Digital Commons Network^™

The Relationship Between Mechanism Geometry And The Centers Of Stiffness And Compliance, Shuguang Huang, Joseph M. Schimmels

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

A significant amount of research has been directed toward developing a more intuitive appreciation of spatial elastic behavior. Results of these analyses have often been described in terms of the elastic behavior (stiffness or compliance) centers. This paper investigates the properties of centers of stiffness and compliance and provides a fresh view of elastic center locations, specifically, the locus of centers associated with a given mechanism’s topology and geometry. We show that the location of the center of stiffness (compliance) for a set of elastic components connected in parallel (in serial) can be described in terms similar to the …

Assessment Of Climate Change Impact On The Annual Maximum Flood In An Urban River In Dublin, Ireland, Arunima Sarkar Basu, Laurence William Gill, Francesco Pilla, Bidroha Basu

Publications

Hydrological modelling to address the problem of flood risk corresponding to climate change can play an important role in water resources management. This paper describes the potential impact of climate change on an urban river catchment using a physically based hydrological model called Soil Water Assessment Tool (SWAT). The study area considered is the Dodder River basin located in the southern part of Dublin, the capital city of Ireland. Climate projections from three regional climate models and two representative concentration pathways (RPC 4.5 and RCP 8.5) were used to evaluate the impact of flooding corresponding to different climate change scenarios. …

On-Site Analyses As A Decision Support Tool For Dredging And Sustainable Sediment Management, Bruno Lemière, Valérie Laperche, Arjan Wijdeveld, Marco Wensveen, Richard Lord, Alasdair Hamilton, Laurence Haouche, Mathieu Henry, Joe Harrington, Branislav Batel, Pascal Lehette

Publications

Beneficial use of dredged sediments, either in harbours or waterways, is based on their potential as alternative resources. Such sediments can be considered as bulk materials for industrial needs, which is predicated on their current waste status or meeting end-of-waste constraints. They also can be an integral part of beneficial use projects using sediments as a bulk component, including civil engineering and landscaping. This is particularly important for beneficial use projects focusing on climate change effects mitigation, such as flood protection works, coastline defence or littoral urban areas redevelopment. When dredged sediment is used as a bulk material, its acceptability …

A Trait‐Based Framework For Assessing The Vulnerability Of Marine Species To Human Impacts, Nathalie Butt, Benjamin S. Halpern, Casey S. O'Hara, A. Louise Allcock, Beth Polidoro, Samantha Sherman, Maria Byrne, Charles Birkeland, Ross G. Dwyer, Melanie Frazier, Bradley K. Woodworth, Claudia P. Arango, Michael J. Kingsford, Vinay Udyawer, Pat Hutchings, Elliot Scanes, Emily Jane Mcclaren, Sara M. Maxwell, Guillermo Diaz-Pulido, Emma Dugan, Blake Alexander Simmons, Amelia S. Wenger, Christi Linardich, Carissa J. Klein

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Marine species and ecosystems are widely affected by anthropogenic stressors, ranging from pollution and fishing to climate change. Comprehensive assessments of how species and ecosystems are impacted by anthropogenic stressors are critical for guiding conservation and management investments. Previous global risk or vulnerability assessments have focused on marine habitats, or on limited taxa or specific regions. However, information about the susceptibility of marine species across a range of taxa to different stressors everywhere is required to predict how marine biodiversity will respond to human pressures. We present a novel framework that uses life-history traits to assess species’ vulnerability to a …

Assessment Of Temperature Optimum Signatures Of Corals At Both Latitudinal Extremes Of The Red Sea, Guilhem Banc-Prandi, Nicolas R. Evensen, Daniel J. Barshis, Gabriela Perna, Youssouf Moussa Omar, Maoz Fine

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Rising ocean temperatures are pushing reef-building corals beyond their temperature optima (T_opt), resulting in reduced physiological performances and increased risk of bleaching. Identifying refugia with thermally resistant corals and understanding their thermal adaptation strategy is therefore urgent to guide conservation actions. The Gulf of Aqaba (GoA, northern Red Sea) is considered a climate refuge, hosting corals that may originate from populations selected for thermal resistance in the warmer waters of the Gulf of Tadjoura (GoT, entrance to the Red Sea and 2000 km south of the GoA). To better understand the thermal adaptation strategy of GoA corals, …

The Challenges Of Growing Orchids From Seeds For Conservation: An Assessment Of Asymbiotic Techniques, Devani Jolman, Martín I. Batalla, Alexis Hungerford, Pryce Norwood, Noah Tait, Lisa E. Wallace

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Lewis Knudson first successfully germinated orchid seeds asymbiotically on artificial medium in 1922. While many orchid species have since been grown asymbiotically, the tremendous variation in how species respond to artificial medium and growth conditions ex situ has also become apparent in the past century. In this study, we reviewed published journal articles on asymbiotic orchid seed germination to provide a summary of techniques used and to evaluate if these differ between terrestrial and epiphytic species, to identify areas where additional research is needed, and to evaluate whether asymbiotic germination could be used more often in ex situ conservation. We …

Mismatches In Scale Between Highly Mobile Marine Megafauna And Marine Protected Areas, Melinda G. Conners, Nicholas B. Sisson, Pierre D. Agamboue, Philip W. Atkinson, Alastair M.M. Baylis, Scott R. Benson, Barbara A. Block, Steven J. Bograd, Pablo Bordino, W. D. Bowen, Paul Brickle, Ignacio M. Bruno, Victoria González Carman, Cory D. Champagne, Daniel E. Crocker, Daniel P. Costa, Tiffany M. Dawson, Tomohiro Deguchi, Heidi Dewar, Philip D. Doherty, Tomo Eguchi, Angela Formia, Brendan J. Godley, Rachel T. Graham, Christian Gredzens, Kristen M. Hart, Lucy A. Hawkes, Suzanne Henderson, Robert William Henry Iii, Luis A. Hückstädt, Ladd M. Irvine, Sarah S. Kienle, Carey E. Kuhn, Damian Lidgard, Stephanie A. Loredo, Bruce R. Mate, Kristian Metcalfe, Jacob Nzegoue, Carmen K. Kouerey Oliwina, Rachel A. Orben, Kiyoaki Ozaki, Richard Parnell, Elizabeth P. Pike, Patrick W. Robinson, Howard C. Rosenbaum, Fumio Sato, Scott A. Shaffer, Donna J. Shaver, Samantha E. Simmons, Brian J. Smith, Guy-Philippe Sounguet, Robert M. Suryan, David R. Thompson, Megan Tierney, Dominic Tilley, Hillary S. Young, Victoria Warwick-Evans, Michael J. Weise, Randall S. Wells, Bradley P. Wilkinson, Matthew J. Witt, Sarah M. Maxwell

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Marine protected areas (MPAs), particularly large MPAs, are increasing in number and size around the globe in part to facilitate the conservation of marine megafauna under the assumption that large-scale MPAs better align with vagile life histories; however, this alignment is not well established. Using a global tracking dataset from 36 species across five taxa, chosen to reflect the span of home range size in highly mobile marine megafauna, we show most MPAs are too small to encompass complete home ranges of most species. Based on size alone, 40% of existing MPAs could encompass the home ranges of the smallest …

Influence Of Abiotic Drivers On 1-Year Seedling Survival Of Six Mangrove Species In Southeast Asia, Taylor M. Sloey, Kiah Eng Lim, Jared Moore, Jie Min Heng, Jia Min Heng, Michiel Van Breugel

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Establishment and survival of plant species in systems with dominant environmental drivers (i.e. factors that exert disproportionate control over species establishment and survival) is often thought to be dominated by one master variable. In forested wetlands such as mangroves, hydrology is typically considered the dominant limiting driver. At the same time, light is a major driver of plant community dynamics, with some of the best understood plant life-history tradeoffs related to fast growth under high-light conditions versus survival under low-light conditions. Yet light is given relatively limited consideration in mangrove research compared to other drivers. Understanding the relative importance of …

System And Methods For Wireless Power Transfer Scheduling In A Wireless Power Transfer Network, Muhammad Omer Farooq

Department of Mathematics Publications

A transmitter in a wireless power transfer network (WPTN) needs to deliver wireless power to a number of wireless power receiver. There can be diverse set of wireless power receivers, for example, Internet of Things devices, smart phones, laptops, etc. The wireless power requirements for receivers vary depending upon their type and state. Commercially deployed WPTNs may also have different subscription plans for users, hence each user’s device should receive wireless power transfer (WPT) service based on the subscribed plan. Usually, a transmitter has to provide service to a number of receivers. Hence, the transmitter needs to have a WPT …

Barcoding And Its Application For Visualizing Ecological Dynamics, Vitul Agarwal, Colleen B. Mouw

Graduate School of Oceanography Faculty Publications

Time is perceived to be unidirectional and continuous in the philosophy of science. This continuity can play a crucial role in time series analysis as events are generally seen as an outcome of the past, or subject to events that occurred previously in time. In this study, we describe an ordinal approach to perceiving ecological time series – one that relies on pattern formation with both antecedent and future events. Our approach defines a limited set of structural shapes that can occur for past, present, and future time points. Such a library of all possible shapes can then be …

Empirical Evaluation Of The Shift And Scale Parameters In Batch Normalization, Yashna Peerthum

Master's Projects

Batch Normalization (BatchNorm) is a technique that enables the training of deep neural networks, especially Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) for computer vision tasks. It has been empirically demonstrated that BatchNorm increases per- formance, stability, and accuracy, although the reasons for these improvements are unclear. BatchNorm consists of a normalization step with trainable shift and scale parameters. In this paper, we examine the role of normalization and the shift and scale parameters in BatchNorm. We implement two new optimizers in PyTorch: a version of BatchNorm that we refer to as AffineLayer, which includes the shift and scale transform without normalization, and …

Abstractive Text Summarization For Tweets, Siyu Chen

Master's Projects

In the high-tech age, we can access a vast number of articles, information, news, and opinion online. The wealth of information allows us to learn about the topics we are interested in more easily and cheaply, but it also requires us to spend an enormous amount of time reading online. Text summarization can help us save a lot of reading time so that we can know more information in a shorter period. The primary goal of text summarization is to shorten the text while including as much vital information as possible in the original text so fewer people use this …

5g Mobility Management Using Satellites In Leo (Low Earth Orbit), Peter Knight

Master's Projects

As technology moves forward we find ourselves demanding faster and better quality internet. Towards that end, 5G was developed. While cell towers are already being built with 5G in mind, some of the built-in limitations of 5G mean that we may be seeing satellites with it in the near future. This development would require a drastic change in the current algorithms used for handovers. These algorithms fail to take into account the high relative velocity of the satellites and result in many unnecessary handovers which increases the likelihood of a dropped connection. This paper will propose and evaluate the effectiveness …

Canvas Autoquiz, Archit Jain

Master's Projects

Online learning management platforms such as Canvas are thriving and quickly replacing traditional classrooms, especially during these pandemic-struck times. As more and more quizzes are administered online, we need tools that make the quiz creation process easier and faster. Canvas Autoquiz is a command-line tool that allows instructors to automatically create and upload quizzes of varying difficulty levels. It also allows instructors to export quizzes from one LMS platform to another. This project explores the need, design, and implementation of the tool, and prospective future work.

Predicting Externally Visible Traits From A Dna Sample For Law Enforcement Applications, Niraj Pandkar

Master's Projects

A large majority of crimes such as homicides, sexual assaults and missing person cases are not solved within a reasonable timeframe and become cold cases. The ability to predict visual appearance and ancestry from a DNA sample will provide an unprecedented advancement in such criminal investigations. DNA based prediction of craniofacial features, phenotypes and ancestry can be used to reduce the pool of candidates onto which to perform further investigations. To achieve the above goal, it is first essential to substantiate, model and measure the intrinsic relationship between the genomic markers and phenotypic features. The first step is to standardize …

Contextualized Vector Embeddings For Malware Detection, Vinay Pandya

Master's Projects

Malware classification is a technique to classify different types of malware which form an integral part of system security. The aim of this project is to use context dependant word embeddings to classify malware. Tansformers is a novel architecture which utilizes self attention to handle long range dependencies. They are particularly effective in many complex natural language processing tasks such as Masked Lan- guage Modelling(MLM) and Next Sentence Prediction(NSP). Different transfomer architectures such as BERT, DistilBert, Albert, and Roberta are used to generate context dependant word embeddings. These embeddings would help in classifying different malware samples based on their similarity …

Adversarial Attacks On Speech Separation Systems, Kendrick Trinh

Master's Projects

Speech separation is a special form of blind source separation in which the objective is to decouple two or more sources such that they are distinct. The need for such an ability grows as speech activated device usage increases in our every day life. These systems, however, are susceptible to malicious actors. In this work, we repurpose proven adversarial attacks and leverage them against a combination speech separation and speech recognition system. The attack adds adversarial noise to a mixture of two voices such that the two outputs of the speech separation system are similarly transcribed by the speech recognition …

Investigating Lattice-Based Cryptography, Michaela Molina

Master's Projects

Cryptography is important for data confidentiality, integrity, and authentication. Public key cryptosystems allow for the encryption and decryption of data using two different keys, one that is public and one that is private. This is beneficial because there is no need to securely distribute a secret key. However, the development of quantum computers implies that many public-key cryptosystems for which security depends on the hardness of solving math problems will no longer be secure. It is important to develop systems that have harder math problems which cannot be solved by a quantum computer.

In this project, two public-key cryptosystems which …

Vincentian Heritage 36:2

Vincentian Studies

No abstract provided.

Exploring Algorithmic Literacy For College Students: An Educator’S Roadmap, Susan Gardner Archambault

LMU Theses and Dissertations

Research shows that college students are largely unaware of the impact of algorithms on their everyday lives. Also, most university students are not being taught about algorithms as part of the regular curriculum. This exploratory, qualitative study aimed to explore subject-matter experts’ insights and perceptions of the knowledge components, coping behaviors, and pedagogical considerations to aid faculty in teaching algorithmic literacy to college students. Eleven individual, semi-structured interviews and one focus group were conducted with scholars and teachers of critical algorithm studies and related fields. Findings suggested three sets of knowledge components that would contribute to students’ algorithmic literacy: general …

Perceptions Of Coding Instruction In K-12 Archdiocese Of Los Angeles Catholic Schools, Krikor Koko Kiladjian

LMU Theses and Dissertations

Traditional pedagogy offers students opportunities to enhance various skills and acquire content knowledge; however, additional steps can be taken to enhance student achievement, prepare them for future occupations, and bridge the divide in access to technology. A curriculum that integrates coding instruction affords students the opportunity to augment their collaboration, communication, creative thinking, and problem-solving skills. This is especially crucial for traditionally marginalized populations who have experienced inequitable access to technology. Nevertheless, coding is not integrated in schools in different domains, including Catholic institutions in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles (ADLA).

This dissertation used a descriptive and inferential quantitative methodology …

A Bayesian Analysis Of Early Śramaṇic Origin Stories, John Kingsley

LMU Theses and Dissertations

When it comes to assessing the historicity of religious figures, the methodology used by the academy is severely outdated, disjointed, and unsound. Bayes' Theorem, first used with a historical analysis by Richard Carrier in 2014 in relation to the historicity of Jesus, is a methodologically sound vehicle with which to examine what we have all simply, in the past, accepted. This paper addresses the historicity of the Buddha, and its implication on the early śramanic origin stories, by Bayes' Theorem.

Impact Of Sleep And Training On Game Performance And Injury In Division-1 Women’S Basketball Amidst The Pandemic, Samah Senbel, S. Sharma, S. M. Raval, Christopher B. Taber, Julie K. Nolan, N. S. Artan, Diala Ezzeddine, Kaya Tolga

School of Computer Science & Engineering Faculty Publications

We investigated the impact of sleep and training load of Division - 1 women’s basketball players on their game performance and injury prediction using machine learning algorithms. The data was collected during a pandemic-condensed season with unpredictable interruptions to the games and athletic training schedules. We collected data from sleep monitoring devices, training data from coaches, injury reports from medical staff, and weekly survey data from athletes for 22 weeks.With proper data imputation, interpretable feature set, data balancing, and classifiers, we showed that we could predict game performance and injuries with more than 90% accuracy. More importantly, our F1 and …

Co-Jumps, Co-Jump Tests, And Volatility Forecasting: Monte Carlo And Empirical Evidence, Weijia Peng, Chun Yao

WCBT Faculty Publications

This study classifies jumps into idiosyncratic jumps and co-jumps to quantitatively identify systematic risk and idiosyncratic risk by utilizing high-frequency data. We found that systematic risk occurs more frequently and has larger magnitudes than the idiosyncratic risk in an individual asset, which indicates that volatilities from one sector are largely derived from the contagious effect of other sectors. We further investigated the importance of idiosyncratic jumps and co-jumps to predict the sector-level S&P500 exchange-traded fund (ETF) volatility. It was found that the predictive content of co-jumps is higher than that of idiosyncratic jumps, suggesting that systematic risk is more informative …

Cradle-To-Grave Life Cycle Assessment Of Production And Consumption Of Pulses In The United States, Prathamesh A. Bandekar, Ben Putman, Greg Thoma, Marty Matlock

Biological and Agricultural Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Environmental impact associated with production and consumption of pulses in the United States was evaluated using life cycle assessment (LCA). The system boundary was set to cradle-to-grave with a functional unit of 60 g (dry basis) of pulses consumed in a US household. Varieties of pulses modeled in the study included field pea (Pisum sativum), lentil (Lens culinaris), chickpea (Cicer arietinum), and dry bean. Three methods of cooking pulses at the consumer stage tested in the study were cooking in open vessel on electric cooking range (OVC), cooking in stovetop pressure cooker on electric cooking range (SPC), and cooking in …

Implementing Organizational Change In A Multidimensional Community College District: A Case Study, Stacy Hicks, Sean Lassiter, Ashley Miller, Julius Moss

Educational and Organizational Learning and Leadership Dissertations

Implementing organizational change within complex organizations involves responding to external forces that impact business operations. Leaders guide their organizations through planned change processes by implementing strategic initiatives that affect the entire organization, impact business operations, and influence organizational values (Nadler & Tushman, 1989; Tushman & Nadler, 2012). Community colleges implement change initiatives on behalf of historically, non-dominant students to address systemic issues through developing more inclusive higher education practices (Harris & Wood, 2016; Tate IV, 2008). The following study investigated a matrix-structured community college district located in the Pacific Northwest that implemented change across multiple dimensions to improve student success …

Iere Annual Report 2022, Erin Largo-Wight, James W. Taylor, Kelly A. Rhoden

Annual Reports

2022 Annual Report of the Institute for Environmental Research and Education

A Contact Stress Capacity Model For Cylindrical Wormsets, Edward E. Osakue, Lucky Anetor

Faculty Publications

A contact stress capacity expression is derived for cylindrical worm sets by considering the worm as a helical rack mating with a helical gear. The concept of the equivalent spur gear for a helical gear defined by the instantaneous radius of curvature in the virtual plane of the helical gear is utilized in the contact stress capacity model formulation. All the basic design parameters of worm and gear are incorporated in the expression which explicitly shows the influence of the base and nominal helix angles on the contact stress. By considering the geometry of the worm and gear in engagement, …

Reckoning With Structural Racism In Legal Education: Methods Toward A Pedagogy Of Antiracism, Doron Samuel-Siegel

Law Faculty Publications

There is an empty quality to much of what passes as “diversity, equity, and inclusion” work in legal education. Despite a robust body of scholarship on teaching law consistent with the goals of antiracism, many legal educators struggle to put theory into practice. This Article responds to that struggle, offering a holistic, methodical approach to a pedagogy of antiracism whose goal is twofold: create conditions in which racially minoritized students learn to their full potential, free from the harms of traditional legal education; and equip all students, regardless of identity, to contribute to the dismantlement of structural racism. Absent such …

What Does It Mean To Be An Assistant Principal In Catholic Primary Schools In Western Australia? An Exploratory Instrumental Case Study, Lisa Gallin

Theses

This research aimed to explore the role of assistant principal in Catholic primary schools in Western Australia and is the first empirical study of assistant principals in this context. This research was predominantly qualitative and used interpretivism, specifically symbolic interactionism, as its theoretical perspective. An exploratory instrumental case study methodology was used to gain an in-depth understanding of the viewpoints of assistant principals regarding their role. Data collection methods included an online survey and semi-structured interviews as the primary sources, with a document search and researcher field notes adding further information. Miles et al.’s (2020) interactive data management and analysis …