Digital Commons Network^™

A Blockchain-Based Auditable And Secure Voting System, Madhukara Kekulandara

Open Access Master's Theses

Improving electronic voting systems to provide election security and integrity while controlling cost has been an area of active research for decades. As a result, many technological improvements are incorporated into the voting systems used today. The introduction of technology, however, has not been without issues and has raised new concerns. One is the possibility of inaccurate election outcomes due to technical failures of the equipment. Another is the problem of election security and the possibility of malicious alteration of election results. Yet another concern is the capability to conduct post-election audits to validate and provide confidence in election results. …

Taxonomic Profiling Of Metagenomic Reads Using Deep Learning, Cecile Cres

Open Access Master's Theses

The field of metagenomics studies microbes from environmental samples in a process generating millions of short DNA sequences called reads. The final outcome is to discover the diversity as well as the function of complex microbial communities using computational tools. The general idea adopted by most taxonomic classifiers, which aim to assign taxonomic groups to individual reads, is to compare the target DNA sequences to a reference database and identify the taxon of the best match. This method has many disadvantages including the necessity for large computing resources in order to process large sequence databases. The current project aims to …

L1-Norm Regularized L1-Norm Best-Fit Line Problem, Xiao Ling, Paul Brooks

Graduate Research Posters

Background

Conventional Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is a widely used technique to reduce data dimension. PCA finds linear combinations of the original features capturing maximal variance of data via Singular Value Decomposition (SVD). However, SVD is sensitive to outliers, and often leads to high dimensional results. To address the issues, we propose a new method to estimate best-fit one-dimensional subspace, called l1-norm Regularized l1-norm.

Methods

In this article, we describe a method to fit a lower-dimensional subspace by approximate a non-linear, non-convex, non-smooth optimization problem called l1 regularized l1-norm Best- Fit Line problem; minimize a combination of the l1 error …

Temporal Behavior Of The Individual Soft Microparticles: Understanding The Detection By Particle Impact Electrochemistry, Junaid Ahmed, Julio C. Alvarez

Graduate Research Posters

Emerging progress of the Particle Impact Electrochemistry (PIE) technique has opened a novel field of detection and characterization of many analyte particles. 1 PIE comprises detection of changes in current when collisions of individual micro or nanoparticles are linked with an electrochemical event at the surface of an ultramicroelectrode (UME). 2 Being a rapid, low cost, and analyzing of one analyte at a time, PIE is widely used to characterize the shape, size distribution, and catalytic activity of nanoparticles. 2-5 To explore the scope of PIE for the detection of soft microparticles (absence of crystalline structure), ferrocene (Fc) trapped toluene-in-water …

Nanoparticles As Alternative Ceramic Glaze Colorants, Nathan Dinh

Honors Theses

Metallic nanoparticles, including gold and silver, have been used in wide-ranging applications due to their versatile characteristics. These include catalysis, biosensing, imaging, cancer treatments, and art. Due to the phenomenon called surface plasmon resonance, metallic particles change optical properties when sized in the nanoscale based on their composition, shape, diameters, or aspect ratios. In study, these robust nanoparticle systems are applied as an alternative to traditional bulk metal colorants in ceramic glazes.

In this study, the research goals are two-fold: to understand firing mechanism on the gold nanoparticle size and to develop these processes for wider use by regular artisans. …

Almost Difference Sets In 2-Groups, Xin Yutong

Honors Theses

Difference sets have been studied for decades due to their applications in digital communication, cryptography, algebra, and number theory. More recently, mathematicians have expanded their focus to the field of almost difference sets. Almost difference sets have similar functionalities with difference sets, yet with more potential of finding new constructions. In this paper I will introduce the definitions, properties, and applications of difference sets and almost difference sets, and discuss our effort and results in the exploration of almost difference sets in cyclic and non-cyclic groups.

Assessing The Feasibility Of Machine Learning To Predict Chronic Pain In Adolescence, Max A. Kramer

Honors Papers

"Chronic pain affects between 15 to 40% of adolescents worldwide. The impact and prevalence of chronic pain can be felt every day in terms of missed school days, strained familial relationships, and financial stress. While rehabilitation programs specifically designed for chronic pain management exist, they cannot always adapt to the idiosyncratic nature of chronic pain. Machine learning presents a framework to use diary data from individuals in pain and make predictions about the trajectories of their pain and related functioning. This study's goal is to assess the feasibility of using machine learning to predict pain and functioning by constructing, training, …

Pretraining Deep Learning Models For Natural Language Understanding, Han Shao

Honors Papers

Since the first bidirectional deep learn- ing model for natural language understanding, BERT, emerged in 2018, researchers have started to study and use pretrained bidirectional autoencoding or autoregressive models to solve language problems. In this project, I conducted research to fully understand BERT and XLNet and applied their pretrained models to two language tasks: reading comprehension (RACE) and part-of-speech tagging (The Penn Treebank). After experimenting with those released models, I implemented my own version of ELECTRA, a pretrained text encoder as a discriminator instead of a generator to improve compute-efficiency, with BERT as its underlying architecture. To reduce the number …

Meaning In Apocalypse, Alexander Johan Metz

Honors Papers

Modernity has always contained the threat of destruction. Mostly, the threat has been shapeless. It has manifested itself in the collective psyche as a vague fear of a far-off wasteland: an unknown apocalypse. The more tense moments of history have sometimes lent the fear real shape. For many years, it seemed as if atomic destruction was just over the horizon. Indeed, the early years of atomic testing wrought significant ecological damage. In the post-Cold War era, the fear of atomic destruction, at least by full nuclear exchange between the superpowers, has receded, but the apocalyptic threat has not. Climate change, …

Curving Towards Bézout: An Examination Of Plane Curves And Their Intersection, Camron Alexander Robey Cohen

Honors Papers

One area of interest in studying plane curves is intersection. Namely, given two plane curves, we are interested in understanding how they intersect. In this paper, we will build the machinery necessary to describe this intersection. Our discussion will include developing algebraic tools, describing how two curves intersect at a given point, and accounting for points at infinity by way of projective space. With all these tools, we will prove Bézout’s theorem, a robust description of the intersection between two curves relating the degrees of the defining polynomials to the number of points in the intersection.

Asking Questions Is Easy, Asking Great Questions Is Hard: Constructing Effective Stack Overflow Questions, Jane W. Hsieh

Honors Papers

This paper explores and seeks to improve the ways in which Stack Overflow question posts can elicit answers. Using statistical data analysis approaches and reviews of existing literature, we pin- point three key factors that are found in many previously success- ful/answerable questions. We then present a prototypical sidebar for the ask page that leverages these factors to dynamically (1) evaluate the quality of questions in construction (2) display answer previews of relevant questions and (3) scaffold the identified factors to subsequent askers during their question development processes.

Machine Learning? In My Election? It's More Likely Than You Think: Voting Rules Via Neural Networks, Daniel Firebanks-Quevedo

Honors Papers

Impossibility theorems in social choice have represented a barrier in the creation of universal, non-dictatorial, and non-manipulable voting rules, highlighting a key trade-off between social welfare and strategy-proofness. However, a social planner may be concerned with only a particular preference distribution and wonder whether it is possible to better optimize this trade-off. To address this problem, we propose an end-to-end, machine learning-based framework that creates voting rules according to a social planner's constraints, for any type of preference distribution. After experimenting with rank-based social choice rules, we find that automatically-designed rules are less susceptible to manipulation than most existing rules, …

A Future For Paris? Federalism, The Law Of Nations, And U.S. Courts, Jamison E. Colburn

Faculty Scholarship

The 'We Are Still In' movement raised novel and urgent questions about the status of executive agreements, treaties, and customary international law in U.S. courts. As sub-national governments increasingly face difficult trade-offs between climate change mitigation and adaptation, American courts will confront challenges thereto likely grounded in various types of "dormant" preemption of state and local initiatives. This symposium essay argues that our courts must first situate sub-national actions on climate mitigation within a complex and evolving context of mitigation as a globally-scaled collective good that can only be provided if contributions thereto accumulate over time. They must also avoid …

The Burden On Society From Eleventh-Hour "Citizen Petitions" Filed To Slow Generic Drugs, Feldman Robin

Maryland Law Review Online

No abstract provided.

Encoding Music: Perforated Paper, Copyright Law, And The Legibility Of Code, 1880–1908, Gerardo Con Díaz

Case Western Reserve Law Review

No abstract provided.

Utilizing Institutional Data For Curriculum Enhancement To Improve Student Success In Undergraduate Computing Programs, Prateek Basavaraj

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Student success is one of the widely discussed topics in post-secondary institutions and is measured in terms of the graduation and retention rates of programs. The goal of an educational institution is to achieve maximum student success and, hence, high graduation and retention rates. There are multiple studies on factors affecting student success. One of the factors that contributes to student success is the "program curriculum." Unfortunately, the traditional program curricula at many higher education institutions were developed with a belief or assumption that all students possess equal expertise, skills, and follow a similar learning path. The traditional curricular development …

A Comparison Of Open And Closed Chain Knee Extension Exercises On Patterns Of Quadriceps Hypertrophy, Domenic Angelino

Open Access Master's Theses

Resistance training causes hypertrophy, however, the magnitude of muscle growth varies along the length of the muscle (i.e. proximo-distally). For running based athletes and those dependent on movement about the hip, preferential proximal hypertrophy of the quadriceps femoris (the primary knee extensor) shifts the center of mass (CoM) of the thigh closer to the hip which provides a direct biomechanical advantage by decreasing the moment of inertia of the high about the hip (I). This in turn can increase movement velocity and economy and has been observed in studies using mathematical modeling and when comparing elite national level …

Associations Of Weight Dissatisfaction On Diet Quality, Percent Body Fat, And Physical Activity In College Students, Kelsey Mcnulty

Open Access Master's Theses

Statement of the Problem: As overweight and obesity rates continue to rise in the United States (U.S.), the social pressure to fit an impractical ideal body weight and image influences the satisfaction college-aged students have of themselves and can lead to higher body weight dissatisfaction (BWD). An increase in BWD has been associated with poorer dietary habits, such as lower intake of nutrient-dense foods like fruits and vegetables, excessive or lacking physical activity, as well as higher body mass index (BMI) and higher percent body fat (%BF). Since BWD has been determined as a contributor to increased risk of disordered …

Mechanical Response Of Water-Filled Drop-Stitch Inflatable Structures, Dylan Stephanik

Open Access Master's Theses

Inflatable structures are essential for a wide variety of applications due to their lightweight and high stiffness capabilities. Having a low storage volume, they can quickly be pressurized to produce a rigid and rapidly deployed structure. Due to their increasing popularity, research on air-inflated drop-stitch structures is becoming more common. However, little work has examined liquid-inflated structures. There are unresolved questions about the effect that liquids have on the materials and a lack of engineering data for designing components that are to be pressurized with a liquid.

The objective of this research is to determine the mechanical response of a …

An Inverse Method For Material Property Derivation Using Digital Image Correlation And The Finite Element Method, Sean D. Scro

Open Access Master's Theses

The objective of this research is to develop a standard operating procedure for correlating uniaxial and biaxial digital image correlation (DIC) data and results from numerical finite element analysis (FEA) simulations to determine material elastic properties. An inverse method is developed in which iterative data matching is achieved using the software package, Isight™. The method is applied to characterize the elastic properties of Lexan polycarbonate sheet and a nominal carbon epoxy composite. Displacement and strain fields obtained from DIC data from simulated uniaxial tension and biaxial DIC experiments serve as the target parameter to match in iterative testing where the …

Patterns, Or No Patterns, That Is The Question, Mehrsa Khaleghikarahrodi

Open Access Master's Theses

To reduce the threshold of EV adoption, the electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE) infrastructure needs to fit the EV systems to its users to satisfy their expectations. There needs to be a reflection of user behavior variability in the EVSE infrastructure to improve its functionality. Individual users’ charging actions, over time, construct a charging behavioral pattern that distinguishes the users from one another. This research analyses the EV users’ unique behavioral charging patterns. Therefore, profiles of users’ charging actions are clustered to investigate the unique behavioral patterns. An unsupervised clustering algorithm (i.e., K-means) is implemented through three distance metrics (i.e., …

A Case Study Of The Effectiveness Of Audiovisuals For English Language Learners In Stem Courses: Enhancing The Girls Who Code Curriculum At The North Side Learning Center, Hanna Nichols

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

No abstract provided.

Artists & Their Tools: A Structuralist Approach To Algorithms, Tajanae Harris

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

No abstract provided.

The Leviathan: How To Move 2.9 Million Government Documents Offsite, Univeristy Of Texas At Arlington Libraries

UTA Libraries Staff Publications - Archive

The concept of moving a university's historic, 2.9 million item government documents collection offsite was daunting. The actual move of the collection took 24 months. In this move, much was learned about developing a project management plan, including: consult the literature early, anticipate confusion points within the collection, discuss wear-and-tear issues, and understand the effect the move would have on service. The final move required 31 working days over five months of shifting. Afterward, it was found that the repercussions of a move especially on staff and reference work can often be more jarring than the move itself.

My Experiential Internship In Insurance Underwriting, Grace Mehr

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents, Academy Editors

Journal of the Arkansas Academy of Science

No abstract provided.

Journal Of The Arkansas Academy Of Science - Volume 74, 2020, Academy Editors

Journal of the Arkansas Academy of Science

No abstract provided.

Energy Content Of Seeds Of Common Sunflowers (Helianthus Annuus) In The Diet Of Scaled Quail (Callipepla Squamata) In Southeastern New Mexico, John L. Hunt, Matthew E. Grilliot, Troy L. Best, Dixie Lozano-Lopez, Emily R. Neilson, Isaac C. Castillo

Journal of the Arkansas Academy of Science

We analyzed the energy content of seeds of common sunflowers (Helianthus annuus) obtained from the crops of scaled quail (Callipepla squamata) collected from plains-mesa sand-scrub habitat in Eddy and Lea counties, New Mexico. Seeds were removed from crops and dried for 48 hours at 60°C to remove moisture and to standardize masses. Seeds were then analyzed for gross caloric value (i.e., energy content) in an oxygen bomb calorimeter. Energy content of seeds of common sunflowers from New Mexico was greater than that of many seeds previously reported from the diet of scaled quail and other granivorous …

Helminth Parasites Of Eastern Screech Owl, Megascops Asio (Aves: Strigiformes: Strigidae) From Arkansas, Chris T. Mcallister, Henry W. Robison

Journal of the Arkansas Academy of Science

The eastern screech owl (Megascops asio) is a small owl that is relatively common in eastern North America. Nothing is known of the parasites of this owl in Arkansas. Here, we document 3 helminths from a single injured M. asio that subsequently died and was donated by a rehabilitation center for parasitic examination. Found were 2 digenetic trematodes, Brachylaima mcintoshi and Neodiplostomumamericanum, and a habronematid nematode, Excisa excisiformis. The former trematode represents a new host record for M. asio, and B. mcintoshi and E. excisiformis are reported from Arkansas for the first time.

Business Meeting Report (Secretary's And Treasurer's Report), Academy Editors

Journal of the Arkansas Academy of Science

No abstract provided.