Digital Commons Network^™

Field Testing Of The Overflow Erosion Of Rhone River Levees, Christophe Picault, Fabrice Campette, Stéphane Bonelli, Sylvie Nicaise, Naim Chaouch, Faustine Byron, Yves Gremeaux, Alexis Doghmane, Mathys Garoui, Jordan Herbeck, Frédéric Golay

Protections Conference

It is important to quantify the soil resistance against erosion caused by the overflow of dikes and levees. Small-scale tests are not recommended, as they do not provide a correct representation of the actual soil in place and do not take into account the geometry of the structure. For this reason, the National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE) developed an on-site overflow device in 2015. The procedure followed is based on ASTM-D6460 standard. Two tests were performed in May 2022 on a Compagnie Nationale du Rhône (CNR) dike near Avignon (France). The dike is 6.2 m high; …

Recent Case Histories Of Cascade Failures And Overflowing Events Of Embankment Dams, Alexius Vogel, Jean-Robert Courivaud, Katarzyna Jarecka

Protections Conference

Excessive rainfall and extensive flooding within the context of a changing environment show the fact that resistance to overflowing erosion of embankment dams needs to be better assessed because of the increasing number of dam failures caused by overflowing, implying the necessity of a reaction to this kind of challenges. Better understandings of the embankment failure processes and the dominant parameters affecting these kinds of failures are necessary for predicting and modeling the breach processes. Acquiring this better understanding of the physical processes and a numerical prediction capability requires progressing in parallel in laboratory and field test investigations of embankment …

Predicting Publication Of Clinical Trials Using Structured And Unstructured Data: Model Development And Validation Study, Siyang Wang, Simon Šuster, Timothy Baldwin, Karin Verspoor

Natural Language Processing Faculty Publications

Background: Publication of registered clinical trials is a critical step in the timely dissemination of trial findings. However, a significant proportion of completed clinical trials are never published, motivating the need to analyze the factors behind success or failure to publish. This could inform study design, help regulatory decision-making, and improve resource allocation. It could also enhance our understanding of bias in the publication of trials and publication trends based on the research direction or strength of the findings. Although the publication of clinical trials has been addressed in several descriptive studies at an aggregate level, there is a lack …

2021/2022 Robert E. Kennedy Library Annual Report, Robert E. Kennedy Library

Library Publications and Administrative Reports

This year’s stories highlight successes and transformations, which will remain woven into the fabric of our organization. Instituting contactless pick-up for library materials is an example of learning how to quickly bring together people to solve immediate problems. We also became more effective at engaging with our constituencies. We reached more users through virtual consultations and online reference assistance and helped them get access to the expertise and materials they needed. We opened access to special collections through on-demand digitization. We broke barriers in the adoption of digital resources for teaching. And we began the challenging work of developing a …

Pacific Magazine 2022, University Of The Pacific

Pacific Magazine and Pacific Review

No abstract provided.

Comparison Of A Dynamic Ankle Orthosis To A Walking Boot For Preserving Ankle Joint Motion And Reducing Tibial Bone Load And Strain, Perri Johnson Jr.

Theses and Dissertations (ETD)

Tibial stress fractures are a common overuse injury accounting for 21.9 – 69% of stress fractures among runners and 24 – 51.2% of stress fractures in military cadets. Current treatment involves wearing a walking boot for 3 – 12 weeks, which limits ankle motion and causes lower limb muscle atrophy. A Dynamic Ankle Orthosis (DAO) provided a distractive force that offloaded the ankle and retained sagittal ankle excursion during walking. It remains unclear how tibial loading is affected by a walking boot or the DAO. This thesis presents a feasibility study confirming the offloading effects of the DAO on tibial …

The Bucksport Community Progress Report: Updated Fall 2022, Cacy Allen, Noah Baran, Anastasia Doyle-Bruce, Jacqueline Dunnigan, Victoria Jeffreys, John Loicono, Nina Mccoy, Hannah Mead, Cameron Mewhirter, Colin Mey, Madelyn Norris, Madeline Rhoda, Caleb Smith, Major Warner, Takiah Anderson, Cate Bauer, Kalina Faulks, Max Hall, Jairan Parker, Katelyn Zimmerman

Goal 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions

No abstract provided.

Vegetation Type Is An Important Predictor Of The Arctic Summer Land Surface Energy Budget, Jacqueline Oehri, Gabriela Schaepman-Strub, Jin Soo Kim, Raleigh Grysko, Heather Kropp, Inge Grünberg, Vitalii Zemlianskii, Oliver Sonnentag, Eugénie S. Euskirchen, Merin Reji Chacko, Giovanni Muscari, Peter D. Blanken, Joshua F. Dean, Alcide Di Sarra, Richard J. Harding, Ireneusz Sobota, Lars Kutzbach, Elena Plekhanova, Aku Riihelä, Julia Boike, Nathaniel B. Miller, Jason Beringer, Efrén López-Blanco, Paul C. Stoy, Ryan C. Sullivan, Marek Kejna, Frans Jan W. Parmentier, John A. Gamon, Mikhail Mastepanov, Christian Wille, Marcin Jackowicz-Korczynski, Dirk N. Karger, William L. Quinton, Jaakko Putkonen, Dirk Van As, Torben R. Christensen, Maria Z. Hakuba, Robert S. Stone, Stefan Metzger, Baptiste Vandecrux

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Despite the importance of high-latitude surface energy budgets (SEBs) for land-climate interactions in the rapidly changing Arctic, uncertainties in their prediction persist. Here, we harmonize SEB observations across a network of vegetated and glaciated sites at circumpolar scale (1994–2021). Our variance-partitioning analysis identifies vegetation type as an important predictor for SEB-components during Arctic summer (June-August), compared to other SEB-drivers including climate, latitude and permafrost characteristics. Differences among vegetation types can be of similar magnitude as between vegetation and glacier surfaces and are especially high for summer sensible and latent heat fluxes. The timing of SEB-flux summer-regimes (when daily mean values …

Bioenergy Crops As A Promising Alternative To Fossil Fuels In Louisiana: A Geographic Information System (Gis) Perspective, Yaw A. Twumasi, Zhu H. Ning, John B. Namwamba, Abena B. Asare-Ansah, Edmund C. Merem, Harriet B. Yeboah, Judith Oppong, Matilda Anokye, Diana B. Frimpong, Priscilla M. Loh, Julia Atayi, Rechael N.D. Armah, Caroline Y. Apraku, Opeyemi I. Oladigbolu, Cynthia C. Ogbu, Leah W. Njeri, Joyce Mcclendon-Peralta

Faculty Publications

Rising greenhouse gas emissions are causing climate change, and the world’s focus has shifted to the need to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. There has been a rise in the published literature on the utilization of crops for bioenergy production in Louisiana. However, very few scholarly documents have used Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to map the distribution of potential bioenergy crops in Louisiana. This study seeks to fill the void by evaluating the potential of bioenergy crops in Louisiana for energy production using GIS. Given this objective, the agricultural census data for 1999, 2009, 2019, and 2020 obtained from …

The Role Of Student Services In Student Retention: A Case Study Of A Ugandan Private University, Olive Kajoina

Theses & Dissertations

Student services plays an essential role in higher education not only by reducing student dropout rates, but also by increasing student retention. This study explored the role of student services in promoting student retention which in turn addresses the problem of college student drop out at a private, non-profit Ugandan university. The purpose of the study was to identify the types of student services available at the university and understand how such are utilized to meet student needs and promote student retention. A qualitative case study method was be used to understand the role of student services in student retention …

Faculty And Staff Perceptions Of Their Roles In Preparing Students For College And Career Readiness: A Qualitative Exploration Of High Schools, Community Colleges, And Universities, Monica Ruiz

Theses & Dissertations

In 2020, nearly half of Texas’s 385,000 public high school graduates were unprepared for college-level reading or math. Limited research reveals K-12 faculty perceive limited roles and responsibilities in the college process, relying heavily on guidance counselors and college admissions counselors for preparing students for college and careers. The purpose of this study was to help fill this gap by answering the central research question: How do high school and college-level faculty and staff prepare high school students for college and careers? I chose a qualitative, interpretive design to explore educators’ individual and shared social meanings and interpretations. I used …

An Autoethnograpy Of A Baby Boomer In Higher Education: Challenges And Catalysts For Change, Deborra Finlan

Theses & Dissertations

Higher education as a baby boomer brings mental, physical, and economic adjustments, concerns, and insecurities. Additionally, life delivers unexpected challenges and barriers which can cause hardships requiring various types of motivation. Fortunately, there are also catalysts which can contribute toward successes. Literature from four major elements were the focus in this study: motivation, adult learning, challenges, barriers, and catalysts. Theorists and theories included Vroom’s expectancy theory of motivation with the added factor of cost, and Ryan and Deci’s theory on self-determination; Mezirow’s transformative learning and Knowles’s self-directed learning; Cross’s theory on educational barriers—situational, dispositional, and institutional; and Cobb’s social support …

(R1981) Evaluating The Mhd Non-Newtonian Fluid Motion Past A Stretching Sheet Under The Influence Of Non-Uniform Thickness With Dufour And Soret Effects Implementing Chebyshev Spectral Method, M. M. Khader, Ram Prakash Sharma

Applications and Applied Mathematics: An International Journal (AAM)

A study is made on the development of hydromagnetic non-Newtonian Casson and Williamson boundary layer flow in an electrically conducting fluid in the presence of heat flux, mass flux, and the uniform magnetic field. The governing non-linear system of PDEs is transformed into a set of non-linear coupled ODEs and then treated numerically by using the Chebyshev spectral method. The velocity, temperature, and concentration fields of the steady boundary layer flow, which are generated by the stretched sheet with non-uniform thickness are discussed. The simultaneous effects of the external magnetic field, Soret and Dufour phenomena with reference have been explored. …

(R1886) Effect Of Aggregation Function In Moma-Plus Method For Obtaining Pareto Optimal Solutions, Alexandre Som, Abdoulaye Compaoré, Kounhinir Somé, Blaise Somé

Applications and Applied Mathematics: An International Journal (AAM)

In this work, we have proposed some variants of MOMA-Plus method that we have numerically tested for the resolution of nonlinear multiobjective optimization problems. This MOMA-Plus method and variants differ from each other by the choice of aggregation functions in order to reduce the number of objective functions. The theoretical results allowing us to use these aggregation functions to transform multiobjective optimization problems into single objective optimization problems are proved by two theorems. This study has highlighted the advantages of each aggregation function according to the type of Pareto front of the optimization problem. Six benchmarks test problems have been …

Earlier Snowmelt May Lead To Late Season Declines In Plant Productivity And Carbon Sequestration In Arctic Tundra Ecosystems, Donatella Zona, Peter M. Lafleur, Koen Hufkens, Barbara Bailey, Beniamino Gioli, George Burba, Jordan P. Goodrich, Anna K. Liljedahl, Eugénie S. Euskirchen, Jennifer D. Watts, Mary Farina, John S. Kimball, Martin Heimann, Mathias Göckede, Martijn Pallandt, Torben R. Christensen, Mikhail Mastepanov, Efrén López-Blanco, Marcin Jackowicz-Korczynski, Albertus J. Dolman, Luca Belelli Marchesini, Roisin Commane, Steven C. Wofsy, Charles E. Miller, David A. Lipson, Josh Hashemi, Kyle A. Arndt, Lars Kutzbach, David Holl, Julia Boike, Christian Wille, Torsten Sachs, Aram Kalhori, Xia Song

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

Arctic warming is affecting snow cover and soil hydrology, with consequences for carbon sequestration in tundra ecosystems. The scarcity of observations in the Arctic has limited our understanding of the impact of covarying environmental drivers on the carbon balance of tundra ecosystems. In this study, we address some of these uncertainties through a novel record of 119 site-years of summer data from eddy covariance towers representing dominant tundra vegetation types located on continuous permafrost in the Arctic. Here we found that earlier snowmelt was associated with more tundra net CO2 sequestration and higher gross primary productivity (GPP) only in June …

Lee Kong Chian School Of Business Year In Review 2021-2022, Singapore Management University

SMU Corporate Reports

As Singapore and the world reopens, this has led to changes, especially as people feel safe to travel abroad again. This has impacted us of course. We have seen an 8.9 percent drop in undergraduate applications from our 2022 high. This decline is due in no small part to the relaxation of travel restrictions. However, despite the drop, the quality of applications this year is similar or maybe even slightly better than the year before. In the end, we matriculated 884 students, above our target. This includes 38 scholarship recipients who accepted our offer, representing a record yield. We have …

Predictions Of Indentation Stiffness Of Musculoskeletal Regions Using Ultrasound, Sean Doherty

ETD Archive

Tissue indentation response is an important metric for understanding how different musculoskeletal regions respond to loading and is a function of the tissue’s form. Modem imaging techniques provide information about the internal structures of human tissue. Ultrasound remains one of the most common imaging techniques performed, given its portability and low costs. Prior work and data collection on 100 patients involved the collection of ultrasound images at eight different locations across the musculoskeletal extremities. Given the tissue structure information that the medical imaging provided, it was hypothesized that the mechanical properties of the tissue could be predicted from this data. …

Strengthening Effects Of Carbon Nanotubes And Graphene Nanoplatelets Reinforced Nickel Metal Matrix Composites, Amit Patil

ETD Archive

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs) with superior mechanical, thermal, chemical, and electrical properties are appealing reinforcements for the fabrication of lightweight, high-strength, and wear-resistant metal matrix composites with outstanding mechanical and tribological performance. The nickel-carbon nanotube composites (Ni-CNT) and nickel-graphene nano-platelet composites (Ni-GNP) were processed using two separate ball milling methods, namely dry ball milling (DM) and solution ball milling (SBM), and then sintered using the spark plasma sintering (SPS) technique. The influence of the premixing process, milling time, reinforcement morphology, and concentration on matrix grain size, microstructure, dispersion in the nickel matrix, mechanical properties, and tribological performance …

Singapore Management University Report To Stakeholders 2021/2022, Singapore Management University

Report to Stakeholders

The title of the annual report, “Our Evolving Garden”, points to how the University continues to develop and progress as “One SMU”. With the world now learning to live with COVID-19 as endemic, the last year has been one in which SMU students have been able to resume many of the activities that contribute towards providing a transformative education. For example, they were able to attend many more events on campus and to travel overseas for internships, exchanges, and community service projects. Faculty too were able to attend academic conferences and meet with educational partners, business connections and research associates …

Mars 2100: A Microcosm Of Ecocentric Design, Andrea Hoe

Architecture Thesis Prep

In the dystopian future of 2100, Earth becomes a dying planet and humanity is forced to continue colonizing the solar system for survival. Mars develops as a colonized planet, exploited for its natural resources and potential. The hierarchical system of power seen constantly throughout Earth’s history was inescapable, and poor conditions turned to extremes. As billionaires take control of the space race, the capitalist system reflected in past company towns was implemented, making the moral questions and lines blurred.

When the system is eventually ruptured, ecosystemic living is proposed. Living is now centered around health and mindfulness, creating a system …

Paradigm Of The Post Natural: Critiquing Capitalist Ideals Through Environmental Degradation, Andrea De Haro, Charlotte Bascombe

Architecture Thesis Prep

There is an unspoken value in the destructiveness caused by design that is exposed through the exploitation of natural resources. This thesis seeks to exemplify the aesthetic value inherent within these newly defined environments. Nature is a source for human consumption, and as such it has developed into a commodity. By now it should be made evident that humanity’s presence is everywhere. There is no ecosystem left unturned by human manipulation Iin this respect, nature is dead. Deforested sites of oil fracking leave mile long toxic ponds highlighting the destructive pursuits that capitalism creates. Chernobyl showcases how human errors in …

Tectonic Thresholds: Reclaiming Space Through Geomorphological Design, Amreeta Verma

Architecture Thesis Prep

This research posits that a revitalization of indigenous earth architecture practices in a contemporary context can mitigate the immense waste and embodied carbon in the construction industry. Earth materials are the focus of this research because they are locally sourced, abundantly available, and can be reused or returned to the natural environment, when utilized in a circular consumption cycle. Designing for reuse reduces the impact of construction waste on the burgeoning issue of environmental degradation and resource depletion.

The structural viability and environmental enclosure capabilities of soil throughout its lifecycle will be tested in different forms derived geomorphically from the …

The Ark: Sanctuary For Isfs, Zejun Sun, Wei Wei Li

Architecture Thesis Prep

The thesis is aiming to decrease the potential flooding damages to the ISFs, and a balance between the limited resources and high population density to relieve the flooding issues through the renovation and reconstruction of local churches in the Baseco Compound.

Flooding has become one of the most common and devastated issues in developing countries, and it is worsen by the housing crisis that lead to a formation of informal settlements with shoddy constructions and destabilized communities. What is an applicable approach to decrease the potential flooding damage to the ISFs? How to find a balance between the limited resources …

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Based Tree Canopy Characteristics Measurement For Precision Spray Applications, Md Sultan Mahmud, Long He, Paul Heinemann, Daeun Choi, Heping Zhu

Agricultural and Environmental Sciences Faculty Research

The critical components for applying the correct amount of agrochemicals are fruit tree characteristics such as canopy height, canopy volume, and canopy coverage. An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based tree canopy characteristics measurement system was developed using image processing approaches. The UAV captured images using a high-resolution red-green-blue (RGB) camera. A digital surface model (DSM) and a digital terrain model (DTM) were generated from the captured images. A tree canopy height map was generated from the subtraction of DSM and DTM. A total of 24 apple trees were randomly targeted to measure the canopy characteristics. Region of interest (ROI) was generated …

Predicting Geotechnical Parameters From Seismic Wave Velocity Using Artificial Neural Networks, Fatema Tuz Johora, Craig J. Hickey, Hakan Yasarer

Faculty and Student Publications

Geotechnical investigation plays an indispensable role in site characterization and provides necessary data for various construction projects. However, geotechnical measurements are time-consuming, point-based, and invasive. Non-destructive geophysical measurements (seismic wave velocity) can complement geotechnical measurements to save project money and time. However, correlations between geotechnical and seismic wave velocity are crucial in order to maximize the benefit of geophysical information. In this work, artificial neural networks (ANNs) models are developed to forecast geotechnical parameters from seismic wave velocity. Specifically, published seismic wave velocity, liquid limit, plastic limit, water content, and dry density from field and laboratory measurements are used to …

Supervised Acoustic Embeddings And Their Transferability Across Languages, Sreepratha Ram, Hanan Aldarmaki

Natural Language Processing Faculty Publications

In speech recognition, it is essential to model the phonetic content of the input signal while discarding irrelevant factors such as speaker variations and noise, which is challenging in low-resource settings. Self-supervised pretraining has been proposed as a way to improve both supervised and unsupervised speech recognition, including frame-level feature representations and Acoustic Word Embeddings (AWE) for variable-length segments. However, self-supervised models alone cannot learn perfect separation of the linguistic content as they are trained to optimize indirect objectives. In this work, we experiment with different pre-trained self-supervised features as input to AWE models and show that they work best …

(R1894) Invariant Solution For Two-Dimensional And Axisymmetric Jet Of Power-Law Fluids, Bhavixa Bhagat, M. G. Timol

Applications and Applied Mathematics: An International Journal (AAM)

An invariant solution is derived using the Lie symmetry technique for steady laminar two-dimensional and axisymmetric boundary layer jet flow of incompressible power-law fluids with appropriate boundary conditions. Using symmetry, the nonlinear partial differential equation of the jet flow problem is transformed into a nonlinear ordinary differential equation. The resultant nonlinear ordinary differential equation with boundary conditions is converted to an initial value problem using the Lie symmetry technique. A numerical solution for the resulting initial value problem is derived using Fehlberg’s fourth-fifth order Runge-Kutta method through Maple software. The graphical representation of the characteristics of the velocity field for …

(R1500) Type-I Generalized Spherical Interval Valued Fuzzy Soft Sets In Medical Diagnosis For Decision Making, M. Palanikumar, K. Arulmozhi

Applications and Applied Mathematics: An International Journal (AAM)

In the present communication, we introduce the concept of Type-I generalized spherical interval valued fuzzy soft set and define some operations. It is a generalization of the interval valued fuzzy soft set and the spherical fuzzy soft set. The spherical interval valued fuzzy soft set theory satisfies the condition that the sum of its degrees of positive, neutral, and negative membership does not exceed unity and that these parameters are assigned independently. We also propose an algorithm to solve the decision making problem based on a Type-I generalized soft set model. We introduce a similarity measure based on the Type-I …

(R1964) Solving Multi-Objective Linear Fractional Programming Problems Via Zero-Sum Game, Gizem Temelcan, Inci Albayrak, Mustafa Sivri

Applications and Applied Mathematics: An International Journal (AAM)

This study presents a hybrid algorithm consisting of game theory and the first order Taylor series approach to find compromise solutions to multi-objective linear fractional programming (MOLFP) problems. The proposed algorithm consists of three phases including different techniques: in the first phase, the optimal solution to each LFP problem is found using the simplex method; in the second phase, a zero-sum game is solved to determine the weights of the objective functions via the ratio matrix obtained from a payoff matrix; in the last phase, fractional objective functions of the MOLFP problem are linearized using the 1st order Taylor series. …

(R1971) Analysis Of Feedback Queueing Model With Differentiated Vacations Under Classical Retrial Policy, Poonam Gupta, Naveen Kumar, Rajni Gupta

Applications and Applied Mathematics: An International Journal (AAM)

This paper analyzes an M/M/1 retrial queue under differentiated vacations and Bernoulli feedback policy. On receiving the service, if the customer is not satisfied, then he may join the retrial group again with some probability and demand for service or may leave the system with the complementary probability. Using the probability generating functions technique, the steady-state solutions of the system are obtained. Furthermore, we have obtained some of the important performance measures such as expected orbit length, expected length of the system, sojourn times and probability of server being in different states. Using MATLAB software, we have represented the graphical …