Digital Commons Network^™

Reachable Sets For Safe, Real-Time Manipulator Trajectory Design, Patrick Holmes, Shreyas Kousik, Bohao Zhang, Daphna Raz, Corina Barbalata, Matthew Johnson-Roberson, Ram Vasudevan

Faculty Publications

For robotic arms to operate in arbitrary environments, especially near people, it is critical to certify the safety of their motion planning algorithms. However, there is often a trade-o↵ between safety and real-time performance; one can either carefully design safe plans, or rapidly generate potentially-unsafe plans. This work presents a receding-horizon, real-time trajectory planner with safety guarantees, called ARMTD (Au-tonomous Reachability-based Manipulator Trajectory Design). The method first computes (o✏ine) a reachable set of parameterized trajectories for each joint of an arm. Each trajectory includes a fail-safe maneuver (braking to a stop). At runtime, in each receding-horizon planning iteration, ARMTD constructs …

Recurrent Neural Network Properties And Their Verification With Monte Carlo Techniques, Dmitry Vengertsev, Elena Sherman

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

As RNNs find its applications in medical and automotive fields, they became a part of critical systems, which traditionally require thorough verification processes. In this work we present how RNNs behaviors can be modeled as labeled transition systems and formally define a set of state and temporal safety properties for such models. To verify those properties we propose to use the Monte Carlo approach and evaluate its effectiveness for different type of properties. We perform empirical evaluation on two RNN models to determine to what extent they satisfy the properties and how many the samples of Monte Carlo required to …

What Snippets Feel: Depression, Search, And Snippets, Ashlee Milton, Maria Soledad Pera

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Mental health disorders (MHD) is a rising, yet stigmatized, topic in the United States. Individuals suffering from MHD are slowing starting to overcome this stigma by discussing how technology affects them. Researchers have explored behavioral nuances that emerge from interactions of individuals affected by MHD with persuasive technologies, mainly social media. Yet, there is a gap in the analysis pertaining to search engines, another persuasive technology, which is part of their everyday lives. In this paper, we report the results of an initial exploratory analysis conducted to understand the sentiment/emotion profiles of search engines handling the information needs of searchers …

Say It With Emojis: Co-Designing Relevance Cues For Searching In The Classroom, Mohammad Aliannejadi, Monica Landoni, Theo Huibers, Emiliana Murgia, Maria Soledad Pera

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Search Engine Result Pages (SERP) include snippets of retrieved resources as a means to help searchers select the ones that satisfy their information needs. This way, result relevance can be determined by scanning through snippets, an exercise that requires experience with reading, understanding, and assessing the value of a document. These are skills that primary school children are still developing and thus are not yet proficient with. As web search tools are essential to support children learning at school and home, we explore how to help young searchers in making informed relevance assessments while conducting searches in a classroom. In …

Prediction Of Fatality Crashes With Multilayer Perceptron Of Crash Record Information System Datasets, Thanh Hung Duong, Fengxiang Qiao, Jyh-Haw Yeh, Yunpeng Zhang

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Despite the effort of the authorities and researchers, there has been no sign of decreasing in the number of fatal crashes annually. To analyze the deadly collisions, researchers have focused on finding which factors affect injury severity, and thus many crash prediction models for it had been developed. Commonly the injury severity is categorized into five different classes. Still, in many studies, minority classes like fatality and incapacitating injury were merged so that the dataset becomes balanced, and the model can provide decent predictions. However, this approach does not help analyze the fatal crashes as they are joined with other …

Peak Pressures On Low Rise Buildings: Cfd With Les Versus Full Scale And Wind Tunnel Measurements, Aly Mousaad Aly, Hamzeh Gol-Zaroudi

Faculty Publications

This paper focuses on the processes of wind flow in the atmospheric boundary layer, to produce realistic full-scale pressures for the design of low-rise buildings. CFD with LES turbulence closure is implemented on a scale 1:1 prototype building. A proximity study was executed computationally in CFD with LES that suggests new recommendations on the computational domain size, in front of a building model, apart from common RANS-based guidelines (e.g. COST and AIJ). Our findings suggest a location of the test building, different from existing guidelines, and the inflow boundary proximity influences pressure correlation and reproduction of peak loads. The CFD …

Wettability Effects On Primary Drainage Mechanisms And Napl Distribution: A Pore-Scale Study, Ian L. Molnar, Jason I. Gerhard, Clinton S. Willson, Denis M. O'Carroll

Faculty Publications

The pore-scale processes governing water drainage behavior in porous media have implications for geoscience multiphase scenarios including carbon capture and storage, contaminant site remediation, oil recovery, and vadose zone processes. However, few studies report directly observed pore-scale water drainage phenomena in 3-D soils. This knowledge gap limits our ability to verify assumptions underlying existing models and develop optimal solutions. This paper utilizes synchrotron X-ray microtomography to present an experimental pore-scale examination of nonaqueous phase liquid (NAPL)/water distribution along a primary drainage front as dense NAPL was injected upward into water wetting (WW) and intermediate wetting (IW) sand-packed columns. Pore-network structures …

Gravity-Drawing Flexible Silicone Filaments As Fiber Optics And Model Foldamers, Katherine Snell

CMC Senior Theses

Here, we present a method of gravity-drawing polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) silicone fibers with application as fiber optics and as model foldamers. Beginning as a viscous liquid, PDMS is cured using heat until its measured viscosity reaches 4000 mPa•s. The semi-cured elastomer is then extruded through a tube furnace to produce thin (diameters on the order of hundred micrometers) filaments with scalable lengths. PDMS is biocompatible, gas-permeable, flexible, and hydrophobic. Additionally, the PDMS surface hydrophobicity can be modified via UV exposure, O2 plasma, and corona discharge. We demonstrate the patternibility (i.e patterns of hydrophobicity) of PDMS fibers, adding complexity to potential foldamer …

Mean Sea Level Changes In The Southwestern Baltic Sea Over The Last 190 Years, Jessica Kelln, Sönke Dangendorf, Ulf Gräwe, Holger Steffen, Justus Patzke, Jürgen Jensen

CCPO Publications

(First paragraph) Over the 20th century a global mean sea level (GMSL) rise of about 1.3 to 2 mm/yr could be observed and it is projected to further accelerate throughout the 21st century (Church and White 2006, Hay et al., 2015; Dangendorf et al., 2017). However, GMSL rise is neither temporally nor spatially uniform. Because of a number of different factors (e.g. mass changes and gravitational effects due to melting ice sheets/glaciers, expanding/contracting volume due to temperature and salinity fluctuations, ocean circulation changes, atmospheric forcing), regional mean sea level (MSL) trends can vary significantly from the global average. In order …

Utility Of Glasgow-Blatchford Scoring System In Identification Of Low Risk Patients With Upper Gastrointestinal Bleeding In Emergency Departments In Dar Es Salaam Hospitals, Tanzania, Selestin D. Mpiri

Master of Medicine in Internal Medicine

Background: Acute upper gastrointestinal bleeding (UGIB) remains a common cause of visits to the Emergency Department (ED). To stratify the risk of complications, rebleeding, need for clinical intervention, or death, several clinical scores are in use. Glasgow-Blatchford Score (GBS) is an excellent risk assessment tool and has shown to accurately identify patients with a low risk of death or requiring intervention. In urban Tanzania, there is a lack of standardized protocol and a well-validated risk assessment tool for analyzing patients presenting with UGIB symptoms. Good performance of GBS score and its use will help to reduce unnecessary emergency endoscopies and …

Landslides Across The Usa: Occurrence, Susceptibility, And Data Limitations, Benjamin B. Mirus, Eric S. Jones, Rex L. Baum, Jonathan W. Godt, Stephen Slaughter, Matthew M. Crawford, Jeremy Lancaster, Thomas Stanley, Dalia B. Kirschbaum, William J. Burns, Robert G. Schmitt, Kassandra O. Lindsey, Kevin M. Mccoy

Faculty, Staff, and Affiliated Publications--KGS

Detailed information about landslide occurrence is the foundation for advancing process understanding, susceptibility mapping, and risk reduction. Despite the recent revolution in digital elevation data and remote sensing technologies, landslide mapping remains resource intensive. Consequently, a modern, comprehensive map of landslide occurrence across the United States (USA) has not been compiled. As a first step toward this goal, we present a national-scale compilation of existing, publicly available landslide inventories. This geodatabase can be downloaded in its entirety or viewed through an online, searchable map, with parsimonious attributes and direct links to the contributing sources with additional details. The mapped spatial …

Free Subgroups With Torsion Quotients And Profinite Subgroups With Torus Quotients, Wayne Lewis, Peter Loth, Adolf Mader

Mathematics Faculty Publications

Here “group” means abelian group. Compact connected groups contain δ-subgroups, that is, compact totally disconnected subgroups with torus quotients, which are essential ingredients in the important Resolution Theorem, a description of compact groups. Dually, full free subgroups of discrete torsion-free groups of finite rank are studied in order to obtain a comprehensive picture of the abundance of δ-subgroups of a protorus. Associated concepts are also considered.

On Using Model For Downstream Responsibility, Frances S. Grodzinsky, Marty J. Wolf, Keith W. Miller

School of Computer Science & Engineering Faculty Publications

The authors identify features of software and the software development process that may contribute to the differences in the level of responsibility assigned to the software developers when they make their software available for others to use as a tool in building a second piece of software. They call this second use of the software "downstream use."

Magnetic Skyrmions In Multilayers With Interfacial Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya Interactions, Xiao Wang

Bryn Mawr College Dissertations and Theses

Magnetic skyrmions, topologically stable spin textures that can be driven by electric currents efficiently, have both rich physics and potential applications in future technology such as spintronic devices for data storage. Magnetic skyrmions in multilayers with interfacial Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI) were investigated in three aspects: stabilization, current-driven motion and antiferromagnetically coupled skyrmion pairs. The formation and stabilization of magnetic skyrmions without external magnetic fields are determined by the competition of the Heisenberg exchange interaction, dipolar interaction, magnetic anisotropy, and interfacial DMI. In the [Pt/Co/HM]n (HM = W, Mn, Ir, Au, n = 1, 3, 5, 8, 10, 12) multilayers, DMI …

Review Of Basic Post-Tonal Theory And Analysis By Philip Lambert, And Introduction To Post-Tonal Theory By Joseph N. Straus, Owen Belcher

Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy

No abstract provided.

First Person: The Pandemic's Silver Lining: Real Talk For Future Teachers, J Hipp

Faculty Publications

When the COVID-19 pandemic closed her university campus, Jamie Hipp had to move her popular arts integration class for preservice teachers to a virtual format. She was surprised to learn that her students wanted more than regular sessions during their scheduled class times; they wanted additional opportunities for real teacher talk about going on interviews, setting up a classroom, and other practical matters that weren't being covered in their preservice program. Hipp set up a series of virtual sessions on topics of interest to students, in addition to regular class sessions. The sessions went so well that Hipp intends to …

The Sky's The Limit, Andrew Zhang '22

Distinguished Student Work - Visual Arts

Photograph

A History Of Fire At Hitchcock Nature Center, Western Iowa, Reconstructed Through An Analysis Of Macroscopic Charcoal And Soil-Magnetic Properties, Christoph E. Geiss, Nicole E. Towner

Journal of the Iowa Academy of Science: JIAS

We analyzed soil-magnetic properties and macroscopic charcoal abundances for two soil profiles located in Hitchcock Nature Center (HNC), Honey Creek, Iowa. Both profiles are located on valley bottoms in the Loess Hills of western Iowa and developed in redeposited Peoria loess. Site HNC 15D is located on an elevated stream terrace and contains a moderately well-developed modern soil. Site HNC 15G is located on a valley floor and consists of a poorly developed modern soil and a series of buried soil horizons. Both sites record consistently low charcoal concentrations of 0.5 mm2 /g in prehistoric deposits. While site HNC 15D …

Zhvillimi I Time Attendance Sistemit Të Bazuar Në Arduino, Mërgim Alidema

Theses and Dissertations

Procesi i përcjellës së kohës se kur është filluar puna dhe kohëzgjatjes së saj ka qenë një çështje e komplikuar. Për shumë vite shumë metoda janë zhvilluar për të monitoruar prezencën e punëtoreve në vendin e tyre të punës. Më të popullarizuarat kanë qenë karta kohore dhe pasqyra e mungesave.

Secila nga këto opsione ka disavantazhët e veta. Në dekadën e fundit shumë kompani kanë filluar të integrojnë softuerin dhe pajisje moderne për regjistrimin e hyrje-daljeve që të monitorojnë prezencën e punëtoreve të tyre. Këto sistem përveç që ofrojnë regjistrimin e hyrje-daljeve janë në gjendje edhe të gjenerojnë raporte ditore, …

Electrodynamics Modeling Of Plasmonic-Organic Hybrid Waveguides, Marcus Michel

Pomona Senior Theses

Optical fibers have multiple advantages over conventional electrical connections, such as lower energy losses and higher bandwidth. To use optics for chip-to-chip communication, electro-optic (EO) modulators need to be scaled down to be incorporated on integrated circuits. This size reduction has been accomplished using plasmonic-organic hybrid (POH) waveguides, which make use of nonlinear organic EO materials and surface plasmon polaritons to achieve light modulation in devices with lengths on the micron scale. As these devices are just starting to be developed, there are many avenues for their potential optimization. In order to streamline and reduce the cost of the optimization …

Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (As A Rapid Method) Coupled With Machine Learning Approaches For Detection And Quantification Of Gluten Contaminations In Grain-Based Foods, Abuchi Godswill Okeke

Theses and Dissertations--Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering

Cross-contamination between food grains during harvesting, transportation, and/or food processing is still a major issue in the food industry. Due to cross-contact with gluten-rich grains (wheat, barley, and rye grains), gluten can get into food that’s naturally free from gluten and thus may not be safe for consumption for people susceptible to gluten-related disorders such as celiac disease, wheat allergy, gluten intolerance or sensitivity. The conventional method of gluten detection is cumbersome, time-consuming, and requires well-trained personnel. Therefore, there is a need for a rapid and equally effective technique to authenticate gluten contamination in foods. This research work explored the …

Developing The Rapid Assessment Of Problem Solving For Kids (Raps-K), Emily Phillips

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

The Rapid Assessment of Problem Solving (RAPS) was created by Dr. Robert Marshall in order to assess an individuals’ problem solving abilities. This assessment is set up like the popular twenty-questions game and is used to assess adults with cognitive impairments. An administrator chooses a picture from a board of thirty-two pictures and the subject must ask yes or no questions in order to guess the target picture in as few questions as possible. Analysis assesses integration planning scores, question asking efficiency scores, and question types to determine a level of problem solving abilities.

Smith and Jones (2018) used the …

The Economic Determinants Of American Professional Sports Franchise Valuations, Ryan Flora

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

This thesis seeks to analyze the impact of regional identities on American professional sports team valuations. Regional identities are classified as any name of a team that is not tied directly to the city that they reside in. For example, the Carolina Panthers have a regional identity because they are not based out of “Carolina”, they are based out of Charlotte, North Carolina. Another example would be the Arizona Cardinals, whose name encompasses the whole state of Arizona rather than Phoenix, the city they are based out of. The leagues that will be involved in this study are the National …

Using Unmanned Aircraft Systems To Identify Invasive Species, Tithe Ahmed

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Invasive species serve as a threat to native biodiversity and ecosystem sustainability. Combatting the spread of invasive species requires long-term physical and monetary commitments. In Balule Nature Reserve of Greater Kruger National Park, South Africa, Opuntia ficus-inidica (the common prickly pear) has been a relentless invader, displacing the local flora and fauna. The goal of this project is to battle invasive species such as prickly pear using efficient and inexpensive technology: unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs or drones) and multispectral sensors.

Using a 4-bandwidth Parrot Sequoia multispectral sensor in tandem with the DJI Phantom Pro 3^TM UAV, images of land …

Geochemical Flux Analysis Of Glacial River Runoff For Sólheimajökull, Iceland, Jessica Garrison

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Geochemical fluxes in aqueous studies are an essential component of research to understand weathering and changes in a hydrologic system. These data can indicate any discrepancies, outliers, or gradual changes in a water environment to gain information on pollutants, carbon cycles, biological input, etc. Glacial melt is the majority of the surface water present throughout the country. The melting amount is increasing with the temperatures, which can be monitored by the changes in geochemical flux during increased discharge in glacial rivers. A high-resolution data set of Sόlheimajökull Glacier in Iceland was used to determine how changing climatic conditions for the …

Bridging The Food Gap: Founding And Sustaining A Food Recovery Network Chapter At Wku, Elaine Losekamp

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Food waste is a pervasive global issue with many environmental and social repercussions. While about one-third of all food produced for human consumption goes to waste, many people in the United States and the world are affected by food insecurity. Food recovery, the process of rescuing edible food that would otherwise go to waste and delivering to hungry people, is an effective solution for both food waste and food insecurity. The author of this capstone created a food recovery program at Western Kentucky University (WKU) in January 2019 and has grown the program’s scope and impact since that time. This …

Attic Salt, 2020, Loyola Marymount University, The Honors Program

Attic Salt

No abstract provided.

The Development Of Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress-Inducingstrategies To Overcome Resistance To Cancer Therapy, Ravyn Marie Duncan

MUSC Theses and Dissertations

Effectively treating therapeutic resistant malignancies remains one of the greatest challenges that cancer researchers and clinicians face today. Intra-tumoral heterogeneity contributes to intrinsic and acquired genetic alterations that render tumor cells nonresponsive to single agent therapies. Adaptations to endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress are a critical driver of tumorigenesis and a source of therapeutic resistance in tumors, as many malignancies suppress this mechanism for survival. Therefore, combination strategies that induce ER stress offer an approach for combating therapeutic resistant cancer. The studies outlined in this dissertation offer two novel synergistic therapeutic strategies: (1) pairing glutaminase inhibitor CB-839 with proteasome inhibitors (PI) …

Formation Of Escherichia Coli O157: H7 Persister Cells In The Lettuce Phyllosphere And Application Of Differential Equation Models To Predict Their Prevalence On Lettuce Plants In The Field, Daniel S. Munther, Michelle Q. Carter, Claude V. Aldric, Renata Ivanek, Maria T. Brandl

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Publications

American Society for Microbiology. Escherichia coli O157:H7 (EcO157) infections have been recurrently associated with produce. The physiological state of EcO157 cells surviving the many stresses encountered on plants is poorly understood. EcO157 populations on plants in the field generally follow a biphasic decay in which small subpopulations survive over longer periods of time. We hypothesized that these subpopulations include persister cells, known as cells in a transient dormant state that arise through phenotypic variation in a clonal population. Using three experimental regimes (with growing, stationary at carrying capacity, and decaying populations), we measured the persister cell fractions in culturable EcO157 …

Role Of Hydrodynamic Interactions In Chemotaxis Of Bacterial Populations, Shawn D. Ryan

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Publications

How bacteria sense local chemical gradients and decide to move has been a fascinating area of recent study. Chemotaxis of bacterial populations has been traditionally modeled using either individual-based models describing the motion of a single bacterium as a velocity jump process, or macroscopic PDE models that describe the evolution of the bacterial density. In these models, the hydrodynamic interaction between the bacteria is usually ignored. However, hydrodynamic interaction has been shown to induce collective bacterial motion and self-organization resulting in larger mesoscale structures. In this paper, the role of hydrodynamic interactions in bacterial chemotaxis is investigated by extending a …