Digital Commons Network^™

Co2-Storage Trapping In Deep Saline Aquifers: Numerical Modeling On The Broom Creek Formation, Christopher Nkansah

Theses and Dissertations

Carbon dioxide (CO2) storage in deep saline aquifers holds promise as a viable solution to mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Bulk-CO2 injection and sequestration in deep saline aquifers is a complex geological process. Previous studies have shown that bulk-CO2 injection into deep saline aquifers provides sufficient aquifer storage efficiency. In North Dakota, the Broom Creek Formation exists in the subsurface as the upper unit of the Minnelusa Group.This study presents a simulation study of bulk-CO2 injection and storage in a saline aquifer belonging to the Minnelusa Group in the Broom Creek Formation by providing insights into and evaluating the efficiency …

A Student Co-Creation Lab As A Sustainable System For Oer Development, Sarah Ann Stokes

Theses and Dissertations

Open educational resources (OER) are digital and non-digital resources for teaching, learning, and research that are available for no cost and licensed with various open licenses, permitting their widespread modification and use. While these resources afford benefits to post-secondary students in terms of reduced cost, ease of access, and potential for customization, faculty members in Ontario, Canada face many barriers to creating these resources for their classes. While many post-secondary institutions have engaged in some form of OER-development initiative, the initiatives are typically not sustainable in the long term. This study explores the model, including the tools, techniques, and workflows, …

Verification And Validation Of Software System Class Models, Kruti Shah

Theses and Dissertations

The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a foundation in software development, providing standardized notation for visualizing, specifying, constructing, and documenting software systems. UML class models, in particular, offer a static view of a system's structure, capturing essential elements such as classes, attributes, operations, and relationships. Despite the widespread adoption of UML and its class modeling capabilities, challenges persist in ensuring the models' correctness, reliability, and effectiveness. This research presents a comprehensive study of UML's role in software development, delving into existing literature to examine the development of UML class models, its significance in various stages of the software development lifecycle, …

A Document Analysis On The Role Of Innovation In The Strategic Plans Of Small Private Liberal Arts Institutions, Jillain Kaye Veil-Ehnert

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study provides interpretations of the nature of strategic plans at small private liberal arts institutions. The study explored the concepts of innovation, entrepreneurship, and transformation detailed in the plans. This study included a specific cohort of eight United States small private liberal arts colleges with similar characteristics regarding academic programs, enrollment, and fiscal stability. The research was conducted through document analysis of the institutions’ publicly available strategic plans. The data collected illustrates what the documents indicates about innovation, entrepreneurship, and transformation at small private liberal arts colleges. Key findings on innovations in the plans included a focus on …

Using Libensemble To Enhance Numerical Ice-Sheet Flow Simulations, Kuang Hsu Wang

Theses and Dissertations

Here, we interface an ice sheet flow model, FastIceFlo v1.0, with the Python toolkitlibEnsemble to enable dynamic ensembles of computations. We test the interface’s capability to perform dynamic ensembles of computations by conducting a sensitivity analysis. The results indicate the interface’s ability to perform dynamic ensembles of computations. Future work could extend the interface to include mass balance to run prognostic simulations. The eventual goal is to run simulation ensembles of large-scale ice sheets forward in time to better assess its sea level contribution sensitivity to uncertainties in climate forcing parameterization.

High Performance Simulation Of Astrocyte Morphology And Dynamics For Brain Imaging, Lun Zhao

Theses and Dissertations

The brain is a complex organ composed of neurons and glial cells. Historically, glial cells were often overlooked in neuroscience research, but their significance has gained increasing recognition in recent years due to mounting evidence demonstrating their pivotal roles in brain function and disease. Notably, a growing body of research highlights the active involvement of astrocytes, the most abundant type of glial cells, in numerous neurological diseases. With the development of microscopy technology, our understanding of astrocytes is becoming more and more abundant. Due to the characteristics of microscopy, tissue scattering and environmental noise, there is a high demand for …

Utilizing Unmanned Aerial Systems (Uas) And Computer Software To Assess Effects Of Cover Crops On Cash Crop Volumetric Mass And Plant Height, Carlos Andres Garcia Patlan

Theses and Dissertations

Sustainability in agriculture starts with the health of soil-- from its productivity and fertility, to its ability to retain water during droughts and allow for drainage during rain. One approach of improving soil health is the use of cover crops, a practice associated with improved nutrient availability in soils, the promotion of soil biodiversity and organic matter to improve density and structure, effective weed management, and ultimately improved yields of subsequent cash crops. Assessing the cumulative impacts of cover crops is difficult, with various metrics and indicators. Crop dry weight may be a way to predict the effects cover crops …

Intrinsic Universality In Tile Automata And Related Results, Elise C. Grizzell

Theses and Dissertations

The Tile Automata (TA) model describes self-assembly systems in which monomers can build structures and transition with an adjacent monomer to change their states. This paper shows that seeded TA is a non-committal intrinsically universal model of self-assembly. We present a single universal Tile Automata system containing approximately 4600 states that can simulate (a) the output assemblies created by any other Tile Automata system Γ, (b) the dynamics involved in building Γ’s assemblies, and (c) Γ’s internal state transitions. It does so in a non-committal way: it preserves the full non-deterministic dynamics of a tile’s potential attachment or transition by …

Evaluating Feature Selection Methods In Machine Learning With Class Imbalance, Martha Asare

Theses and Dissertations

Class imbalance is a common issue in various real-world machine learning applications such as medical diagnosis and fraud detection, where one class significantly predominates over the other(s). Conventional methods often lead to biased models that favor the majority class, which can negatively impact the performance of the minority class. To address this issue, techniques like Synthetic Minority Oversampling Technique (SMOTE), Adaptive Synthetic Sampling (ADASYN), and NearMiss have been employed to adjust the class distribution. However, these techniques may not effectively capture the nuances when the feature space is noisy, irrelevant, or high-dimensional. This thesis presents a novel approach that combines …

Benchmarking Machine Learning Algorithms For The Prediction Of Gas Adsorption In Metal-Organic Framework Materials, Juan G. Benitez

Theses and Dissertations

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are nanoporous materials with a structure and chemistry that can be tailored with precision to support a variety of applications, such as gas storage, drug delivery, catalysis, and sensing. Central to the realization of these applications is the need to model adsorption in MOFs. However, if the goal is to screen a large number of the hundreds of thousands of MOFs discovered, conventional high-throughput molecular simulations are prohibitively demanding in terms of computational resources. Therefore, efficient approaches are required to efficiently identify suitable MOFs for specific applications. In our work, machine learning (ML) models to predict adsorption …

Increasing The Robustness Of Machine Learning By Adversarial Attacks, Gourab Mukhopadhyay

Theses and Dissertations

By perturbation or physical attacks any machine can be fooled into predicting something else other than the intended output. There are training data based on which the model is trained to predict unknown things. The objective was to create noises and shades of different levels on the images and do experiments for measuring accuracy and making the model classify the traffic signs. When it comes to adding shades to the pictures, pixels were modified for three different layers of the pictures. The experiment also shows that with the shadows getting deeper, the accuracies drop significantly. Here, some changes in pixels …

Mathematical Concepts And Coding Theory In Kumārasambhavam Of Kālidāsa, Bhuvaneswari K

Theses and Dissertations

Kālidāsa, a renowned Sanskrit poet and playwright from ancient India, is known for his profound understanding and depiction of various aspects of human life, nature, and the universe in his works. While his writings primarily revolve around themes of love, romance, and human emotions, there are several instances where he incorporates mathematical concepts and astronomical references.

His meticulous usage of such abstractions and symbolism adds depth and richness to his poetry. These elements serve as tools to enhance the imagery and aesthetics of his literary works, reflecting the interplay between art and science in ancient Indian culture. These subtle allusions …

Associations Between Coping Style And Perceptions Of Web-Delivered Physical Activity Messages Among Women In Midlife With Cardiovascular Health Risks, Kristen Pasko

Theses and Dissertations

Midlife women are at unique risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD) and benefit from increasing physical activity (PA). Many PA interventions involve social support, though fail to address related processes such as social comparison. Desire for specific types of social support and comparison may represent emotion-focused versus problem-solving coping, though little is known about women’s preferences for/responses to these coping opportunities. The present study examined women’s selections of PA content in a digital environment. Over 7 days, women in midlife ≥1 CVD risk factor (N = 60, MAge = 50.70, SD = 5.89) wore a PA monitor and visited a proprietary …

Robustness Of Aging Transition In Competing Effect Of Heterogeneity And Symmetry Breaking Coupling, Gowthaman I

Theses and Dissertations

The knowledge of emergent dynamics and the mechanisms by which self-organizing complex systems operate is a perennially difficult problem that can be effectively resolved by employing an ensemble of coupled dynamical units as a framework. Several intriguing collective dynamical behaviors, such as synchronization, chimera, clustering, oscillation quenching, etc., have been reported using an ensemble of coupled oscillators. Failure or degradation in the performance of even one of the local oscillators in a network of oscillators can lead to cascading failures resulting in the collapse of the entire network such as power blackouts. Similar dynamics can also be observed among neuronal …

Striking At The Root: A Categorization Of Dns Clients, Tyler Dean

Theses and Dissertations

The Domain Name System (DNS) root servers have provided a useful look into the DNS and internet ecosystems for decades. We present a categorization of clients querying DNS root servers. Using two clustering algorithms on DNS traffic sampled in 2020, we can predict the structure and volume of queries originating from different types of clients. Previous research has used unsupervised techniques to better understand DNS traffic patterns, but none have, to our knowledge, considered clients beyond those driven by queries from end users. By performing clustering on IP addresses rather than on individual queries, we are able to examine the …

Personalized Driving Using Inverse Reinforcement Learning, Rodrigo J. Gonzalez Salinas

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis introduces an autonomous driving controller designed to replicate individual driving behaviors based on a provided demonstration. The controller employs Inverse Reinforcement Learning (IRL) to formulate the reward function associated with the provided demonstration. IRL is implemented through a dual-feedback loop system. The inner loop utilizes Q-learning, a model-free reinforcement learning technique, to optimize the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equation and derive an appropriate control solution. The outer loop leverages this derived control solution to generate parameters for the reward function, which are subsequently integrated into the HJB equation. The ultimate control policy is deduced from the final reward function obtained …

Strong Gelfand Pairs Of Some Finite Groups, Joseph E. Marrow

Theses and Dissertations

Strong Gelfand pairs describe a relation between a group and a subgroup, using a relation between inner products of their characters. We find all strong Gelfand pairs of the dihedral and dicyclic groups, and several of the sporadic groups. We provide some results for the strong Gelfand pairs of the affine linear groups, in addition to the exceptional classical groups $\mathrm{Sp}_4(q)$ for $q$ a power of $2$.

Information Geometric Approaches To Optimal Experimental Design And Reduced-Order Modeling In Ocean Acoustics, Jay C. Spendlove

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis demonstrates the application of information geometry to problems in underwater acoustics. Information geometry combines the fields of information theory and differential geometry by interpreting a multiparameter model as a Riemannian manifold in an ambient data space. Information geometry tools are especially powerful in context of problems of experimental design and model selection in ocean acoustics. The application area specifically considered in this research is geoacoustic inversion, where seabed parameter values are inferred from acoustical data. Chapter 2 contains a paper submitted to the Journal of Theoretical and Computational Acoustics, which introduces information geometry tools such as the model …

Documentation Of Norm Negotiation In A Secondary Mathematics Classroom, Michelle R. Bagley

Theses and Dissertations

While previous mathematics education research has shown that norms can change in mathematics classrooms, little research has closely documented the struggles, concessions, and compromises involved in the negotiation process. Negotiating norms is a complex process entailing deliberate teacher moves intended to promote norms, often met with misunderstandings or resistance from students. This thesis documented the negotiation process that occurred when a teacher attempted to require conceptual explanations from students who had not previously been accustomed to doing so. I recorded six days of instruction in a 9th grade algebra unit, transcribed the class discussions, and inferred norms "at play" for …

A Scalable Parallel Processing Design For The Data Washing Machine: An Unsupervised Entity Resolution System, Nicholas Kofi Akortia Hagan

Theses and Dissertations

Entity Resolution (ER) has been one of the bedrocks in the creation of information systems by ensuring ambiguous entities are identified and resolved by linking. One common design approach of traditional ER systems is to run in single-threaded mode, which makes the system prone to out-of-memory error when processing larger datasets. The Data Washing Machine (DWM) as a proof-of-concept of an unsupervised cluster ER system is indifferent from this common design bottleneck. The original prototype design of the DWM requires shared memory tables and dictionaries of tokens, and its single-threaded nature makes it not scalable, hence not viable for real-world …

Examining School Belonging And Academic Resilience Among Biliterate And Multilingual High School Students, Keila Moreno Navarrete

Theses and Dissertations

An increasing number of students in the United States identify as Hispanic or Latino/a. These students enter American classrooms from varying backgrounds with diverse talents. Many of these students are proficient in at least two languages. Unfortunately, Hispanic students are underrepresented in gifted and talented programs, nationwide. The present study contributes to the limited empirical research on talented, biliterate, Hispanic, first-generation, and second-generation immigrant students by investigating strength-based factors (i.e., academic resilience, biliteracy, and school belonging) using both quantitative and qualitative evidence. Quantitative data from 30 bilingual Hispanic high school students were collected through an online survey with items measuring …

Optimization Of A Sers-Based Vertical Flow Immunoassay Utilizing A Plasmonic Syringe Filter For Rapid Biomarker Detection And Quantification, Anthony Abeiku Amissah

Theses and Dissertations

Many current diagnostic tools for accurate disease detection and quantification are often tedious and involve multiple complex steps. Consequently, there is a critical need for alternative point-of-care devices that are affordable and deliver rapid and reliable results. Recently, surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) has emerged as a highly effective analytical method, enhancing Raman scattering of molecules adsorbed onto nanoparticles and allowing for low-level detection and quantitative chemical analysis. In this study, we employ SERS to develop a rapid diagnostic test using human immunoglobulin G (hIgG) as a model biomarker because it is abundant in human serum, cheap, readily available, and well-understood. …

Membrane Hinges For Deployable Systems, C. Mitchel Skinner

Theses and Dissertations

Origami-inspired and deployable technology has become increasingly common in a variety of applications including satellite and antenna designs for space applications. The drive to utilize ultra-thin materials in the design of these deployable space structures has led to the development of membrane hinges. Membrane hinges show promise as an effective surrogate fold because of their potential advantages including requiring minimal volume and mass, allowing for small bending radii, and functioning without lubricant. Two challenges associated with membrane hinges include reliability after repeated cyclic loading and predictability of a large deployable with radially-unconstrained membrane hinges. The research presented includes the cyclic …

The Moderating Effect Of Organizational Identification And Supervisor’S Organizational Embodiment On Unethical Pro- Organizational Behavior, Taylor Morgan Flinn

Theses and Dissertations

Unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB) are behaviors that are illegal/immoral but are engaged in with the intention of benefiting their organization. The present study sought to investigate the moderating relationships of organizational identification (OI) and supervisor’s organizational embodiment (SOE), with work engagement as a predictor. The results revealed that there was a weak correlation between work engagement and UPB as well as SOE and UPB. Both OI and SOE did not moderate the relationship between work engagement and UPB. The current study contributed to the literature on predictors of UPB, as work engagement has rarely been used as a predictor of …

Parent-Child Interaction And Developing Resilience In Young Children, Seungok Yum

Theses and Dissertations

Early childhood is an especially important period to develop resilience due to social, academic, and emotional benefits for later development. Previous studies pointed out the importance of parent-child interactions, by showing that parental warmth and support can enhance resilience in children by increasing children’s self-esteem and self-regulation. In contrast, hostile parent-child interactions were revealed as risk factors to hinder developing resilience by increasing children’s internalizing symptoms and behavioral difficulties. This study included 85 young children aged 4 to 5 years and 85 parents recruited from the community. Parents completed the Parent Behavior Inventory (PBI) to provide details about two parent-child …

The Planning Strategy For Electric Vehicle Charging Stations In The Road Transportation Network Synchronized With The Distribution Network, Muthukannan S

Theses and Dissertations

Electric vehicles (EVs) are recognized as a potentially effective solution to the environmental crisis and fuel deficit that modern metropolises are currently experiencing. Meanwhile, the expansion of EVs and their haphazard charging would negatively affect the road transportation network (RTN) as well as the electric distribution network (EDN). The proper infrastructure for the electric vehicle charging station (EVCS) will enhance the effective utilization of energy of both the networks.

This research work proposes a two-phase planning strategy for deploying Electric Vehicle Charging Stations (EVCS), considering both static and dynamic factors. The strategy uses a hybrid PSO-DS algorithm which is a …

Investigating The Fatigue Life Of Asymmetric And Novel Helical Gear Drives, Rajesh S

Theses and Dissertations

The present research work investigates the contact and bending fatigue life of asymmetric helical gear and novel helical gear based on the finite element analysis. In the first phase, the contact and bending fatigue life of the asymmetric helical gear drives is estimated based on the strain life approach.

Further, a parametric study is carried out to investigate the influence of important helical gear parameters such as module, pressure angle, helix angle, gear ratio, teeth number and face width on contact and bending fatigue life of asymmetric helical gear drives. It is noted that the asymmetric helical gear shows a …

Frequency & Severity Modeling Of Cyber Risk, Vilma Yayra Mensah Ofori

Theses and Dissertations

In an era where cyber risks are escalating at an unprecedented rate, understanding andmitigating data breach risks has become critical for organizations. This paper proposes a novel frequency-severity model to assess hacking data breach risks at the individual company level, focusing on the Finance, Healthcare, and Technology sectors. Our anal- ysis reveals significant heterogeneity in breach frequencies and severities across sectors and individual companies within those sectors. To model breach frequency, we employ a Zero-Inflated Poisson (ZI-Poisson) model with random effects, capturing unobserved heterogeneity and within-firm correlations over time. Breach severity is modeled using a log-normal regression, given the symmetrical …

Investigation Of Various Mimo Antenna For 5g Mobile Phone Applications, Rajesh Kumar D

Theses and Dissertations

The rapid progress of wireless communication systems has been driven by the persistent demand for higher data rates, improved connectivity, and seamless user experiences. The introduction of fifth-generation (5G) wireless technology introduces fresh challenges and possibilities within the domain of antenna design, particularly concerning Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) systems operating in the sub-6 GHz frequency range. This thesis conducts a comprehensive exploration and conceptualization of MIMO antennas expressly crafted for smooth integration into mobile phones, with a particular emphasis on addressing the distinctive requisites of sub-6 GHz 5G communication.

The proposed antenna designs effectively harnesses the advantages inherent in multiple-input multiple-output …

Sri Hayagriva Stotra An In Depth Analysis, Vasudevan V

Theses and Dissertations

ŚRĪ HAYAGRĪVA is a benevolent avatar of Śrī Mahāviṣnu. He is worshiped as the God of knowledge and wisdom. He is an eternal avatar of Śrī Mahāviṣnu and there have been many studies on him done in the past by eminent scholars all over the world. Swāmi Śrī Deśika is a Sri Vaiṣṇava Acharya who has written many philosophical as well as religious and poetical works in several languages including Sanskrit, Manipravālam, Tamil, and Prākṛt. Svāmi Vedānta Deśika received the grace of Śrī Hayagrīva and was blessed with knowledge and wisdom. He then composed ŚRĪ HAYAGRĪVA STOTRA with thirty-three stanzas …