Digital Commons Network^™

Quantification Of Rigidity And Synthesis Of Cyclobutane Bisimide Building Blocks, Joseph Earl Mcgilligan Robertson

Theses and Dissertations

The quantification of a molecule’s conformational rigidity was achieved via development of a new measure called the Rigidity Factor, Rg_f. This value is a unit interval wherein molecules with corresponding Rg_f values closer to 1 are rigid and values closer to 0 are more flexible. The value is determined as a ratio between the molecule’s Van der Waals volume, V_W, and it’s Van der Waals potential volume, VWpot. The V_Wpot was defined as the minimum total volume occupied by a rotamer ensemble of the molecule which has been aligned according to the RMSD for …

Trauma Education In Social Work Curricula: An Innovative Approach To The Teaching Of Trauma-Informed Care, Jennifer M. Schlinger

Theses and Dissertations

Many professionals, especially social workers, work with individuals who have a history of or are experiencing trauma. If students understand the trauma their clients have experienced, they are better suited to meet the individual where they are and help them work towards their goals. Social work professors must prepare their students by instructing them about different types of traumatic experiences, the impacts, assessment tools, and various intervention strategies. I used a qualitative research approach and document analysis to understand how social work programs incorporate education related to trauma and trauma-informed practice into their curricula. This method allowed me to gain …

Attitudes, Subjective Norms, And Perceived Behavioral Control Of Perianesthesia Nurses' Intentions To Engage In Mindful Self-Care, Brenda Sanya

Theses and Dissertations

Study Purpose and Design: The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships among attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, and intentions to engage in mindful self-care among nurses working in the perianesthesia setting. The study utilized cross-sectional design and was guided by the Theory of Planned Behavior. Methods: Modified Theory of Planned Behavior questionnaire and Mindful Self Care Scale were utilized for data collection among 85 perianesthesia nurses using a survey through the American Society of PeriAnesthesia Nurses (ASPAN). Findings: Regression analyses demonstrated that attitude (β=0.51, t=5.63, p=0.001) and self-compassion and purpose (β=0.29, t=2.54, p=0.013) were significant factors …

Use Of Lidar And Synthetic Bathymetry To Develop Stream Cross Sections For Alternative Modeling Of Streamflow In North Dakota Using Hec-Ras: A Case Study On The Tongue River In North Dakota, James Brennan Sullivan

Theses and Dissertations

Analysis of streamflow levels is critical to flood protection and management. Computer modeling software such as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Hydraulic Engineering Center River Analysis System (HEC-RAS) is used to calculate water surface elevations for statistical or historical flows. A key element of modeling river hydraulics is the development of one-dimensional (1-D) cross sections or two-dimensional (2-D) terrain from elevation data. Airborne LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) is now commonly used to collect high-density digital elevation model (DEM) data. Models developed from near-infrared LiDAR DEMs alone however, do not have bathymetry since the LiDAR pulses are adversely affected …

Performance Analysis Of Data-Driven Algorithms In Detecting Intrusions On Smart Grid, Tala Talaei Khoei

Theses and Dissertations

The traditional power grid is no longer a practical solution for power delivery due to several shortcomings, including chronic blackouts, energy storage issues, high cost of assets, and high carbon emissions. Therefore, there is a serious need for better, cheaper, and cleaner power grid technology that addresses the limitations of traditional power grids. A smart grid is a holistic solution to these issues that consists of a variety of operations and energy measures. This technology can deliver energy to end-users through a two-way flow of communication. It is expected to generate reliable, efficient, and clean power by integrating multiple technologies. …

The Mysterious Mu Wave: The Effects Of Tdcs On Visuomotor Integration And Processing, Jessica Lynn Van Bree

Theses and Dissertations

Visuomotor integration is the coordination of neuronal activity between the motor- and vision-related parts of the brain that influence behavior and perception, resulting in a motor reaction (Shin et al. 2016). Previous studies have demonstrated that longitudinal training of oculomotor, visual, attentional, and motor skills produce significant improvements of visuomotor integration and control in healthy subjects. Within healthy populations, transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has been found to facilitate visuomotor learning, motion processing, and the coordination and accuracy of motor movement (Antal et al., 2004; Coffmann et al., 2014). As such, tDCS may be an appropriate addition to the rehabilitation …

Conducting Fog Research And Abatement Using Unmanned Aircraft Systems (Uas), Michael Douglas Willette

Theses and Dissertations

The tremendous safety and monetary impacts of long-duration fog events continue to spur interest in its anthropogenic dissipation. With the emergence of the Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) platform and the development of miniaturized atmospheric sensors, more efficient methods of fog research and anthropogenic fog dispersal may be achieved. The feasibility of a supercooled fog dispersal project in the Red River Valley and the efficacy of using the UAS platform to acquire in-situ fog microphysical data are explored. A 30-year climatology of the Red River Valley indicates increased supercooled fog potential between early November through early April, peaking in March. Five …

Land Acquistion For Flood Adaptation Under Changing Climate, Jiyang Zhang

Theses and Dissertations

Flood has caused tremendous life and economic losses over the past few decades and is expected to cause more in the future under the effects of climate change and socioeconomic development. With limited resources, cost-effective adaptation policies are urgently needed to minimize the economic and social impacts of future floods. The increasing flood losses and recent catastrophic flood events around the world expose two major issues of current flood adaptation schemes: 1) Flood risks are not well captured and predicted under climate change, leaving many communities unprepared for potential extreme flood events; 2) Current flood adaptation measures focus on the …

Enhancement Of The Performance Of Lignin-Derived Hard Carbons For Battery Applications By Chemical Pretreatment, Ruiqing Zhang

Theses and Dissertations

Because of lignin's renewable and low-cost characteristics, lignin-derived hard carbons have been extensively studied as electrode materials for energy storage applications. However, the formation of solid electrolyte interface (SEI) during the first cycle in electrode materials and the loss of lithium/sodium ions during long-term cycling has a fatal impact on the performance of batteries. Recent technology is needed to improve lignin-based electrode materials' initial Coulombic efficiency (ICE).

In this study, pre-lithiation/pre-sodiation through the spontaneous chemical reaction between the aryl etherification reagent was used to improve the low ICE of the lignin-based anode material. Our results show that the ICE of …

Pedestrian And Bicycle Improvement Scoring Method For Shift–2024, Nikiforos Stamatiadis, Daria Korostina, Teng Wang, Reginald Souleyrette

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

State transportation agencies have limited funding to deliver multimodal transportation programs that address the needs of all users. To allocate project funding in an impartial and objective manner, many agencies have adopted data-driven scoring systems that are used to evaluate the merits of proposed capital improvement projects. The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet introduced the Strategic Highway Investment Formula for Tomorrow (SHIFT) for this purpose. Until now SHIFT, has evaluated projects based five core variables — congestion, safety, benefit-cost ratio, asset management, economic growth. To address local needs, SHIFT has also allocated points that Area Development Districts, metropolitan planning organizations, and Cabinet …

How To Treat A Woman's Cold And Porous Body: Mugwort Fumigation For Fertility In Medieval And Modern Folk Medicine Of Western And Asian Cultures, Minji Lee

Department of Religion Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

In the history of gynecology and obstetrics, many medical interventions – direct and indirect–have been suggested to aid women’s fertility. Even when women’s sexual and reproductive organs were not visible or easily treatable, premodern medicine tried to provide women with the right diagnoses and treatments. Fertility affects not only whether women can have children but also whether women can survive birth procedures. Today, ultrasounds and hormone tests are vital and standard diagnostic tools in gynecology. But the absence of these medical technologies did not mean that medieval medicine lacked methods to save women in agony, either by urgent direct interventions …

Proknow: Process Knowledge For Safety Constrained And Explainable Question Generation For Mental Health Diagnostic Assistance, Kaushik Roy, Manas Gaur, Misagh Soltani, Vipula Rawte, Ashwin Kalyan, Amit Sheth

Publications

Current Virtual Mental Health Assistants (VMHAs) provide counseling and suggestive care. They refrain from patient diagnostic assistance because of a lack of training on safety-constrained and specialized clinical process knowledge (Pro-Know). In this work, we define ProKnow as an ordered set of information that maps to evidence-based guidelines or categories of conceptual understanding to experts in a domain. We also introduce a new dataset of diagnostic conversations guided by safety constraints and ProKnow that healthcare professionals use (ProKnow-data). We develop a method for natural language question generation (NLG) that collects diagnostic information from the patient interactively (ProKnow-algo). We demonstrate the …

Knowledge Graph Guided Semantic Evaluation Of Language Models For User Trust, Kaushik Roy, Tarun Garg, Vedant Palit, Yuxin Zi, Vignesh Narayanan, Amit Sheth

Publications

A fundamental question in natural language processing is - what kind of language structure and semantics is the language model capturing? Graph formats such as knowledge graphs are easy to evaluate as they explicitly express language semantics and structure. This study evaluates the semantics encoded in the self-attention transformers by leveraging explicit knowledge graph structures. We propose novel metrics to measure the reconstruction error when providing graph path sequences from a knowledge graph and trying to reproduce/reconstruct the same from the outputs of the self-attention transformer models. The opacity of language models has an immense bearing on societal issues of …

Cook-Gen: Robust Generative Modeling Of Cooking Actions From Recipes, Revathy Venkataramanan, Kaushik Roy, Kanak Ray, Renjith Prasad, Yuxin Zi, Vignesh Narayanan, Amit Sheth

Publications

As people become more aware of their food choices, food computation models have become increasingly popular in assisting people in maintaining healthy eating habits. For example, food recommendation systems analyze recipe instructions to assess nutritional contents and provide recipe recommendations. The recent and remarkable successes of generative AI methods, such as auto-regressive large language models, can lead to robust methods for a more comprehensive understanding of recipes for healthy food recommendations beyond surface-level nutrition content assessments. In this study, we explore the use of generative AI methods to extend current food computation models, primarily involving the analysis of nutrition and …

Tutorial - Shodhguru Labs: Knowledge-Infused Artificial Intelligence For Mental Healthcare, Kaushik Roy

Publications

Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems for mental healthcare (MHCare) have been ever-growing after realizing the importance of early interventions for patients with chronic mental health (MH) conditions. Social media (SocMedia) emerged as the go-to platform for supporting patients seeking MHCare. The creation of peer-support groups without social stigma has resulted in patients transitioning from clinical settings to SocMedia supported interactions for quick help. Researchers started exploring SocMedia content in search of cues that showcase correlation or causation between different MH conditions to design better interventional strategies. User-level Classification-based AI systems were designed to leverage diverse SocMedia data from various MH conditions, …

Tutorial - Shodhguru Labs: Optimization And Hyperparameter Tuning For Neural Networks, Kaushik Roy

Publications

Neural networks have emerged as a powerful and versatile class of machine learning models, revolutionizing various fields with their ability to learn complex patterns and make accurate predictions. The performance of neural networks depends significantly on the appropriate choice of hyperparameters, which are critical factors governing their architecture, regularization, and optimization techniques. As the demand for high-performance neural networks grows across diverse applications, the need for efficient optimization and hyperparameter tuning methods becomes paramount. This paper presents a comprehensive exploration of optimization strategies and hyperparameter tuning techniques for neural networks. Neural networks have emerged as a powerful and versatile class …