Digital Commons Network^™

Wildfire Spread Prediction Using Attention Mechanisms In U-Net, Kamen Haresh Shah, Kamen Haresh Shah

Master's Theses

An investigation into using attention mechanisms for better feature extraction in wildfire spread prediction models. This research examines the U-net architecture to achieve image segmentation, a process that partitions images by classifying pixels into one of two classes. The deep learning models explored in this research integrate modern deep learning architectures, and techniques used to optimize them. The models are trained on 12 distinct observational variables derived from the Google Earth Engine catalog. Evaluation is conducted with accuracy, Dice coefficient score, ROC-AUC, and F1-score. This research concludes that when augmenting U-net with attention mechanisms, the attention component improves feature suppression …

Ectotherm Thermoregulation At Fine Scales: Novel Methods Reveal A Link Between The Spatial Distribution Of Temperature And Habitat Quality, Ian Axsom

Master's Theses

Investigating ecological questions at the scale of individual organisms is necessary to understand and predict the biological consequences of environmental conditions. For small organisms this can be challenging because we need tools with the appropriate accuracy and resolution to record and quantify their ecological interactions. Unfortunately, many of our existing tools are only appropriate for medium to large organisms or those that are wide ranging, inhibiting our ability to investigate the ecology of small organisms at fine scales.

In Chapter 1, I tested a novel workflow for recording animal movements at very fine spatial and temporal scales. The workflow combined …

Passion-Driven Statistics: A Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experience (Cure), Naomi J. Spence, Rachel Anderson, Sherryse Corrow, Susan A. Dumais, Lisa Dierker

The Mathematics Enthusiast

This paper describes the use of scientific practices in the Passion-Driven Statistics CURE and presents the results of surveys from the implementation of this CURE at three different colleges. Overall, students experienced positive changes in thinking and working like a scientist, personal gains related to research, and gains in research skills, attitudes and behaviors. The Passion-Driven Statistics CURE aims to equip the future STEM workforce with the data analysis skills and reasoning needed across industries.

Experimental Mathematics – A Course-Based Research Experience In Machine Learning, Mathew Gluck

The Mathematics Enthusiast

Efforts to expand the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) work- force have been topics of United States policy action for more than 50 years (Hira 2010). Unfortunately, among U.S. undergraduate curricula, STEM has one of the highest attrition rates (Tinto 1993) with less than half of students in the U.S. that enroll in an undergraduate STEM program ultimately receiving a degree in a STEM field (Hayes 2009). Naturally, the high rate of attrition is a topic of persisting concern. Many programs have been designed and implemented to model best practices in retaining students in STEM disciplines. One retention strategy …

A Probabilistic Formalisation Of Contextual Bias: From Forensic Analysis To Systemic Bias In The Criminal Justice System, M. Cuellar, J. Mauro, Amanda Luby

Mathematics & Statistics Faculty Works

Researchers have found evidence of contextual bias in forensic science, but the discussion of contextual bias is currently qualitative. We formalise existing empirical research and show quantitatively how biases can be propagated throughout the legal system, all the way up to the final determination of guilt in a criminal trial. We provide a probabilistic framework for describing how information is updated in a forensic analysis setting by using the ratio form of Bayes’ rule. We analyse results from empirical studies using this framework and employ simulations to demonstrate how bias can be compounded where experiments do not exist. We find …

Understanding Racial Disparate Treatment Of Juvenile Interpersonal Violent Offenders In The Juvenile Justice System Using Focal Concerns Theory., Suzanne Overstreet

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Disproportionate minority contact (DMC) is a salient issue that has been found at every stage of the decision-making process in the juvenile justice system (Hawkins & Kempf-Leonard, 2005; Kempf-Leonard, 2007; Bishop, 2005; Leiber, Bishop, & Chamlin, 2010; Leiber & Stairs, 1999). Existing research indicates that DMC influences adjudication for drug, property, and personal crimes (Fergusson, Horwood, & Swain-Campbell, 2003; Frazier, Bishop, & Henretta, 1992; Leiber & Jamieson, 1995; Leiber & Mack, 2003; Hawkins & Kempf-Leonard, 2005; Leiber, 2015). Because intimate partner violence (IPV) is a major public health problem and global concern (Djamba & Kimuna, 2008; Goo & Harlow, 2012; …

Sex Trait Discrimination: Intersex People And Title Vii After Bostock V. Clayton County, Sam Parry

Washington Law Review

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects employees from workplace discrimination and harassment on account of sex. Courts have historically failed to extend Title VII protections to LGBTQ+ people. However, in 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton County changed this. Bostock explicitly extended Title VII’s protections against workplace discrimination to “homosexual” and “transgender” people, reasoning that it is impossible to discriminate against an employee for being gay or transgender without taking the employee’s sex into account. While Bostock is a win for LGBTQ+ rights, the opinion leaves several questions unanswered. The reasoning in …

The Tokenisation Of Assets: Jurisdictional Experiences And The Lessons For Nigeria’S Financial System, Peter N. Okafor

Economic and Financial Review

The tokenisation of assets is not the future - it is the present. It is deeply transformative and is offering exciting possibilities for, in particular, financial markets. The tokenisation of assets offers promising possibilities for how capital is raised. Novel fundraising vehicles, such as Security Token Offerings (STOs), provide a higher degree of regulation and transparency for investors. Further, STOs are an efficient method to raise capital from a broader investment pool than it has been possible with traditional fundraising methods. It is, however, still in infancy stage and market adoption will still need time. Despite an exponentially increasing interest …

The Book Of Revelation In Nafe (Kwamera): William Watt’S Translations And Loanwords, Lamont Lindstrom

Pacific Studies

William Watt, Presbyterian missionary on Tanna (1869–1910), published a Nafe (Kwamera) language translation of the KJV New Testament in 1890. He had earlier produced Kwamera versions of the Gospels as soon as linguistic skills permitted, but the full New Testament translation was not completed until the late 1880s and printed in Glasgow during a mission leave (1889–1890). Watt worked with island pundits, and he relied on his wife Agnes’s linguistic expertise. Revelation’s allusions and obscurities presented significant difficulties of translation. I offer a close reading of Watt’s translated book of Revelation—Nari Kenamsasani (sasani means “display”)—tracking his grammatical choices, his …

Vol. 45 No. 2 (2022): Pacific Studies Full Issue, The Jonathan Nāpela Center For Hawaiian And Pacific Islands Studies

Pacific Studies

Pacific Studies is published two times a year by The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies, Brigham Young University Hawai‘i #1979, 55–220 Kulanui Street, Lāʻie, Hawai‘i 96762, but responsibility for opinions expressed in the articles rests with the authors alone. Subscription rate is US$40.00 yearly, payable to The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies. The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies (formerly The Pacific Institute) is an organization funded by Brigham Young University Hawai‘i. The Center assists the University in meeting its cultural and educational goals by undertaking a program of teaching, research, and …

Journal Of Food Law & Policy - Fall 2022, Journal Editors

Journal of Food Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Legislative Brief, Treatment For Substance Use Disorder In Tennessee, Tennessee. Comptroller Of The Treasury.

Office of Research and Education Accountability

No abstract provided.

Changes In Streptococcus Pneumoniae Susceptibility In Wisconsin: Implications For Clinical Treatment Decisions For Respiratory Infections, Erik Munson, Stephen C. Lavey, Megan R. Lasure, Barry C. Fox

Clinical Lab Sciences Faculty Research and Publications

Objective: In 2019, the American Thoracic Society and Infectious Diseases Society of America updated clinical practice guidelines for community-acquired pneumonia (CAP). In contrast to guidelines published in 2007, macrolide monotherapy for outpatients was made a conditional recommendation based on resistance levels. Local knowledge of current antimicrobial susceptibility is needed to guide management of CAP and other bacterial respiratory pathogens. The purpose of this study was to investigate antimicrobial susceptibility profiles and trending for Wisconsin Streptococcus pneumoniae isolates.

Design: Multi-center laboratory surveillance, with testing at a central location utilizing standardized susceptibility testing protocols.

Methods: Data published by the Wisconsin Department of …

Cultural And Contextual Adaptation Of Mental Health Measures In Kenya: An Adolescent-Centered Transcultural Adaptation Of Measures Study, Vincent Nyongesa, Shillah Mwaniga, Joseph Kathono, Obadia Yator, Beatrice Madeghe, Sarah Kanana, Beatrice Amugune, Naomi Anyango, Darius Nyamai, Manasi Kumar

Brain and Mind Institute

Introduction: There is paucity of culturally adapted tools for assessing depression and anxiety in children and adolescents in low-and middle-income countries. This hinders early detection, provision of appropriate and culturally acceptable interventions. In a partnership with the University of Nairobi, Nairobi County, Kenyatta National Hospital, and UNICEF, a rapid cultural adaptation of three adolescent mental health scales was done, i.e., Revised Children’s Anxiety and Depression Scale, Patient Health Questionnaire-9 and additional scales in the UNICEF mental health module for adolescents.

Materials and methods: Using a qualitative approach, we explored adolescent participants’ views on cultural acceptability, comprehensibility, relevance, and completeness of …

Pathways To Equity And Access: A Phenomenological Exploration Of Bipoc Mentoring And Their Use Of Emancipatory Pedagogy To Catalyze Minoritized Learners' Interest In Architecture And Urban Planning, Tameka Pierre-Louis

Education Doctoral

The overarching objective of this study was aimed to examine how BIPOC mentor faculty were able to persevere the challenges they faced during their post-secondary academic experiences to become licensed architects and urban planners, as well as to identify the motivating factors that contributed to them committing their time to mentoring students of color in NOMA's Project Pipeline bridge program. This study also looked at how their lived experiences shaped their approach to teaching the design justice principles within the NOMA’s Project Pipeline curriculum to help stimulate URMs' interest in pursuing post-secondary study in architecture or design. The hypothesis proposed …

Advocacy Experiences Of Licensed Professional Counselors Who Serve Minor Survivors Of Abuse And Neglect, Earniesha S. Lott-Kennebrew

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

LPCs in Louisiana operate in multiple professional roles and maintain various responsibilities, including advocacy for clients. Although numerous advocacy opportunities occur when counselors are working with children, a minimal amount of research exists regarding advocacy training, as well as the associated intricacies and responsibilities of advocacy. Lack of awareness of advocacy issues is a prominent barrier to advocacy involvement and it is suggested that counselor education programs are infusing advocacy education into courses but are not necessarily teaching specific constructs of advocacy. Thus, relevant and existing advocacy literature is sparse.

The purpose of my qualitative phenomenological research is to understand …

Denoising And Deconvolving Sperm Whale Data In The Northern Gulf Of Mexico Using Fourier And Wavelet Techniques, Kendal Mccain Leftwich

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The use of underwater acoustics can be an important component in obtaining information from the oceans of the world. It is desirable (but difficult) to compile an acoustic catalog of sounds emitted by various underwater objects to complement optical catalogs. For example, the current visual catalog for whale tail flukes of large marine mammals (whales) can identify even individual whales from their individual fluke characteristics. However, since sperm whales, Physeter microcephalus, do not fluke up when they dive, they cannot be identified in this manner. A corresponding acoustic catalog for sperm whale clicks could be compiled to identify individual …

A Novel Synthetic Phenotype Association Study Approach Reveals The Landscape Of Association For Genomic Variants And Phenotypes, Mária Škrabišová, Nicholas Dietz, Shuai Zeng, Yen On Chan, Juexin Wang, Jana Biová, Trupti Joshi, Kristin D. Bilyeu

Biomedical Sciences

Introduction: Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS) identify tagging variants in the genome that are statistically associated with the phenotype because of their linkage disequilibrium (LD) relationship with the causative mutation (CM). When both low-density genotyped accession panels with phenotypes and resequenced data accession panels are available, tagging variants can assist with post-GWAS challenges in CM discovery.

Objectives: Our objective was to identify additional GWAS evaluation criteria to assess correspondence between genomic variants and phenotypes, as well as enable deeper analysis of the localized landscape of association.

Methods: We used genomic variant positions as Synthetic phenotypes in GWAS that we named “Synthetic …

Correction Of Velopharyngeal Insufficiency Secondary To Palatal Gunshot Wound: Case Presentation And Review Of The Literature, Rogelio Martinez-Wagner, Cristopher Cardenas-Cruz, Ivan Ortiz-Monasterio, Edgar Vargas, Maria M. Cabrera, Pablo A. Ysunza, M. Del Carmen Pamplona, Diane E. Campos-Lopez

Articles

Reconstruction of midfacial traumatic defects secondary to a gunshot wound (GSW) is one of the most challenging head surgeries. The high impact on the functional and aesthetic quality of life, and the small margin of error to achieve a successful outcome are significant hurdles in the surgical treatment of these cases. Here we report a 33-years old patient who suffered a GSW with an entrance wound penetrating between the soft and hard palate and an exit wound on the right malar region. A description of the case and a systematic review of the literature were conducted. The treatment depends on …

Developing Distributed Real-Time Hybrid Simulation For Dynamic Response Evaluation Of Floating Wind Turbine, Hezha Lutfalla Sadraddin

Dissertations

Floating wind turbine (FWT) has a significant role in producing clean and sustainable energy in unlimited spaces with more steady wind and less cost. The design, construction, and safe operation of FWTs require a deep understanding of their dynamic responses under combined aerodynamic and hydrodynamic loads. Conventional FWT model experiments utilize wave tanks and wind tunnels. However, laboratory size and capacity and the scaling conflicts between the Froude and the Reynold numbers in these coupled wind-wave loading tests impose challenges to replicate dynamic responses of FWT. Alternatively, real-time hybrid simulation (RTHS), which combines numerical simulation and physical experiment of FWT …

Switching “Leader” And “Follower” Roles: The Wedding First Dance As A Representation Of A Modern Relationship, Anna Magidson

Master's Theses

The purpose of this exploratory study was to determine whether introducing switch dancing as an alternative to the traditional “leader” and “follower” role dynamic in a wedding first dance could be an effective tool of empowerment for people of all gender identities and sexual orientations. It was particularly important to understand whether this could have a positive impact on the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual, and other (LGBTQIA+) community. To the researcher’s knowledge, no other academic research paper has ever examined the intersectionality between the wedding industry, the LGBTQIA+ community, and switch partner dancing. This study was developed …

Social Emotional Learning And Its Development Through Dance: Comparing The Opinions Of Dance Educators And Non-Dance Educators, Teresa Pachniak

Master's Theses

The purpose of this thesis was to identify connections between what is learned in a dance classroom within public schools and the five components of a Social Emotional Learning Curriculum: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making. The research was designed to answer the following questions: Q1 Are the five components of SEL demonstrated regularly by dance students in compared to non-dance students? Q2 Can SEL be taught using a dance curriculum of movement exploration and dance scholarship? The researcher hoped to accomplish this goal by comparing the opinions of dance teachers and those of non-dance teachers, regarding …

Dance Education In Pennsylvania Charter Schools: Advocating For Parity Among The Core Arts Disciplines, Donna Lynch

Master's Theses

The goal of this research was to collect data on existing dance programs and activities in Pennsylvania charter schools, and to advocate for the presence of dance in school arts offerings for academic credit, creating parity among the four core arts disciplines of visual arts, music, theater, and dance. The researcher developed three essential questions to guide this research:

Q1 What dance education programs currently exist in Pennsylvania charter schools, and what certifications are held by dance educators in these schools?

Q2 What obstacles, other than the teacher certification process, are preventing schools from hiring dance specialists and implementing dance …

Who’S Teaching Whom? A Dance Concert Exploring Teacher-Led, Student-Led, And Collaborative Choreographic Methods, Robin Suing

Master's Theses

The purpose of this study was to create a positive learning environment where students with a range of dance backgrounds can flourish. The goal was to discover the feeling responses of college students to teacher-led, student-led, and collaborative choreography to determine the importance of a balance between teacher-led and student-centered instruction. Information from this project will be used to inform curriculum planning in future dance courses. The following essential questions were used as a guide when assessing the qualitative and quantitative answers to the surveys and interview questions given to the participating students: Q1 What similarities and differences are found …

Faculty Senate Chronicle December 1, 2022, Heather M. Loughney

The University of Akron Faculty Senate Chronicle

Minutes for the regular meeting of The University of Akron Faculty Senate on December 1, 2022

Reducing Opioid Use In Older Adults Through Pain Management Screening And Use Of A Pain Treatment Algorithm, Erika Power

Doctoral Scholarly Projects & Capstones

Older adults are prescribed more medications for chronic issues due to increased age, a phenomenon called polypharmacy. Unfortunately, older adults also experience persistent pain more often than younger adults. This age group is prone to utilizing opioids for longer than expected due to lack of screening for pain by providers accompanied by a lack of open and ongoing discussion about pain management options with patients. Evidence suggested that older adults are at an increased risk for improper use of opioids for pain management and often suffer side effects from long-term opioid use. Some possible side effects of opioid use in …

Lessons Learned: Patrick Honohan, Mercedes Cardona, Patrick Honohan

Documents

Recommended Citation Haggerty, Maryann (2022) "Lessons Learned: Patrick Honohan," Journal of Financial Crises: Vol. 4 : Iss. 4, 617-621. Available at: https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/journal-of-financial-crises/vol4/iss4/31

Stability Of Universal Screening Over Time: An Examination Of The Student Risk Screening Scale, Rebecca Wagner Lovelace

Master's Theses

Universal screening is a proactive method to identify students that are at risk for social-emotional and behavior (SEB) problems and provide information to schools to support early intervention for at risk children. Current recommendations for practice indicate screening should be conducted at three time points during the school year. Previous studies suggest that this recommendation is not empirically based and fewer screenings per year may be sufficient for identifying students at risk. The current study seeks to extend the literature regarding the stability and consistency of screening scores over time by analyzing ratings from the Student Risk Screening Scale (SRSS) …

Crisis Communication In The Ukraine-Russia Conflict: Use Of Facebook By Un Humanitarian Organizations, Rubaiya Zannat

Master's Theses

The proliferation of social media has made it incredibly simple to quickly disseminate valuable information to a large audience. Thus, numerous organizations are now heavily leveraging these social networking platforms as a means for managing their crisis responses. Through a content analysis of 355 posts concerning the Ukraine-Russia conflict made by five large UN humanitarian organizations between February and May, 2022, on their official Facebook pages, this study investigated organizational crisis communication patterns. Findings suggest that UN humanitarian organizations extensively used "threat" and "need for change" as crisis characteristics to delineate the Ukraine-Russia situation, whereas “protection of safety and security,” …

Plant Productivity And Diversity In Coastal Wetlands In Mississippi – Impact Of Hydrological Extremes, Kodi Feldpausch

Master's Theses

Wetlands are highly productive ecosystems that provide important ecosystem services and are threatened by extreme hydrological events. I evaluated how diversion of freshwater like Bonnet Carré Spillway openings in Louisiana, US, affected vegetation productivity and diversity in salt marshes on the neighboring Mississippi Gulf Coast, US. My study area is two estuarine systems that differ in their proximity to the Bonnet Carré Spillway, elevation, and salinity including Hancock County Marshes on the west, and Grand Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR) on the east in Mississippi. I collected above- and belowground biomass samples in 2020 and 2021, developed linear mixed-effects …