Digital Commons Network^™

Thin Film Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting Nanostructured Materials: Tailoring Size, Porosity, Morphology Of Zinc Stannate Perovskites (Abx3), Christopher Munoz

Theses and Dissertations

Three dimensional (3D) piezoelectric zinc stannate (ZnSnO3) nanoweb arrays are synthesized using a combination of treatment methods deposited in PDMS thin films for electrochemical analysis of its piezoelectric response. Advantages of hydrothermal, molten salt, and solvothermal synthesis methods were leveraged to facilitate several chemical and surface engineering techniques. The combination of these treatments reduce the size of zinc stannate to approximately ~40nm-80nm weblike networks, much smaller than previously reported ZnSnO3 sub-micro cubes. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) analysis reveal a mesoporous protonated tristannate (H2Sn3O7) nanoweb template with connecting wirelike strands having diameters ranging from 12-27nm across and …

Electrolysis Degradation Of Cyanuric Acid In Wastewater At Cu/Go Cathodes, Chioma Chinwe Nwakanobi

Theses and Dissertations

This work evaluates the development of electrochemical processes for the oxidative degradation of persistent organic chemicals in waste waters, specifically the oxidation of cyanuric acid in the presence of NaCl at Cu/GO cathodes and Ti anodes. The experiment used a graphene oxide doped copper mesh cathode to examine different concentrations of cyanuric acid (30 mg/L, 40 mg/L, and 50 mg/L) and various concentrations of NaCl electrolyte (0.007mol/L, 0.03mol/L, 0.07mol/L, 0.1mol/L, and 0.2mol/L). In addition, the effect of pH (2, 4, 6, and 8), and applied current (0.200A, 0.150A and 0.100A) were studied. The Cu/GO electrode played a central role in …

Enhancing Time Series Hashing Performance Via Deep Orthogonal Hashing, Mahmudul Hasan Robin

Theses and Dissertations

Deep hashing has been widely used for efficient retrieval and classification of high-dimensional data like images and text. However, its application to time series data is still challenging due to the data’s temporal nature. To tackle this issue, a new deep hashing method has been proposed that generates efficient hash codes and enhances the time series hashing performance using a ResNet model with Orthohash (Cosine Similarity Loss). The proposed method uses one loss architecture while using ResNet model for efficient hashing. It uses the Character Trajectories dataset to extract discriminative features from the time series data. These features are then …

Robust Uncertainty Estimation Framework In Deep Reinforcement Learning For Active Slam, Bryan Joseph Pedraza

Theses and Dissertations

Autonomous mobile robots are essential in various domains such as industry, manufacturing and healthcare. Navigating autonomously and avoiding obstacles are crucial tasks that involve localizing the robot to explore and map unknown environments without prior knowledge. Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) present significant challenges. In this study, we introduce a new approach to address robust navigation and mapping of robot actions using Bayesian Actor-Critic (A2C) reinforcement learning. The A2C framework combines policy-based and value-based learning by dividing the model into two components: (1) the policy model (Actor) determines the actions based on the state, and (2) the value model (Critic) …

Relationship Between Socioeconomic Status And Incidence Of Specific Learning Disability: A Quantitative Study, Nora Nevarez

Theses and Dissertations

This quantitative study used a linear regression model to determine if a relationship exists between one independent variable (i.e., Socioeconomic Status) and one dependent variable (i.e., Specific Learning Disabilities). State level data was collected from publicly available databases in the State of Texas that delineate the percentage of students diagnosed with and placed in special education under the umbrella of Specific Learning Disabilities. These percentages were aggregated into the 20 Texas Educational Regional Service Centers. Additionally, national data was collected from publicly available databases listing the percentage of students at or under the age of 18 years old …

Robust And Uncertainty-Aware Image Classification Using Bayesian Vision Transformer Model, Fazlur Rahman Bin Karim

Theses and Dissertations

Transformer Neural Networks have emerged as the predominant architecture for addressing a wide range of Natural Language Processing (NLP) applications such as machine translation, speech recognition, sentiment analysis, text anomaly detection, etc. This noteworthy achievement of Transformer Neural Networks in the NLP field has sparked a growing interest in integrating and utilizing Transformer models in computer vision tasks. The Vision Transformer (ViT) model efficiently captures long-range dependencies by employing a self-attention mechanism to transform different image data into meaningful, significant representations. Recently, the Vision Transformer (ViT) has exhibited incredible performance in solving image classification problems by utilizing ViT models, thereby …

Electromagnetic Field Analysis, Materials Characterization, And Advanced Modeling Of Modern Guitar Pickups, Luis Alonso Villarreal

Theses and Dissertations

This Thesis establishes the foundations of modern guitar pickup theory, enhancing current pickup design by an increase in voltage output, reduction of DC resistance, and a reduction of production costs. This research investigates factors that have received insufficient attention, such as the performance of different magnetic materials, magnet geometry, bobbin geometry, metal effects, etc. An equation to calculate the output of guitar pickups is developed. Additionally, this work constructs a modern pickup using the techniques developed in this thesis incorporating theory and advanced modeling techniques to simulate changes in performance and interactions with different magnetic materials and geometries. The new …

Using Statistical Clustering Of Trajectory Data To Support Analysis Of Subject Movement In A Virtual Environment, Martín Alejandro Galicia Avila

Theses and Dissertations

The rising use of virtual reality software requires new methods of spatiotemporal analysis to enhance the user experience. This investigation is focused on forming clusters from spatiotemporal trajectories within a virtual environment and analyzing them in search of human immersion and behavior insights. The cluster centroids are plotted and analyzed to identify associations with the trajectories and user demographics.

Effects Of The Build Orientation And Support Patterns On The Geometric Accuracy In Printing Parts With Overhang Structure: An Experimental Study, Bala Murali Krishna Mohan

Theses and Dissertations

Additive manufacturing is becoming increasingly popular in industries such as manufacturing due to its ability to use raw materials more efficiently and require less machining than traditional methods(Calignano et al., 2017). However, constructing overhanging structures in additive manufacturing can be challenging, potentially affecting the overall geometric quality of the printed components. The objective of this study was to identify the most effective printing orientation for overhanging designs in Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) using two different support structures. To achieve this, the researchers used a laser scanner to collect point cloud data and conducted a comparative study to determine the …

Meeting Students’ Needs To Improve Motivation And Higher Academic Achievement In Rio Grande Valley Schools, Tanya Jessica Reyes

Theses and Dissertations

Educational systems are to prepare students for future success in our ever-changing world. Administrators must realize that before a student is willing to learn, crucial needs must be met, especially in low-socioeconomic areas such as the Rio Grande Valley. Some basic needs consist of food and shelter, which are vital for survival. Other needs deal with one’s social and emotional needs that support a child's safety, sense of belonging, and their self-esteem. In this study, focus groups were conducted with sixth, seventh, and eighth grade student participants that gathered the phenomenon of their experiences and their fulfillment of needs …

The Importance Of Emotional Intelligence And Leadership Development In Principal Efficacy, Lorine Olivarez Bazan

Theses and Dissertations

Recently, public schools have seen an increase in obstacles and challenges in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and school leaders have had to pivot and adjust to meet these ever-changing demands (McLeod & Dulsky, 2021). Principals in today’s schools have had to discover new and innovative ways to successfully lead, motivate and support their school communities. This emerging leadership includes the leader’s ability to utilize emotional intelligence and leadership skills effectively and intentionally.

The purpose of this qualitative study was to take a deeper look at investigating the school principal’s utilization of emotional intelligence and effective leadership skills. This …

Level Of Opportunity For Translanguaging In A One-Way Dual Language Program, Cristina Flores

Theses and Dissertations

In the context of language diversity in schools, this research underscores the persistence of monolingual academic standards despite linguistic variety. Bilingual education, historically intertwined with sociopolitical agendas aligning with dominant societal power structures, necessitates a paradigm shift. Bilingual educators must empower students to utilize their complete linguistic repertoire, fostering creative language expression through translanguaging (Sánchez et al., 2018, p.13). This approach challenges superficial language norms, potentially deviating from the standard language codified by a powerful central group.

The study delves into the types of language practices teachers permit, promote, or prohibit and examines teachers' perceptions regarding the constraints of a …

Strategies Community College Mexican American Adult College Algebra Students Use When Graphing Function Transformations, Roxana Pamela Jimenez

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative case study pursued to describe the different strategies Mexican American adult students in a local community college used to graph function transformations. Participants in the study were purposefully selected using a criterion sampling to ensure participants were atypical, above average students between the ages 18-22, and had a final course average of 89.5-100 in College Algebra. Three research questions were examined 1) In what ways do Mexican American adult college students graph a function transformation? 2) Which strategies do students implement when graphing a function transformation? Qualitative research methods using think aloud semi-structured interviews were used in this …

A Combinatorial Proof Of Supercranks For Partitions With A Fixed Number Of Parts, Jacob J. Gutierrez

Theses and Dissertations

In a previous paper by Eichhorn and Kronholm, a selection of supercranks for p(n,m) was established by generating functions. In this paper we will reprove this result with combinatorial witnesses for the selection of supercranks via integer lattice points.

Attitudes Towards Mathematics Of Developmental Mathematics Students In A Community College, Benjamin Ortiz

Theses and Dissertations

Reformations to developmental mathematics aim to remove barriers for students entering higher education. Challenges like costly multi-course sequences and high failure rates prohibit students’ access to college-level math courses and prevent degree or certification completion. Understanding factors that foster student success is critical to increase student success. This study focuses on students’ attitudes towards mathematics, utilizing the novice-expert continuum through Code et al.’s Mathematical Attitude and Perceptions Survey (MAPS) instrument. Student expertise scores, including all MAPS dimensions and specific dimension scores, were assigned. Kruskal-Wallis Rank-Sum tests identified differences in student populations by course and attitude dimension. …

Case Studies Of Algebra 1 Teachers Selection And Implementation Of Mathematics Tasks Toward Situated Learning, Luis Román Sauceda

Theses and Dissertations

Mathematical tasks are vital in active learning, especially in situated learning. Adequate selection and appropriate implementation of tasks are steps toward success in engaging students for active learning. This study explored how a professional development (PD) workshop influences teacher participants’ capabilities in selecting, redesigning, implementing, and reflecting on mathematical tasks to promote situated and active learning. The teacher participants were Algebra 1 teachers from a South Texas secondary school. During the workshop, participants developed and implemented activities after being shown situated learning strategies to promote student-centered learning. They were required to design hypothetical dialogues to simulate their class practice before …

An Automatic Solver For Optimal Control Problems, Marcel Efren Benitez

Theses and Dissertations

Optimal control theory is a study that is used to find a control for a dynamical system over a period of time such that a objection function is optimized. In this study we will be looking at optimal control problems for ordinary differential equations or ODEs and see that we can use an automatic solver using the forward-backward sweep using Matlab to solve for them from an 1 dimension to bounded cases and to nth dimension cases.

Mathematical Evaluation Of Ulnar Nerve Somatosensory Evoked Potentials (Sseps), Maribel Carmen Gomez

Theses and Dissertations

As the number of individuals suffering with low back and neck pain rises, we find people undergoing spinal procedures more often. In means, of safeguarding the patient and their neurological structures during the procedure intraoperative neuro-physiological monitoring (I.O.M) has been more widely used amongst surgeons orthopedic and neuro alike. During these procedures, a modality widely used for both low back and neck surgery is somatosensory evoked potentials (SSEPs). The aim of neuro-technicians is to obtain a baseline waveform that can be considered present and reliable. When obtaining SSEPs the technician can encounter obstacles with ’noisy’ wave-forms due to …

A Case Study Of Student And Faculty Experiences In A High-Achieving Early College High School Along The Texas-Mexico Border, Kelly Louis Stuart

Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the high academic achievement of Excelencia Early College High School (EECHS), located along the Texas-Mexico border. An open-enrollment public school, EECHS serves students who are characteristic of the lower Rio Grande Valley. These include students of low socioeconomic backgrounds, minorities, first-generation, and those typically underserved by higher education. Over two years, seven student focus-group interviews and fifteen faculty personal interviews were conducted. These interviews addressed key research questions such as: What are the lived experiences of students and faculty at this high-achieving school? What motivates students to overcome challenges and …

Postsecondary Students With Disabilities: Predictors Of Academic Performance/Gpa, Uzoamaka Barbara Okori

Theses and Dissertations

The determination of people with disabilities to enroll in postsecondary education did not remove the struggles and challenges of adjusting to the college environment despite the provisions of the legislation. Students with disabilities still had problems with degree completion, graduation rates, barriers caused primarily by their unwillingness to disclose their disabilities, and the support networks of these students. This study explores the relationship between the acceptance of disability, self-efficacy, support, and the academic performance/grade point average of postsecondary students with disabilities who receive disability accommodations through their institution’s disability service offices.

Although there has been an increase …

Accelerating Machine Learning Inference For Satellite Component Feature Extraction Using Fpgas., Andrew Ekblad

Theses and Dissertations

Running computer vision algorithms requires complex devices with lots of computing power, these types of devices are not well suited for space deployment. The harsh radiation environment and limited power budgets have hindered the ability of running advanced computer vision algorithms in space. This problem makes running an on-orbit servicing detection algorithm very difficult. This work proposes using a low powered FPGA to accelerate the computer vision algorithms that enable satellite component feature extraction. This work uses AMD/Xilinx’s Zynq SoC and DPU IP to run model inference. Experiments in this work centered around improving model post processing by creating implementations …

Low Reynolds Number Locomotion Near Interfaces In Two-Fluid Media, Avriel Rowena Mae Cartwright

Theses and Dissertations

Microorganisms often swim within complex fluid environments composed of multiple materials with very different properties. Biological locomotion, including swimming speed, is significantly impacted by the physical composition and rheology of the surrounding fluid environment, as well as the presence of phase boundaries and free interfaces, across which physical properties of the fluid media may vary greatly. Through computational simulations, we first investigate the classical Taylor’s swimming sheet problem near interfaces within multi-fluid environments using a two-fluid immersed boundary method. The accuracy of the methodology is illustrated through comparisons with analytical solutions. Our simulation results indicate that the interface dynamics and …

Anxiety In International Graduate Students With U.S. Education, Aeshah Zarraa

Theses and Dissertations

Anxiety in international graduate students is a significant concern for most students planning to move out of their home country to pursue higher education in the United States. The primary purpose of this research is to identify the prime causes of anxiety triggers in the targetted Graduate students, thereby determining a step-wise methodology development to address the causes. The study initially identified a set of graduate students who were voluntarily willing to collaborate and address their concerns anonymously to identify the significant issues faced by current students and alumni of the Florida Institute of Technology, Melbourne, Florida. Several questions were …

Being A Trafficked Teacher: An Asiancrit Autoethnography Exploring The Exploitation Of Filipino Migrant Teachers In Louisiana, Christopher R. Jose

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this autoethnographic study is to critically explore the lived curriculum of Filipino migrant teachers trafficked by a Louisiana school district using the theoretical lens of AsianCrit. Using the different tenets of AsianCrit, this study wrestles with the injustices of this lived curriculum as connected to a broader set of hegemonic curricular experiences and demonstrates the ways such injustice still permeates the lived curriculum of migrant teachers. It explores its discussion on critical race theory in education, migrant teachers and human trafficking in the United States. This study shares the effects of human trafficking of teachers and the …

How An Instructor's Noticing For Equity Can Foster Students' Sense Of Belonging And Mathematical Confidence, Sthefania Espinosa

Theses and Dissertations

There are many aspects a teacher can notice inside the mathematics classroom, and the more a teacher notices, the more difficult it is to teach. In this study, I particularly focus on noticing for equity, which describes the role of the teacher in attending to students’ mathematical thinking through an equity lens that can allow the instructor to notice the aspects of classroom mathematical activity that can make students feel less or more empowered in their mathematical practices (van Es et al., 2017). There exists few research about how students perceive their instructor’s effort to promote equity and …

A Hybrid Cognitive Model For Machine Agents In Project And Action Teams, Joshua A. Lapso

Theses and Dissertations

High performing human teams transcend complex domain uncertainty by achieving an emergent state of shared cognition, in which knowledge is organized, represented, and distributed to team members for rapid execution. However, this requires that individuals emit perceivable qualities upon which other members can make inferences about intent. In pursuit of future human and machine team studies, this research presents a hybrid cognitive model for machine agents in fully cooperative and semi-cooperative action and project teams. The hybrid cognitive model unifies the characteristics of the shared mental model and transactive memory system. The resultant model facilitates anytime selection over the two …

Marss: Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning For Satellite Swarms, Nicholas J. Yielding

Theses and Dissertations

Multi-agent systems and swarms in spacecraft formation flying are of ever-increasing importance in a contested space environment—use of multiple spacecraft to contribute to a cooperative mission potentially increases positive outcomes on orbit, while autonomy becomes an ever more important requirement to reduce reaction time in dynamic situations and lower the burden on space operators. This research explores difficult swarm Guidance Navigation and Control (GNC) scenarios using Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL). DRL polices are trained to provide guidance inputs to agents in multi-agent swarm environments for completing complex, teamwork focused objectives in geosynchronous orbit. An example scenario is explored for a …

Federated Active Learning For Network Intrusion Detection, Matthew D. R. Sauer

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis addresses challenges with detecting attacks on computer networks within a Federated Learning (FL) framework, when labeled instances are few. We explore the integration of active learning (AL) and semi-supervised learning (SSL). AL efficiently uses data that would otherwise be wasted or require substantial time for labeling. SSL provides capacity to train models that have a limited amount of labeled data, by utilizing additional unlabeled data that is available. We show how FL combined with AL or SSL can realize a detection system that adapts and trains quickly to new networks, reducing the total amount of data labeling needed. …

Qasm-To-Hls: A Framework For Accelerating Quantum Circuit Emulation On High-Performance Reconfigurable Computers, Anshul Maurya

Theses and Dissertations

High-performance reconfigurable computers (HPRCs) make use of Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) for efficient emulation of quantum algorithms. Generally, algorithm-specific architectures are implemented on the FPGAs and there is very little flexibility. Moreover, mapping a quantum algorithm onto its equivalent FPGA emulation architecture is challenging. In this work, we present an automation framework for converting quantum circuits to their equivalent FPGA emulation architectures. The framework processes quantum circuits represented in Quantum Assembly Language (QASM) and derives high-level descriptions of the hardware emulation architectures for High-Level Synthesis (HLS) on HPRCs. The framework generates the code for a heterogeneous architecture consisting of a …

Chemical Investigation Of Dichloromethane Extract Of Aloe Vera Peels: An Agricultural Waste, Nazmul Huda

Theses and Dissertations

Aloe barbadensis Miller, commonly called Aloe Vera, is a widely popular succulent plant species cultivated across subtropical regions worldwide from India to the Tex-Mex border. Besides its historical uses, Aloe juice has garnered attention as a potential remedy for various ailments, particularly in treating various skin conditions and facilitating wound recovery, including obesity, diabetes, hepatitis, Crohn's disease, and ulcerative colitis. Regrettably, the agricultural practice following sap extraction involves discarding Aloe vera peels, constituting agricultural waste. As part of our continuous research on extraction, isolation, separation, and spectral characterization of value-added chemicals present in waste botanicals herein, …