Digital Commons Network^™

Reinforcement Learning For Model Building And Variance-Penalized Control, Abhijit Gosavi

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Reinforcement learning (RL) is a simulation-Based technique to solve Markov decision problems or processes (MDPs). It is especially useful if the transition probabilities in the MDP are hard to find or if the number of states in the problem is too large. in this paper, we present a new model-Based RL algorithm that builds the transition probability model without the generation of the transition probabilities; the literature on model-Based RL attempts to compute the transition probabilities. We also present a variance-penalized Bellman equation and an RL algorithm that uses it to solve a variance-penalized MDP. We conclude with some numerical …

An Environment That Fosters Shared Leadership And The Effects On Engineering Education: An Analysis And Proposed Structure, Brian J. Galli, Ray Luechtefeld

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Engineers must not only have design and technical skills, but they must also possess the ability to work in and lead teams, adopt and adapt to change, and act as leaders who can think in terms of the bigger picture. to develop these skills, engineering students must be actively involved in their education and trained to continually learn. Many engineering students have become accustomed to traditional forms of education, which can lead to passivity and dependence on faculty to tell them what to know and why they need to know it. Research in organizational behavior suggests a solution can lie …

E-Design Tool For Friction Stir Welding, Harish Bagaitkar, Venkat Allada

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper describes efforts to develop a web-Based E-Design tool for the Friction Stir Welding (FSW) technique. the input parameters to the E-Design tool are the joint specifications. the output parameters of the E-Design tool are process parameters such as tool geometry details, tool rpm, and plunge depth. the heart of the E-Design tool is the FSW database. the FSW database contains mappings of various input parameters and output parameters that are captured by referring to various experimental studies cited in the literature. the proposed E-Design tool deals with lap joints and butt joints between similar aluminum alloys. Copyright © …

The Part Count Tool (Pact) For Concept Selection, Tarang Parashar, Katie Grantham Lough, Robert B. Stone

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper presents a part count tool that automates the consideration of manufacturing cost during the conceptual design phase by predicting part count for a particular product concept. with an approximate number of parts per product in the conceptual design phase, the designer can estimate the cost associated with the product. on the basis of the cost, the designer can make changes according to budget requirements. the part count tool will also aid in ranking the design concepts by number of components for a product. This tool utilizes existing automated concept generation algorithms to generate the design concepts. It extracts …

Risk Matrix Input Data Biases, Eric D. Smith, William T. Siefert, David Drain

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Risk matrices used in industry characterize particular risks in terms of the likelihood of occurrence, and the consequence of the actualized risk. Human cognitive bias research led by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky exposed systematic translations of objective probability and value as judged by human subjects. Applying these translations to the risk matrix allows the formation of statistical hypotheses of risk point placement biases. Industry-generated risk matrix data reveals evidence of biases in the judgment of likelihood and consequence-principally, likelihood centering, a systematic increase in consequence, and a diagonal bias. Statistical analyses are conducted with linear regression, normal distribution fitting, …

Arriving, Bill Elgersma

Pro Rege

No abstract provided.

Neo-Orthodoxy In Academic Freedom, J. Peter Byrne

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This review essay analyzes two recent books that advance neo-orthodox theories of academic freedom: Matthew Finkin and Robert Post, For the Common Good: Principles of American Academic Freedom, and Stanley Fish, Save the World on Your Own Time. Both books develop principles articulated in the American Association of University Professors 1915 Declaration, which emphasize the role of faculty in advancing knowledge and the need to insulate professional evaluation of academic work from lay, political interference. This review essay defends the return to protection of the scholarly search for truth as the touchstone of academic freedom, offers critiques of the authors’ …

December 1, 2009, The Daily Mississippian

Daily Mississippian (all digitized issues)

No abstract provided.

Compact Trench-Based Silicon-On-Insulator Rib Waveguide Ring Resonator With Large Free Spectral Range, Seunghyun Kim, Gregory P. Nordin, Weisheng Hu, Yusheng Qian, Jiguo Song, Gregory L. Wojcik

Faculty Publications

We demonstrate a compact trench-based silicon-on-insulator (SOI) rib waveguide ring resonator comprised of trench-based bends and splitters. It has a perimeter of 50 μm and occupies an area of only 25×25 μm. The measured free spectral range (FSR) is 13.2 nm, which the largest reported for an SOI rib waveguide ring resonator. The measured FSR, full width at half maximum, and quality factor match reasonably well with analytical calculations. Further calculation shows that a FSR of 50.8 nm is achievable for an SOI rib waveguide ring resonator with a perimeter of 15 μm.

Detecting The Process' 1.5 Sigma Shift: A Quantitative Study, James R. Stevenson

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Process behavior can change with time. In this study an attempt was made to discover whether the Six Sigma™ claim of changes in the process mean stayed within +/- 1.5 sigma units. Several process groups were examined for a particular firm that made metal castings, machined parts, tested major components and assembled these into a vehicle that was a product sold to the customer. As the assembly progressed, deficiencies were identified and recorded. Analyses employed cumulative sum (CUSUM) sequence charts, Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) time series analyses, minimum mean square error (MMSE) exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA), Shewhart control …

Thin Film Integrated Capacitors With Sputtered-Anodized Niobium Pentoxide Dielectric For Decoupling Applications, Susan Jacob

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Electronics system miniaturization is a major driver for high-k materials. High-k materials in capacitors allow for high capacitance, enabling system miniaturization. Ta2O5 (k~24) has been the dominant high-k material in the electronic industry for decoupling capacitors, filter capacitors, etc. In order to facilitate further system miniaturization, this project has investigated thin film integrated capacitors with Nb2O5 dielectric. Nb2O5 has k~41 and is a potential candidate for replacing Ta2O5. But, the presence of suboxides (NbO2 and NbO) in the dielectric deteriorates the electrical properties (leakage current, thermal instability of capacitance, etc.). Also, the high oxygen solubility of niobium results in oxygen …

Evaluation Of Best Management Practices To Reduce Nutrients Runoff In Watersheds In Arkansas, Hector German Rodriguez Diaz

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There are many non point sources (NPS) of pollution issues across the state of Arkansas. Each region of the state has different concerns. Many watersheds have been included in the Arkansas's 2008 303(d) list for NPS impairments with sediment and nutrients being the primary causes of concern. This research hypothesized that there are no cost or net returns risks when adopting best management practices (BMPs) to control nutrients runoff and that selection, timing, placement and cost have no impact on the implementation of BMPs. Using two priority watersheds, the L'Anguille River and the Lincoln Lake, as examples, the environmental benefits …

Angular Rigidity In 3d: Combinatorial Characterizations And Algorithms, Audrey Lee-St.John, Ileana Streinu

Computer Science: Faculty Publications

Constraint-based CAD software, used by engineers to design sophisticated mechanical systems, relies on a wide range of geometrical constraints. In this paper we focus on one special case: angular constraints in 3D. We give a complete combinatorial characterization for generic minimal rigidity in two new models: line- plane-and-angle and body-and-angle structures. As an immediate consequence, we obtain efficient algorithms for analyzing angular rigidity.

Press The Cancel Button! A Performance Evaluation Of Scalable In-Network Data Aggregation, Jamie Macbeth, Majid Sarrafzadeh

Computer Science: Faculty Publications

We perform real-world tests of the performance of medium access control protocol schemes for scalable data aggregation in sensor networks. Specifically, we evaluate the performance of a Listen-and-Suppress Carrier Sense Multiple Access (LAS-CSMA) scheme on the duplicate-insensitive exemplary monotonic aggregates MAX and MIN. These schemes reduce power consumption, network bandwidth usage and delays by suppressing node packet transmissions that are proven to be unnecessary in the query response. This is possible when nodes listen to the transmissions of other nodes as they respond.

Scalability tests were performed for 8 networks of various sizes, the largest having 24 Crossbow IRIS wireless …

The Relationship Between Web Accessibility Policy And Practice In Postsecondary Institutions, Michael Whitney

Dissertations

From computer workstations to the world of the web, statutes and policies have afforded students with disabilities the right to participate in postsecondary education in a non-discriminatory manner. Automatic doors and adjustable tables are a commonplace on campuses and represent prime examples of accessible policy adherence, but what affect do accessible website design policies have on practice? The answer is monumental for the students with disabilities that rely on the integration of electronic curb cuts into institutional websites. In 2006, Illinois Board of Higher Education required public postsecondary institutions to develop and implement a website policy, report on the accessibility …

The Impact Of Training And Its Integration In The Firm's Business Strategies On The Firm's Competitiveness, Vichet Sum

Dissertations

The problem of the present study was to determine training professionals' perceptions of their awareness of and involvement in the integration of training in the firm's business strategies and the impact of training on the firm's competitiveness. The analysis of data obtained from the online survey of 111 participants who were training professionals employed in small, medium, and large firms across three different industries - service, retailing, and manufacturing - revealed that more than 50% of the participants indicated that they either had some understanding of or understood in depth the integration of training in their firms' business strategies. And …

The Physiological Ecology And Evolution Of Freezing Tolerance In Diploid Larrea Sp., Juliana Sibylla Medeiros

Biology ETDs

A basic understanding of vegetation responses to temperature and precipitation variability is paramount to the understanding of ecological adaptation, and comparisons across warm deserts are needed to increase our understanding of the controls on establishment in warm desert ecosystems. At the high latitude edges of warm deserts drought and freezing lower plant performance due to xylem dysfunction, as freeze-thaw embolism reduces stomatal conductance, or damage to leaf photosynthetic apparatus, as tissue desiccation reduces photosynthetic efficiency. Variation in these physiological responses can be observed across life-history stages, genetic background, climate gradients, and species, and this variation may be acted on by …

Microsphere Based Protease Assays And High Throughput Screening Of Bacterial Toxin Proteases, Matthew J. Saunders

Biomedical Sciences ETDs

Proteases, proteins which cleave peptide bonds in other proteins, are a large and varied group of proteins which regulate a variety of physiological processes. Methodologies to study proteases are often protease specific and often differ greatly from the roles proteases play in vivo. In vitro protease assays often use peptide based substrates, which do not take into account highly specific interactions distal from the proteolytic site of peptide cleavage on protease substrates. In the work described here we have developed a microsphere based protease assay, capable of using full length protease substrates, and have successfully measured proteolytic activity via loss …

To Trust Or Not To Trust? Predicting Online Trusts Using Trust Antecedent Framework, Viet-An Nguyen, Ee Peng Lim, Jing Jiang, Aixin Sun

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper analyzes the trustor and trustee factors that lead to inter-personal trust using a well studied Trust Antecedent framework in management science. To apply these factors to trust ranking problem in online rating systems, we derive features that correspond to each factor and develop different trust ranking models. The advantage of this approach is that features relevant to trust can be systematically derived so as to achieve good prediction accuracy. Through a series of experiments on real data from Epinions, we show that even a simple model using the derived features yields good accuracy and outperforms MoleTrust, a trust …

Insights Into Malware Detection And Prevention On Mobile Phones, Qiang Yan, Yingjiu Li, Tieyan Li, Robert H. Deng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The malware threat for mobile phones is expected to increase with the functionality enhancement of mobile phones. This threat is exacerbated with the surge in population of smart phones instilled with stable Internet access which provides attractive targets for malware developers. Prior research on malware protection has focused on avoiding the negative impact of the functionality limitations of mobile phones to keep the performance cost within the limitations of mobile phones. Being different, this paper investigates the positive impact of these limitations on suppressing the development of mobile malware. We study the state-of-the-art mobile malware, as well as the progress …

Denial-Of-Service Attacks On Host-Based Generic Unpackers, Limin Liu, Jiang Ming, Zhi Wang, Debin Gao, Chunfu Jia

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

With the advance of packing techniques, a few generic and automatic unpackers have been proposed. These unpackers are designed to automatically unpack packed binaries without specific knowledge of the packing techniques used. In this paper, we present an automatic packer with which packed malware forges spurious unpacking behaviors that lead to a denial-of-service attack on host-based generic unpackers. We present the design, implementation, and evaluation of the proposed packer and malware produced using the proposed packer, and show the success of denial-of-service attacks on host-based generic unpackers.

Adaptive Type-2 Fuzzy Maintenance Advisor For Offshore Power Systems, Zhaoxia Wang, C. S. Chang, Fan Yang, W. W. Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Proper maintenance strategies are very desirable for minimizing the operational and maintenance costs of power systems without sacrificing reliability. Condition-based maintenance has largely replaced time-based maintenance because of the former's potential economic benefits. As offshore substations are often remotely located, they experience more adverse environments, higher failures, and therefore need more powerful analytical tools than their onshore counterpart. As reliability information collected during operation of an offshore substation can rarely avoid uncertainties, it is essential to obtain consistent estimates of reliability measures under changing environmental and operating conditions. Some attempts with type-1 fuzzy logic were made with limited success in …

Learning Bregman Distance Functions And Its Application For Semi-Supervised Clustering, Lei Wu, Rong Jin, Steven C. H. Hoi, Jianke Zhu, Nenghai Yu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Learning distance functions with side information plays a key role in many machine learning and data mining applications. Conventional approaches often assume a Mahalanobis distance function. These approaches are limited in two aspects: (i) they are computationally expensive (even infeasible) for high dimensional data because the size of the metric is in the square of dimensionality; (ii) they assume a fixed metric for the entire input space and therefore are unable to handle heterogeneous data. In this paper, we propose a novel scheme that learns nonlinear Bregman distance functions from side information using a nonparametric approach that is similar to …

What Do Healthcare Providers Think Of Patients Who Use The Internet?: An Exploratory Study, Matt Willis

Communication ETDs

The Internet is a technology that is influencing multiple human factors (i.e. cognitive and social). Adults who seek information on the Internet about their health conditions are becoming more common. Providers have been wary of patient information searches, fearing that, at worst, conflicting information may provoke confrontation and doubt and, at best, the information is trivial or already well known to the provider. For this exploratory study a survey was conducted that investigates trends in healthcare provider information technology use and information seeking opinions. This survey was followed by a highly structured interview of n=21 providers. The researcher shows two …

Adams's Quest For The Unity Of Knowledge, Karl Shaddox

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In "Adams's Quest for the Unity of Knowledge," Karl Shaddox discusses Henry Adams's lesser known work, The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma, as a continuation of the historian's attempt at unifying knowledge in The Education. Whereas unification in The Education was proposed by historicizing force, whether religious or molecular, Adams's effort in The Degradation employed a scientistic approach to history. Using Josiah Gibb's research on the equilibrium of heterogeneous substances, Adams felt he had provided a natural explanation of social and historical change — and thus the elemental connection between matter and mind. Critical opinion has not been receptive to …

Innovation And Multimedia In The Poetry Of Cummings And Mayakovsky, Svetlana Nikitina

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Innovation and Multimedia in the Poetry of cummings and Mayakovsky" Svetlana Nikitina discusses how e.e. cummings and Vladimir Mayakovsky foreshadowed the digital revolution of today in their multimedia experiments in poetry. Although they spoke different languages and lived in different societies, the two modernist poets display similarities in their modernist aesthetics. Both are artists as well as poets who blur the line between the two forms of art. Their synesthesia inoculates them against postmodern disintegration of meaning or form. Although cummings is a staunch individualist, and Mayakovsky the tribune of the collective, they both rebel against traditional …

The City As A Growth Machine: Reynosa, Mx, Victoria Hirschberg

Latin American Studies ETDs

As cities grow in size and population and focus on job creation, their leaders face the challenge of balancing economic development and providing citizens with services. The city of Reynosa, Mexico, located on the border across from McAllen, TX, has experienced rapid population growth, increased commercial and manufacturing sectors, thus positioning itself on the global scale. However, development officials in McAllen also facilitate this growth by assisting Reynosa in the recruitment of maquiladoras, or export-processing plants. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between economic development and planning practices in Reynosa. The study aims to discuss how …

The Bite Detector: A Device For The Behavioral Treatment Of Overweight And Obesity, Jenna Scisco

All Theses

Overweight and obesity are primary health concerns worldwide and particularly in the United States. Currently, the most effective treatments are behavioral interventions, and a reduction of eating rate is one behavioral method that may help individuals eat less and lose weight. Additionally, adaptive eating behaviors, such as intuitive eating, have been identified as healthy body weight predictors. The purpose of Study 1 was to examine the accuracy of the bite detector, a wrist-worn device designed to detect bites of food. Participants (N = 21) ate a meal in the laboratory, and the sensitivity and positive predictive value (PPV) of the …

2-D And 3-D Assessment Of Cambered And Symmetric Airfoils: A Cfd Study, Tuncay Kamas

All Theses

A two dimensional and three dimensional computational study has been carried out respectively regarding aerodynamic forces affecting a symmetric airfoil, NACA0015 and a cambered airfoil, NACA2414. The negative lift (down force) and drag forces were predicted through the simulation of airflows over inverted rear-wings in different configurations namely; varying incidences i.e. angles of attack of the airfoils, two dimensional cross section of the inverted rear wings to be mounted on back of a car, and varying speeds of initial airflow.
The downforce increases as the angle of attack increases however, if an inverted rear wing is fixed on a car …

Experimental Characterization Of Stress Relaxation In Glass, Hemanth Kadali

All Theses

Glass viscoelasticity has gained importance in recent years as glass lens molding appeared as a valuable alternative to the traditional grinding and polishing process for manufacturing glass lenses. In the precision lens molding process, knowledge of viscoelastic properties of glass in the transition region, which affect the stress relaxation behavior, is required to precisely predict the final size and shape of molded lenses. The purpose of this study is to establish a step-by-step procedure for characterizing the viscoelastic behavior of glass in the glass transition region using a finite term Prony series of a Generalized Maxwell model. This study focuses …