is a "Tree"-based algorithm that makes judgments by combining the attributes of numerous Decision Trees is used. The primary goal of this work is to evaluate the predictive performance of a random forest model with various parameters used for forecasting numerical user ratings of a movie based on pre-release data such as actors, directors, profit, …


Using Probabilistic Component Separation To Measure The Sunyaev-Zel’Dovich Effect In Herschel-Spire Galaxy Cluster Observations, Daniel Jeremy Klyde Aug 2025

Using Probabilistic Component Separation To Measure The Sunyaev-Zel’Dovich Effect In Herschel-Spire Galaxy Cluster Observations, Daniel Jeremy Klyde

Theses

Galaxy clusters evolve over cosmic history from small gravitational over-densities at redshift z > 7 to become the most massive gravitationally bound objects in the universe today. The demographics of galaxies populating clusters have shifted significantly over this time, from sites of intense star formation at z ~ 2-4, to largely quiescent objects in the current epoch. An important phase of this evolution involves the development of a hot, ionized intracluster medium (ICM). Its formation around cosmic noon overlaps with the peak in star formation, which requires a multi-wavelength observational approach to fully characterize. One way to study the properties of …


Pd Chlorin-Based Molecμlar Imaging Probes For Breast Cancer, Yoonjung Cho Aug 2025

Pd Chlorin-Based Molecμlar Imaging Probes For Breast Cancer, Yoonjung Cho

Theses

Breast cancer (BrCa) is the second most common cancer and the second leading cause of cancer death among women in the U.S. This highlights the necessity of developing effective therapeutic agents to aid in the treatment of BrCa. A promising new method of treatment is photodynamic therapy (PDT), a clinically approved therapeutic procedure that uses a porphyrin-based photosensitizer (PS) dye to kill cancer cells upon excitation with a light source. It has been observed that chelation of a metal ion into the porphyrin increases the therapeutic efficacy. We have developed a synthetic route incorporating the palladized analogue of the PS …


Ambient Environment Effect On Color Perception, Eddie Pei Aug 2025

Ambient Environment Effect On Color Perception, Eddie Pei

Theses

The ambient environment—including both background and surround conditions—is a critical factor influencing color perception. It affects not only how we perceive colors but also how we interpret complex visual scenes, impacting both sensory processing and cognitive interpretation. This thesis focuses on three major perceptual phenomena: simultaneous contrast, mixed chromatic adaptation, and color preference. First, the effects of simultaneous contrast on hue, chroma, and lightness in traditional displays were explored. This study was extended to a dual-display augmented reality (AR) environment that introduces layered perception. An extension to the CIECAM16 color appearance model is proposed to incorporate this effect. Second, the …


Eviction Optimizations And Dynamic Lease Adjustments In A Single-Level Lease Cache, Vincent Michelini Aug 2025

Eviction Optimizations And Dynamic Lease Adjustments In A Single-Level Lease Cache, Vincent Michelini

Theses

In a computer system, a hierarchical memory aims to give processing cores the illusion that they have access to the largest capacity memory, i.e., the disk, at the shortest access time, i.e., that of the memory level closest to them - the one-, two-, or three- levels of cache. Therefore, an efficient operation of the cache is key to lowering the average memory access time. Toward this end, lowering the miss rate, which is the principal metric of cache performance, is the goal of any cache implementation. Traditional caches are automatic and reactive. Several prior iterations of this work have …


A Place To Pause: Designing Ritual Space In The Domestic Realm, Elise Miller Aug 2025

A Place To Pause: Designing Ritual Space In The Domestic Realm, Elise Miller

Theses

Modern society in Western developed countries is focused on the rush and go, often leaving people feeling discombobulated from constant running around, task-oriented days and switching of roles one must play in different areas of their life, such as at home, work, socializing, parenting, etc. How can ritual bring a sense of calmness and order to lives of those on the go? Ritual studies are often only categorized under psychology, sociology, or religious studies. However, as industrial design encompasses human interaction with objects, often with an emotional quality, ritual can be studied more wholesomely with the added lens of industrial …


Digital Biophilia In Web Interface Design For Accessibility And User Well-Being, Bryana Michelle Peifer Aug 2025

Digital Biophilia In Web Interface Design For Accessibility And User Well-Being, Bryana Michelle Peifer

Theses

This interdisciplinary study explores the intersection between horticultural therapy and web design, focusing on the impact of biophilic design principles in shaping contemporary practices within digital interface design. This exploration addresses the multifaceted relationship between humanity and the natural world, particularly how this connection serves as a source for the emergence of nature-inspired elements in digital expressions and their subsequent integration into modern web design for accessibility and well-being. As digital environments increasingly dominate daily experiences, the need for digital wellness through nature integration has become critical, especially for individuals who have physical disabilities, limited mobility, or limited access to …


Enhancing Remote Operator Situational Awareness Leveraging Technology For Improved Decision-Making In Urban Emergency Response, Saleem Syed Aug 2025

Enhancing Remote Operator Situational Awareness Leveraging Technology For Improved Decision-Making In Urban Emergency Response, Saleem Syed

Theses

The aim of this research is to develop a technology enabled Unified Emergency Response Platform (UERP) that enhances situational awareness, decision-making, and response efficiency during urban fire emergencies. Traditional systems, such as Hassantuk, are primarily reactive and focus on alarm verification, often leading to delays and limited coordination among stakeholders. To address these challenges, this study proposes an integrated framework that leverages the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), digital twins, and predictive analytics to enable early fire detection, rapid alarm validation, and optimized incident response. The platform is structured around three key phases: (1) Early detection and prediction …


The Evolution Of The High Redshift Quiescent Population In Cosmos-Web, Carter B. Flayhart Aug 2025

The Evolution Of The High Redshift Quiescent Population In Cosmos-Web, Carter B. Flayhart

Theses

Understanding the quiescent galaxy population is incredibly important in the context of galaxy evolution. These galaxies are defined as having a low star formation rate, and their evolved stellar populations makes them identifiable by their redder colors in both the observed and rest-frame. Since their rest-frame optical emission lies in the infrared (IR) regime, observations of these galaxies at high redshifts were quite difficult prior to the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Recent observations of this high redshift population conflict with galaxy formation and evolution models that existed prior, with quiescent galaxies being detected more frequently than …


Waveform Systematics In Moderate Mass Ratio Binary Black Hole Systems, Rachel E. Mechum Aug 2025

Waveform Systematics In Moderate Mass Ratio Binary Black Hole Systems, Rachel E. Mechum

Theses

Gravitational wave (GW) observations of binary black hole (BBH) mergers by advanced LIGO (aLIGO) have transformed our understanding of compact objects (COs). As detector sensitivity improves, new populations consisting of moderate to high mass ratio binaries will become increasingly accessible. Parameter estimation (PE), a process that extracts source properties such as masses and spins from GW signals, is critically dependent on accurate waveform models. However, current models may use approximations that introduce systematic errors for binaries with mass ratios between 0.05 and 0.5, affecting parameter accuracy and scientific interpretation. Using the Rapid Iterative FiTting (RIFT) algorithm, this work quantifies waveform …


Model Explainability: From Post-Hoc To Self-Explainable, Xin Miao Lin Aug 2025

Model Explainability: From Post-Hoc To Self-Explainable, Xin Miao Lin

Theses

Deep learning models have achieved remarkable success across diverse domains, yet their ``black-box" nature poses significant challenges to trust and adoption, particularly in high-stakes applications. This dissertation addresses the critical need for explainable artificial intelligence by advancing model interpretability through three complementary approaches: improved post-hoc explanation methods, internal mechanism understanding, and inherently interpretable architectures. First, we tackle the challenge of explaining video understanding models by proposing Frequency-based Extremal Perturbation (F-EP), which generates spatiotemporally consistent explanations for video classification. By leveraging frequency domain analysis and extending perturbation-based methods to the temporal dimension, F-EP achieves superior spatiotemporal consistency while maintaining high classification …


Product, Process, And Behavior Influences On Value Retention Processes: Toward A Circular Economy In Consumer Electronics, Kyle Parnell Aug 2025

Product, Process, And Behavior Influences On Value Retention Processes: Toward A Circular Economy In Consumer Electronics, Kyle Parnell

Theses

Consumer electronic products (CEP) manufacturing and retail contribute markedly to global industrial activity; worldwide estimates suggest revenue growth from $1 trillion in 2020 to $1.5 trillion by 2026. Consequently, the production, distribution, use, and end-of-life (EOL) disposition of these products are responsible for considerable social and environmental impacts, including 35 million metric tonnes of waste to landfill per year, 793 million metric tonnes (MMT)—and growing—of carbon dioxide-equivalent (CO2e) greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per year, and innumerable adverse effects on human health and development. Driving these impacts are the inherent characteristics of CEPs themselves, which increasingly require critical materials in design, …


Advancing The Utility Of Unmanned Aerial Systems (Uas)-Based Imaging Techniques In Broadacre Agriculture: A Multimodal Case Study On Table Beets, Mohammad Shahriar Saif Aug 2025

Advancing The Utility Of Unmanned Aerial Systems (Uas)-Based Imaging Techniques In Broadacre Agriculture: A Multimodal Case Study On Table Beets, Mohammad Shahriar Saif

Theses

Efficient and sustainable food production and management are growing concerns in the context of an ever-increasing global population. It is in this context that the integration of remote sensing with advanced imaging technologies presents transformative opportunities for data-driven decision-making in agriculture. This study therefore explores the use of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) equipped with multispectral, hyperspectral, and LiDAR sensors for the non-destructive monitoring of table beet (Beta vulgaris) crop traits, with a specific focus on root yield estimation and foliar disease assessment. Table beet, a subterranean crop of increasing commercial and nutritional importance, poses unique challenges for above-canopy sensing due …


Engineering Tunable Collagen Fiber Alignment Gradients To Quantify Contact Guidance Effects On Cell Migration, Indranil Mandar Joshi Aug 2025

Engineering Tunable Collagen Fiber Alignment Gradients To Quantify Contact Guidance Effects On Cell Migration, Indranil Mandar Joshi

Theses

Directional migration of cells is one of the most important physiological processes, necessary for tissue and organ development. It also plays a crucial role in pathological conditions such as cancer metastasis. This directed migration is influenced by various factors present in the native environment, which guide cells to migrate steadily in a specific direction. Due to its importance, over the years, a lot of emphasis has been placed on understanding and exploring the biochemical and biophysical factors that direct cell migration. In addition to the commonly studied biochemical and biophysical cues, contact guidance from collagen fibers, in the native matrix, …


An Investigation Of Active Inference For Reinforcement Learning Control, Xinyu Hu Aug 2025

An Investigation Of Active Inference For Reinforcement Learning Control, Xinyu Hu

Theses

This thesis investigates the application of active inference framework on different reinforcement learning (RL) tasks. We specifically consider the following OpenAI Gym environments: CartPole, MountainCar, and LunarLander. In this thesis, our primary goal is to explore whether active inference could provide better performance and stability compared to traditional RL methods. The proposed model consisted of three main components: a variational autoencoder (VAE) model to infer hidden states, a transition model predicting latent states, and a Double deep Q-network (Double DQN) as the actor selecting optimal actions. To achieve this, extensive experiments are carried out using grid searches across several hyperparameters, …


Design Of A Posit Based 6-Bit Configurable Cnn Hardware Accelerator For Audio And Image Classification, Steven Ng Aug 2025

Design Of A Posit Based 6-Bit Configurable Cnn Hardware Accelerator For Audio And Image Classification, Steven Ng

Theses

The rapid development and growing interest in Artificial Intelligence (AI) have resulted in a trend of models increasing in size and complexity at an accelerating rate. These larger models have demonstrated a greater ability to accomplish increasingly sophisticated tasks compared to smaller models, furthering the trend of making models larger. However, as the models continue to improve and grow larger, this has created a new challenge in deploying them into practical applications. Current models typically run inference on the same systems where they were trained. Large data centers comprising Central Processing Units (CPUs) and Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) are well-suited …


Design Of A 32-Bit 4-Phase Asynchronous Risc-V Processor, Sean Jacobs Aug 2025

Design Of A 32-Bit 4-Phase Asynchronous Risc-V Processor, Sean Jacobs

Theses

As microchips become more complex, smaller, and faster, the clock skew and power consumption present significant design challenges. Asynchronous circuits offer a solution to these issues by replacing the global clock routing with handshaking circuitry. This thesis details the implementation of an asynchronous 32-bit RISC-V processor leveraging 4-phase bundled data handshaking to replace the clock used for synchronization. Key contributions include the development of a 4-stage pipelined RISC-V compliant processor architecture adapted for asynchronous operation, the design of a custom 45nm C-element cell crucial for handshaking synchronization, and analysis of its performance in terms of area, timing, and power. This …


Global Trail: Interactive Travel Memory System For Unesco Sites, Anne Sophie Beatrice Min Fa Aug 2025

Global Trail: Interactive Travel Memory System For Unesco Sites, Anne Sophie Beatrice Min Fa

Theses

Global Trail is an interactive mobile app designed for travellers or culture seekers to reimagine how they discover new places, engage with cultural sites and remember their travel experiences. In this digital world, photos get easily lost in phone galleries and sometimes lack an organized way to find specific memories to places visited. Through design, the app experience addresses three core objectives: Discover — users explore Unesco sites represented by badges through an interactive world map; Engage — they unlock and earn those badges when they visit those sites where they can post their memories on a community platform; and …


Radio Emission As A Probe Of Astrophysical Sources And Ionized Media, Olivia R. Young Aug 2025

Radio Emission As A Probe Of Astrophysical Sources And Ionized Media, Olivia R. Young

Theses

Broadband radio emission originates from a wide range of astronomical sources, such as the hot plasma of the middle solar corona and the exotic environments found around objects such as radio pulsars. For many of these sources, radio emission mechanisms and regions are not well understood, as they are complex and obscured from direct observation by the ionized media that the emission must traverse as it radiates outward toward the observer. Broadband radio waves from galactic astrophysical sources are delayed and distorted on their paths toward the Earth as they pass through the free electrons that compose a variety of …


Multiplex Leiden Optimized Dynamic Network Microsegmentation And Flow Validation For Software Defined Networks, Rashed Husni Rashed Alnuman Aug 2025

Multiplex Leiden Optimized Dynamic Network Microsegmentation And Flow Validation For Software Defined Networks, Rashed Husni Rashed Alnuman

Theses

Modern digital infrastructure is fundamentally built upon robust networks, which underpin seamless communication, data exchange, and the operation of critical systems. These networks facilitate everything from internet access and real-time patient vital sign transfers in healthcare to the management and control of industrial processes. As demands on networks have surged, their complexity and functionality have evolved significantly, continuously adapting to diverse sectoral needs. However, this rapid evolution has also amplified security challenges. The escalating scale and intricacy of contemporary networks have exposed vulnerabilities that traditional perimeter-based security models are often insufficient to counter. Static defenses prove inadequate in dynamic environments …