Digital Commons Network^™

Document Layout Analysis And Recognition Systems, Sai Kosaraju

Master of Science in Computer Science Theses

Automatic extraction of relevant knowledge to domain-specific questions from Optical Character Recognition (OCR) documents is critical for developing intelligent systems, such as document search engines, sentiment analysis, and information retrieval, since hands-on knowledge extraction by a domain expert with a large volume of documents is intensive, unscalable, and time-consuming. There have been a number of studies that have automatically extracted relevant knowledge from OCR documents, such as ABBY and Sandford Natural Language Processing (NLP). Despite the progress, there are still limitations yet-to-be solved. For instance, NLP often fails to analyze a large document. In this thesis, we propose a knowledge …

Teaching Engineers That Nursing Is A Stem Discipline, Daniel B. Oerther

Biennial Convention (CONV)

As STEM morphs into "STEMpathy" (adding empathy), the profession of engineering will benefit most from the recognition of the profession of nursing as a STEM discipline because the holistic, patient-centered approach to caring embedded within nursing offers the best evolution of people-centered engineering design.

November 8, 2019, The Daily Mississippian

Daily Mississippian (all digitized issues)

No abstract provided.

Establishing Computational Approaches Towards Identifying Malarial Allosteric Modulators: A Case Study Of Plasmodium Falciparum Hsp70s, Arnold Amusengeri, Lindy Astl, Kevin Lobb, Gennady M. Verkhivker, Özlem Tastan Bishop

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

Combating malaria is almost a never-ending battle, as Plasmodium parasites develop resistance to the drugs used against them, as observed recently in artemisinin-based combination therapies. The main concern now is if the resistant parasite strains spread from Southeast Asia to Africa, the continent hosting most malaria cases. To prevent catastrophic results, we need to find non-conventional approaches. Allosteric drug targeting sites and modulators might be a new hope for malarial treatments. Heat shock proteins (HSPs) are potential malarial drug targets and have complex allosteric control mechanisms. Yet, studies on designing allosteric modulators against them are limited. Here, we identified allosteric …

Eigenfunction Restriction Estimates On Submanifolds, Chamsol Park

Shared Knowledge Conference

Classical mechanics is governed by Hamilton's equations. If the particles we are interested in are small enough, however, we then need a more sophisticated machinery in the quantum mechanics sense. With this in mind, we can think of a motion of the small particle as a wave. Hence, the wave equation. With the help of the spectral decomposition, we can reduce our study to the one of the eigenfunctions of the Laplacian. In quantum mechanics, we are interested in ��^2 estimates of the eigenfunctions, because we want to know where the particle is, by comparing ��^2 and ��^�� estimates of …

Estimation Of, Kellin Rumsey, Gabriel Huerta, Lauren Hund

Shared Knowledge Conference

Bayesian model calibration has become a powerful tool for the analysis of experimental data coupled with a physics-based mathematical model. The forward problem of prediction, especially within the range of data, is generally well-posed. There are many well-known issues with the approach when solving the inverse problem of parameter estimation, especially when the calibration parameters have physical interpretations. In this poster, we explore several techniques to identify and overcome these challenges. First, we consider regularization, which refers to the process of constraining the solution space in a meaningful and reasonable way. This is accomplished via the Moment Penalization prior distribution …

Modeling Mastitis Reveals Relative Impact Of (A)Symptomatic Infectivity, O. Liota Weinbaum, Helen J. Wearing

Shared Knowledge Conference

Despite widespread compliance with control recommendations, chronic infectious disease remains problematic in animal agriculture. Efforts to disrupt transmission target symptomatic individuals, but disease persists at the population level. Staphylococcus aureus mastitis in dairy cows is a painful inflammation of the udder that reduces milk volume and quality. The popularly targeted transmission mechanism is contact between the milk of symptomatic cows and the udders of susceptible cows via milking equipment. A common control practice is to milk symptomatic cows last, known as the Milk Last Intervention (MLI). However, asymptomatic cows are also infectious. We suspect that they play an important role …

A Posteriori Error Analysis Of A Non-Standard Quantity Of Interest, Zachary Stevens

Shared Knowledge Conference

Classical a posteriori error analysis quantifies error in a Quantity of Interest (QoI) which is represented as a bounded linear functional of the solution. In this work we consider a posteriori error estimates of a specified non-linear quantity of interest using adjoint-based analysis for linear and nonlinear systems of Ordinary Differential Equations. We apply the estimates to the problem of uncertainty quantification of certain example ODEs which depend on a stochastic parameter. In particular, we compute a bound for the error in a corresponding cumulative distribution function. We derive two methods for computing the error estimates for the QoI. The …

How Good Are Standard Copulas Anyway?, Dragan Radulovic

Mathematics Colloquium Series

First, we will raise a question: How good are standard copulas in capturing the dependency structure? To this end we will offer a series of simulated/numerical examples demonstrating that, more often than not, standard model copulas do not capture the underlying dependency structure. We believe that copula models, unlike other statistical tools, are too readily accepted by practitioners. Rigorous, goodness-of-fit tests are commonly replaced by off-hand statements like: “it works well”. To this end, the second part of the talk offers a theoretical result, an umbrella type theorem tailored for creating numerous Goodness of Fit tests for copulas.

Weather And Climate Summary And Forecast: November 2019 Report, Gregory V. Jones

Linfield University Wine Studies Reports

This report provides a summary of the weather and climate forecast for November 2019. It includes forecast information specific to the Pacific Northwest and the western United States, as well as forecast information for other portions of the United States and abroad.

Career Corner: Stem Graduates Can Earn Tuition-Free Masters In Education Teaching Fellowships, Ohio University College Of Arts & Sciences

All Forum Articles

No abstract provided.

Uwrl Hosts Awra Conference Tour, Utah Water Research Laboratory

News

The Utah Water Research Laboratory recently had the opportunity to host AWRA Conference attendees on a laboratory tour.

Charging And Supercharging Of Proteins For Mass Spectrometry: Recent Insights Into The Mechanisms Of Electrospray Ionization., Lars Konermann, Haidy Metwally, Quentin Duez, Insa Peters

Chemistry Publications

Electrospray ionization (ESI) is an essential technique for transferring proteins from solution into the gas phase for mass spectrometry and ion mobility spectrometry. The mechanisms whereby [M + zH]^z+ protein ions are released from charged nanodroplets during ESI have been controversial for many years. Here we discuss recent computational and experimental studies that have shed light on many of the mysteries in this area. Four types of protein ESI experiments can be distinguished, each of which appears to be associated with a specific mechanism. (i) Native ESI proceeds according to the charged residue model (CRM) that entails droplet evaporation …

He, She, They, Them, Us: Teaching Gender Studies In A Stem Environment, Erin Micklo, Leah Kind

Faculty Publications & Research

In this session, we will share the importance of teaching Gender Studies as an English elective in a STEM school. We will introduce our curriculum, including biological and socially constructed theories of gender and how these inform gender-related legal and social challenges in our world. Areas of focus include the role of gender in: politics, sports, media, literature, and culture. Our aim is to share our experiences and course materials with other humanities teachers and discuss and strategize ways to eliminate gender bias in our own schools as well as prepare students for the post-secondary world.

What Stem Can Learn From The Digital Humanities, Eric Rettberg

Faculty Publications & Research

Three main goals to the presentation.

• First, just to show some of the work my students have been doing in a new English elective at IMSA, Digital Literary Studies. In the second half of the presentation especially, I’ll be explaining the class and showing this work.
• Second, to give some sense of the field of the Digital Humanities, which has been a significant force in humanities at the college level for some time now, especially in the last ten years.
• Finally, to propose a rethinking of the way we think about the role of the humanities in STEM education. And …

Planck's And Callendar's Blackbody Radiation Formulas And Their Fitness To Experimental Data, Max Tran

Publications and Research

In this paper, we compare the blackbody radiation density formula obtained with classical physics by Hugh L Callendar and the formula obtained by Max Planck using quantization of energy. We use R and Maxima to analyze their fitness on coordinating experimental data and indicate some limitations with experiments in this area.

St. Norbert College Faculty And Staff To Present At Neville Public Museum Steam Engine Event, St. Norbert College

Press Releases 2019

No abstract provided.

Impact Analysis Of Karst Reservoir Construction On The Surrounding Environment: A Case Study For The Southwest Of China, Huan Shen, Yong Huang, Yuzhou Tang, Huiyang Qiu, Ping Wang

KIP Articles

With the rapid growth of the global demand for low-carbon energy, the development of hydropower has ushered in new development, but the ecological and environmental problems caused by this cannot be ignored. Taking the safe and efficient operation of water conservancy projects as the goal, this paper took the Maling Water Conservancy Project (MWCP) as an example to predict and evaluate the ecological environment risks of water conservancy projects. Based on the on-site geological surveys and experiments, the big well method and the long narrow horizontal tunnel method were used to estimate the water inflow from the underground caverns. The …

Why The Crackling Deformations Of Single Crystals, Metallic Glasses, Rock, Granular Materials, And The Earth’S Crust Are So Surprisingly Similar, Karin A. Dahmen, Jonathan T. Uhl, Wendelin J. Wright

Faculty Journal Articles

Recent experiments show that the deformation properties of a wide range of solid materials are surprisingly similar. When slowly pushed, they deform via intermittent slips, similar to earthquakes. The statistics of these slips agree across vastly different structures and scales. A simple analytical model explains why this is the case. The model also predicts which statistical quantities are independent of the microscopic details (i.e., they are "universal"), and which ones are not. The model provides physical intuition for the deformation mechanism and new ways to organize experimental data. It also shows how to transfer results from one scale to another. …

Scythes, Sickles And Other Blades: Defining The Diversity Of Pectoral Fin Morphotypes In Pachycormiformes, Jeff J. Liston, Anthony E. Maltese, Paul H. Lambers, Dominique Delsate, William E.H. Harcourt-Smith, Anneke H. Van Heteren

Publications and Research

The traditional terminology of ‘scythe’ or ‘sickle’ shaped is observed to be flawed as an effective descriptor for pectoral fin shape in pachycormids. The diversity of pachycormid pectoral fin shapes is assessed across the 14 recognised genera that preserve complete pectoral fins, and improved terms are defined to more effectively describe their form, supported by anatomical observation and aspect ratio analysis of individual fins, and corroborated by landmark analysis. Three clear and distinct pectoral fin structural morphotypes emerge (falceform, gladiform, falcataform), reflecting a diversity of pachycormid lifestyles throughout the Mesozoic, from agile pursuit predator to slow-cruising suspension feeder.

The Weekly Challenger, November 7, 2019, The Weekly Challenger, Et Al

Weekly Challenger Newspaper Collection

The November 7, 2019, issue of The Weekly Challenger.

Recommendation-Based Team Formation For On-Demand Taxi-Calling Platforms, Lingyu Zhang, Tianshu Song, Yongxin Tong, Zimu Zhou, Dan Li, Wei Ai, Lulu Zhang, Guobin Wu, Yan Liu, Jieping Ye

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

On-demand taxi-calling platforms often ignore the social engagement of individual drivers. The lack of social incentives impairs the work enthusiasms of drivers and will affect the quality of service. In this paper, we propose to form teams among drivers to promote participation. A team consists of a leader and multiple members, which acts as the basis for various group-based incentives such as competition. We define the Recommendation-based Team Formation (RTF) problem to form as many teams as possible while accounting for the choices of drivers. The RTF problem is challenging. It needs both accurate recommendation and coordination among recommendations, since …

Blood Pressure And Restorative Sleep Intensity Are Altered By Chronic Daytime Sleep Disruption In Rats, Katherine A. Maki, Sara M. Mithani, Ulf G. Bronas, Anne M. Fink

Biennial Convention (CONV)

There is a serious need to develop preventative strategies reducing night-shift workers' risk of cardiovascular disease and stroke. I developed an animal model of disrupted sleep and found when rats had abnormal sleep patterns, overall sleep quality (quantified by delta power in the electroencephalogram) suffered and blood pressure increased significantly.

Investigations Of Aerobic Methane Oxidation In Two Marine Seep Environments: Part 2—Isotopic Kinetics, Eric W. Chan, Allan M. Shiller, Dongjoo J. Joung, Eleanor C. Arrington, David L. Valentine, Molly C. Redmond, John A. Breier, Scott A. Socolofsky, John D. Kessler

School of Earth, Environmental, & Marine Sciences Faculty Publications

During aerobic oxidation of methane (CH4) in seawater, a process which mitigates atmospheric emissions, the 12C‐isotopologue reacts with a slightly greater rate constant than the 13C‐isotopologue, leaving the residual CH4 isotopically fractionated. Prior studies have attempted to exploit this systematic isotopic fractionation from methane oxidation to quantify the extent that a CH4 pool has been oxidized in seawater. However, cultivation‐based studies have suggested that isotopic fractionation fundamentally changes as a microbial population blooms in response to an influx of reactive substrates. Using a systematic mesocosm incubation study with recently collected seawater, here we investigate the fundamental isotopic kinetics of aerobic …

Structure-Property-Function Connections Underlying Performance Of Polybenzoxazole Membranes Derived From Bisapaf Polyimides, Maram A. Q. Al-Sayaghi, Jeremy Lewis, Chris Buelke, Ali Alshami

Chemical Engineering Faculty Publications

Highlights

• Stable rigid monomers result in polyimides with higher Mw, Tg, TR, and the more superior separation performance.
• Thermal rearrangement improved ideal gas separation by 1.5 to 2.0 orders of magnitude.
• Thermal rearrangement resulted in an enhanced thermal, mechanical and chemical properties of the produced membranes.

Polymeric membranes remain and will most likely continue to be the most practical cost-effect chemical constructs for gas separation processes, provided that novel polymers are developed to overcome current and persisting limitations facing exiting membranes. Here, we report a methodical and systematic study of the structure-property-function relations of standard polyimide membranes and their implications …

The Cowl - V. 84 - N. 9 - Nov 7, 2019

The Cowl

The Cowl - student newspaper of Providence College. Volume 84 - Number 9 - November 7, 2019 28 pages.

Social-Emotional Learning In Middle School: A Mixed-Methods Evaluation Of The Strong Kids Program, Erin Larsen Neth

Theses and Dissertations

Strong Kids is a social-emotional curriculum designed to reduce students' externalizing and internalizing symptoms. Strong Kids has shown promise in elementary school, but this was the first study to evaluate the newly updated version of the intervention in a middle school setting. The curriculum was implemented by two general education teachers with students at-risk for emotional and behavioral disorders. A mixed method design was used to evaluate outcomes with eight middle school students. Overall findings suggest that Strong Kids was effective at improving students' social emotional knowledge and internalizing symptoms; however, there were no significant changes in students' externalizing symptoms. …

Combined Molecular Dynamics And Phase Field Simulation Of Crystal Melt Interfacial Properties And Microstructure Evolution During Rapid Solidification Of Ti-Ni Alloys, Sepideh Kavousi

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Phase field method has become a popular tool to investigate the microstructure evolution during the solidification. Quantitative predictions using this method is still limited, and in this dissertation, we try to study this problem from different perspectives.

Most of the phase field models consider the solid-liquid interface to be in local equilibrium. Solidification during some manufacturing processes like selective laser melting, and electron beam additive manufacturing is rapid and far from equilibrium which can result in supersaturated solid solutions, segregation-free crystals, or metastable phases. Before obtaining any conclusions from the phase field simulations, we must know the answer for “which …

Demand Response Management In Smart Grid Networks: A Two-Stage Game-Theoretic Learning-Based Approach, Pavlos Athanasios Apostolopoulos

Electrical and Computer Engineering ETDs

In this diploma thesis, the combined problem of power company selection and Demand Response Management in a Smart Grid Network consisting of multiple power companies and multiple customers is studied via adopting a distributed learning and game-theoretic technique. Each power company is characterized by its reputation and competitiveness. The customers who act as learning automata select the most appropriate power company to be served, in terms of price and electricity needs’ fulfillment, via a distributed learning based mechanism. Given customers' power company selection, the Demand Response Management problem is formulated as a two-stage game theoretic optimization framework, where at the …

A Simple And Flexible Model To Calculate Annual Merit Raises For Health Sciences Faculty, Reza Mehvar

Pharmacy Faculty Articles and Research

Purpose

The objective of this study was to develop and implement a simple and flexible mathematical model to generate merit-based salary increases as a percentage of the faculty base salaries, with the flexibility to choose the range of merit raises.

Methods

Annual faculty performance scores, faculty base salaries, and available salary increase pool were used in a relatively simple linear model to determine the individual faculty merit raises as a percentage of their base salary. The core model allows the selection of a slope value that determines how steeply the merit raise changes with a change in the performance score. …