Digital Commons Network^™

A Mode Sum Regularization Prescription In Quantum Field Theory In Curved Spacetimes In Higher Dimensions And For Charged Scalar Fields, Eoin Scanlon

Academic Posters Collection

Semi-classical gravity combines classical treatment of the gravitational field with quantum mechanical treatment of matter fields. A significant challenge however is the divergence contained within the stress-energy tensor when solving the semi-classical Einstein equations. This work extends to higher dimensions an extremely efficient method for renormalizing the stress-energy tensor of a quantum scalar field in spherically-symmetric black hole spacetimes, thereby removing the divergences. The method applies to a scalar field with arbitrary field parameters. The utility of the method is demonstrated by computing the renormalized stress-energy tensor for a scalar field in the Schwarzschild black hole spacetime for odd dimensions.

Feedback, Learning Outcomes And Mathematics Anxiety In A Digital Game Based Learning Approach In Mathematics Education, André Almo

Academic Posters Collection

Feedback is a crucial part of learning, and an essential element in digital game-based learning approaches, in which digital games - known as 'serious games' - are used to deliver educational content. Feedback features respond to players' actions within the game, providing them with information and guidance, as well as potentially impacting their learning, motivation and engagement. However, these features may be designed differently, since they include various distinct characteristics and dimensions. This work proposes a new taxonomy for feedback features in serious games, with an emphasis in game design aspects, in order to provide clearer descriptions and distinctions of …

Cslinc: A Nationwide Cs Mooc For Second-Level Students, Karen Nolan, Keith Quille, Brett A. Becker

Academic Posters Collection

This poster introduces CSLINC, a free scaffolded MOOC framework tailored to second-level students in Ireland that consists of: an online platform built for accessibility; a suite of modules developed upon international best practices with varying co-creators; and automated assessment and certificates of completion. Its aim is to provide content to promote national CS curricula to all second-level students in Ireland. In September 2021, CSLINC launched to 10,000 students across 100 schools. Future work will include collecting and collating research to validate CSLINC’s goals, scaffolding that will build foundations for national curriculum learning outcomes, and measure its impact on students, their …

A Framework For Confusion Mitigation In Task-Oriented Interactions, Na Li, Robert J. Ross

Academic Posters Collection

Confusion is a mental state that can be triggered in task-oriented interactions and which can if left unattended lead to boredom, frustration, or disengagement from the task at hand. Previous work has demonstrated that confusion can be detected in situated human-robot interactions from visual and auditory cues. Therefore, in the next step, we propose appropriate interaction structures in this study, which should be used to mitigate confusion. We motivate and describe this dialogue mechanism through an information state-style dialogue framework and policies, and also outline the approach we are taking to integrate such a meta-conversational goal alongside core task-oriented considerations …

Techmate: A Research-Driven Toolkit To Enhance Gender Balance In Computing Education, Alina Berry, Sarah Jane Delany

Academic Posters Collection

This poster presents a toolkit of practical initiatives and guidance on how to enhance gender balance in computing higher education. The suggested initiatives are designed in the way that could be adapted for a use in a local context, especially in universities in the UK or in Ireland. The initiatives are categorised under four main areas: Policy, Pedagogy, Influence & Support and Promotion & Engagement. Additionally, guidance is given on mechanisms to evaluate the impact of these initiatives. This work will be of interest to champions looking to enhance gender balance in their computing courses.

They Followed The Cheese - Visual Web-Based Experiments Showcasing The Opportunities Available For The Presentation Of Information In Ar, Nina Lyons

Academic Posters Collection

The desktop paradigm bridged a sizeable usability gap at a time before the term “usability” became a conscious objective goal of developers. Mapping the capabilities of the computer to how a user understands their work desk, helped users understand how to interact with a computer. The paradigm has evolved and continues to evolve and reshape itself in different platforms. However, the UIs still rely heavily on established laws and principles that suit the conditions of screens. AR has the opportunity to leverage Semiotic Extension to create context relevant UIs that rely on the focus of the real-time view to inform …

Fired Shards From Selected Ancient Anatolian Ceramics: A Brief Review Of Their Mineralogical Nature And Pedological?Microstructural Evolution, Seli̇m Kapur, Selahatti̇n Kadi̇r, Gilbert Kelling, Erhan Akça, Mustafa Topaksu, Necdet Sakarya, Zehra Yeği̇ngi̇l, Muhsi̇n Eren, Ewart Adsil Fitzpatrick

Turkish Journal of Earth Sciences

This review is concerned with some key features observed within grouped samples of ancient ceramics that provide important evidence concerning the selection of appropriate raw materials and the evolution of the firing technologies employed in their production. It also demonstrates the importance of distinguishing and accounting for the mineralogical and microstructural attributes and identifying the processes responsible for the microstructural evolution of these ancient ceramics. The mineralogy largely reflects both the nature of the raw materials used and the maximum temperatures achieved during firing, deduced from the presence of specific high temperature minerals (HTMs). The microstructural evolution processes, deduced by …

Structural Analysis And Interpretation Of Deformation Along The Keweenaw Fault System From Lake Linden To Mohawk, Michigan, Nolan G. Gamet

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

The Keweenaw fault is likely the most significant and most studied fault associated with the Midcontinent Rift System. The fault roughly bisects the Keweenaw Peninsula and places Portage Lake Volcanics (~1.1 Ga) over much younger Jacobsville Sandstone (~1.0 Ga). Published bedrock geology maps with cross sections from the 1950s show the fault as a single continuous trace that is locally associated with smaller cross faults and splays. The accompanying cross-sections show hanging-wall volcanic strata having a well-defined, listric geometry with dip decreasing away from the fault to the northwest.

This M.S. thesis presents a structural analysis and interpretation of the …

Dynamic Mode Decomposition Approach For Estimating The Shape Of A Cable, Yash Manik Chavan

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

This study investigates the dynamic behavior of a flexible cable with heterogeneous stiffness using a data-driven approach. The study aims to develop accurate models describing intricate structures with rigid or flexible components. To achieve this, reflective markers were attached to the cable at equal spacing, and the motion was manually excited and captured using an 8-camera setup and OptiTrack's Motive software.

The cable displacement data at the marker locations were used as initial conditions for various Dynamic Mode Decomposition (DMD) models. The performance of the data- driven cable model is compared against the performance of the DMD modeling approach, fitting …

Knowledge Discovery On The Integrative Analysis Of Electrical And Mechanical Dyssynchrony To Improve Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy, Zhuo He

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) is a standard method of treating heart failure by coordinating the function of the left and right ventricles. However, up to 40% of CRT recipients do not experience clinical symptoms or cardiac function improvements. The main reasons for CRT non-response include: (1) suboptimal patient selection based on electrical dyssynchrony measured by electrocardiogram (ECG) in current guidelines; (2) mechanical dyssynchrony has been shown to be effective but has not been fully explored; and (3) inappropriate placement of the CRT left ventricular (LV) lead in a significant number of patients.

In terms of mechanical dyssynchrony, we utilize an …

On The Gaussian-Core Vortex Lattice Model For The Analysis Of Wind Farm Flow Dynamics, Apurva Baruah

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Wind power science has seen tremendous development and growth over the last 40 years. Advancements in design, manufacturing, installation, and operation of wind turbines have enabled the commercial deployment of wind power generation systems. These have been due, in a large part, to the expertise in the simulation and modeling of individual wind turbines. The new generation of wind energy systems calls for a need to accurately predict and model the entire wind farm, and not just individual turbines. The commercial deployment of these wind farms depends on model's ability to accurately capture the different physics involved, each at its …

Development And Implementation Of A Ngss Curriculum Unit For Astronomy In Ninth-Grade Earth And Space Science, Jessica Hughes

Graduate Research Papers

Since the release of the NGSS in 2013, there has been a gap in available curricula that is aligned with the new standards. To fill this gap, I created and implemented a unit of study aligned to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) on the topic of astronomy for a ninth grade earth and space science course. Much of the available curriculum is above the level of ninth grade students. This curriculum approaches the astronomy standards at the level of ninth grade students.

The research questions were “how well does the curriculum prepare students for the disciplinary core ideas (DCIs) …

Prediction Of Sumoylation Sites In Proteins From Language Model Representations, Evgenii Sidorov

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Sumoylation is an essential post-translational modification intimately involved in a diverse range of eukaryotic cellular mechanisms and plays a significant role in DNA repair. Some researchers hypothesize that a high level of SUMOylation events in cancer cells improves cells' chances for survival under stress conditions by regulating tumor-related proteins.

This study belongs to a booming field of harnessing computational power to the domain of life. Prediction of protein structure, its molecular function, and the design of new drugs are just a few examples of the applications within this exciting area of research. By leveraging computational power, researchers can analyze vast …

Nonlinear Two-Dimensional Water Waves With Arbitrary Vorticity, Delia Ionescu-Kruse, Rossen Ivanov

Articles

We consider the two-dimensional water-wave problem with a general non-zero vorticity field in a fluid volume with a flat bed and a free surface. The nonlinear equations of motion for the chosen surface and volume variables are expressed with the aid of the Dirichlet-Neumann operator and the Green function of the Laplace operator in the fluid domain. Moreover, we provide new explicit expressions for both objects. The field of a point vortex and its interaction with the free surface is studied as an example. In the small-amplitude long-wave Boussinesq and KdV regimes, we obtain appropriate systems of coupled equations for …

Turbulence Phenomena In Magnetohydrodynamic Phase Transitions, Giovambattista Amendola, Mauro Fabrizio, John Murrough Golden

Articles

The model developed in (Fabrizio in J. Eng. Math., 2023) and (Fabrizio in Int. J. Eng. Sci. 44:529–539, 2006), involving the use of a local Reynolds number, is applied to describe phase transitions in a fluid. Specifically, it is applied in a magnetohydrodynamics context to study the evolution of turbulence in certain phenomena. The relevant equations describing the system are those of Navier-Stokes, Ginzburg-Landau and the magnetohydrodynamic equations, all suitably interconnected.

Facial Recognition Using Neural Network, Georges Diego Hawile Pinheiro, Allison Alves De Moura

ICT

Face recognition technology using machine learning and neural networks has become increasingly prevalent in recent years, revolutionizing various fields such as security, law enforcement, and marketing. The development of an AI-based system that can perform face recognition using these technologies has become a significant focus for researchers and developers worldwide. This project aims to create such a system that can recognize and classify faces accurately using machine learning algorithms and neural networks. By leveraging these advanced technologies, the system can learn and improve over time, leading to higher accuracy rates and enhanced performance.

Investigating The Effects Of Network Dynamics On Quality Of Delivery Prediction And Monitoring For Video Delivery Networks, Obinna C. Izima

Doctoral

Video streaming over the Internet requires an optimized delivery system given the advances in network architecture, for example, Software Defined Networks. Machine Learning (ML) models have been deployed in an attempt to predict the quality of the video streams. Some of these efforts have considered the prediction of Quality of Delivery (QoD) metrics of the video stream in an effort to measure the quality of the video stream from the network perspective. In most cases, these models have either treated the ML algorithms as black-boxes or failed to capture the network dynamics of the associated video streams.

This PhD investigates …

X-Rays Vision: Finding Success Through Sabermetrics In Major League Baseball, Madelyn Dickinson

Honors Theses - Providence Campus

This study aims to evaluate the correlation between a Major League Baseball team’s success and the team’s use of sabermetrics, advanced baseball analytics. The timeline of the sabermetric revolution and its implementation into each MLB team are cross examined with that team’s payroll, attendance, win/loss record, playoff success, and fan opinions. This study is conducted by cross-analyzing raw data regarding team records, attendance, and payroll data as well as background internet research on the sabermetric revolution as well as fan reactions to its use from social media or team-specific online forums. This research finds that there is a positive correlation …

An Entropy-Based Risk Index (Eri) Of Mining Health And Safety Using Clustering And Statistical Methods, Dharmasai Eshwar Reddy Sirigiri

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Over the last decade, the mining industry has seen a significant reduction in the number of fatalities in the United States. However, the annual employee hours have also decreased during the same period. Therefore, it is crucial to evaluate the historical mining data and identify the potential risks of a mine through the mine risk index. The risk indicators also describe the severity of accidents and injuries at mine sites. The variables such as citation, order, significant & substantial citations, lost time, and no lost time injuries and penalties are considered for the determination of the risk index. However, using …

The Rhetorical Art Of Risk Assessment: Lessons From Risk Management In Rural And Tribal Communities, John L. Velat

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Risk assessment, mitigation, and communication rely on data from multiple sources to form a complete understanding of hazards and how to manage them. Experts can use these data to make informed decisions about the nature and extent of risks and inform the public to protect health, the environment, and economic welfare. However, in an effort to objectively make decisions, technical experts and policymakers increasingly rely on quantitative data as the most important determiner of risk, which can alienate the public, limit risk understanding, and delay or miss obvious signals of impending catastrophe. I examine several cases based on my experiences …

Exploring High Performance And Energy Efficient Graph Processing On Gpu, Robert P. Watling

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Parallel graph processing is central to analytical computer science applications, and GPUs have proven to be an ideal platform for parallel graph processing. Existing GPU graph processing frameworks present performance improvements but often neglect two issues: the unpredictability of a given input graph and the energy consumption of the graph processing. Our prototype software, EEGraph (Energy Efficiency of Graph processing), is a flexible system consisting of several graph processing algorithms with configurable parameters for vertex update synchronization, vertex activation, and memory management along with a lightweight software-based GPU energy measurement scheme. We observe relationships between different configurations of our software, …

Study Of Droplets Interactions On Solid Surface For Manufacturing Applications, Menghan Zhao

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Droplet impact behaviors on a solid substrate is a complicated process that involves multiple phenomena on a small scale within a short time. This phenomenon has wide applications in the industrial, medical, and scientific fields. To understand the complicated mechanism, we select the oscillation process as the marked phase to observe and analyze the dynamical balancing between different forces and conservation of energies and compare it to the typical damped harmonic oscillator (DHO) model to examine the character of variables as viscosity, surface tension, and wettability. From the testing results, we created a precise model for post-impact dynamics and described …

Evaluating Geomechanical Uncertainty In Open Pit Mine Planning, Evan Ricchio-Hitchcock

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Open pit mine planning encompasses a variety of uncertainties. Uncertainty due to geomechanics is most critical for a safe operation in an open pit mine. Without sufficient knowledge of the geomechanical properties of the subsurface, a reliability analysis of the slope stability could be challenging. Slope stability is a crucial step in pit optimization since the cash flow analysis of a mine is constrained by a stable slope angle. However, obtaining a stable slope angle with certainty is difficult to achieve as geomechanical parameters are modeled using a very limited number of samples. This thesis proposes a method to integrate …

Statistical Methods For Gene Selection And Genetic Association Studies, Xuewei Cao

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

This dissertation includes five Chapters. A brief description of each chapter is organized as follows.

In Chapter One, we propose a signed bipartite genotype and phenotype network (GPN) by linking phenotypes and genotypes based on the statistical associations. It provides a new insight to investigate the genetic architecture among multiple correlated phenotypes and explore where phenotypes might be related at a higher level of cellular and organismal organization. We show that multiple phenotypes association studies by considering the proposed network are improved by incorporating the genetic information into the phenotype clustering.

In Chapter Two, we first illustrate the proposed GPN …

Age And Chemistry Of Bell Creek Batholith, Elana G. Barth

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

The Southern Complex, located near Marquette, Michigan is in the southernmost portion of the Superior Province. This complex consists of granitoids and granitic gneiss that vary in composition. In twentieth century research, Hoffman (1987) and Tinkham (1997) concluded that the Southern Complex contained two units in which the granitoid was emplaced in the granitic gneiss. Recent research conducted by Petryk (2019) determined that the Southern Complex has a U-Pb zircon age of 2600 Ma. Dalle Fratte (2020) concluded that the granitic gneiss migmatite texture was the result of a felsic magma mixing with several generations of mafic intrusions that were …

Watchdogs Of The Economy: The Development Of Irish Economics Profession’S Independent Voice, Joseph K. Fitzgerald, Brendan O'Rourke

Articles

Histories of the development of professions show a profession’s relationship with the state as key to its authority. Yet professions, to gain technocratic authority, also strive to depoliticise their discourses to gain technocratic authority. This dilemmatic tension is particularly true for the economics profession. The historical development of the Irish economics provides an interesting case, where a complicated relationship with the state ultimately strengthened the profession within a society. An initial formalisation trajectory of Irish economics was thrown off course by the formation of an independent Irish state in the 1920s. This marked a period of isolation for the profession …

Reinforcement Learning For Stock Option Trading, James Garza

ICT

Reinforcement learning has recently seen an increase in popularity due to its ability to learn from past experience and its capability of adapting quickly and effectively to new market conditions. This research will focus on reinforcement learning and its importance in trading stock options. Option traders can trade options with one of two option expirations: American or European style. This research will base the analysis on the American expiration style, considered more challenging in trading than the European expiration style. This could lead to the possibility of improving the current trading techniques. In addition, this research aims to understand the …

Predicting The Effects Of Climate Change On Irish Agriculture, Rodrigo Matsumoto, Sarah Kuprian Carrinho

ICT

The impact of climate change on agriculture is a growing concern worldwide, and Ireland is no exception. The purpose of this project is to use machine learning techniques to predict the effects of climate change on Irish agriculture and identify strategies for adaptation and mitigation. The project uses the Cross-Industry Standard Process for Data Mining (CRISP-DM) methodology to guide the data analysis process, MoSCoW prioritization to identify the most critical needs, and SWOT analysis to evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats our project may encounter. Historical temperature data for Ireland and Dublin will be used as our data sources. …

Diffusion Of Carbon Nanoparticles Intercalated Into Layered Materials, Madelyn Johnson

Honors Program Theses

Using electron beam radiation, as found in a scanning electron microscope, it is possible to induce the local intercalation of carbon nanoparticles into two dimensional layered materials. This technique can be used to form insulating and optically active nanostructures in samples ranging from graphite to BSSCO. In this study, the evolution of these features with time is explored to determine the stability of such nanoparticles in layered materials.

Over the course of days and weeks, the nanostructures created this way broaden and change height. In general, it appears that material buried deep within the layers diffuses upwards to increase the …

A Next Generation Science Standards (Ngss) Aligned 3rd Grade Weather Unit, Jennifer Hageman

Graduate Research Papers

This unit is the culmination of work on taking the NGSS for weather and climate and creating an inclusive unit for third grade students. At the time this unit was started, many teachers were taking the NGSS and creating units for the classrooms. This unit integrates math, literacy, and social studies standards to help explore the NGSS for weather and climate.

After completion of this unit it was given to two reviewers in the field of teaching. They read the unit and provided feedback for improvement. After review of the feedback it was noted that adaptations for students need to …