Digital Commons Network^™

Always Judge A Book By Its Cover, Abby Miller

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The goal for this honors project is to build my illustration portfolio and to explore the world of children's book illustration. This project will facilitate my improvement in design layout, theming, and illustration. I would love to pursue a job involving children's book illustrations at some point in the future and completing this project would help me to understand the challenges that come with designing such covers, it would improve my ability to illustrate in a purposeful manner, and it would strengthen my portfolio overall.

Simply Butter (One Pat At A Time), Maddie Mcsweeney

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Simply Butter (one pat at a time) is an investigation of food and intimacy through sculpture, installation, performance, printmaking, and recordkeeping. In this series of Happenings, I explore themes of love, loss, and empathy while dealing with emotions related to grief and mental health issues. I look to cultural phenomena and art history figures who are concerned with similar sentiments to make conceptual connections and inform my choices when creating this project. Drawn to silliness and the absurd, I use the rudimentary yet familiar form of a stick of butter to act as a monolithic stand-in for the emotionally, mentally, …

Hardening A Small Business Network, Madison Baxter

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Security is one of the most, if not the most, important facets of a network. Without security, proprietary data is vulnerable to theft by malicious actors or even just curious techies with too much time on their hands.

Building and implementing a network lays the foundation for a technically sound, robust environment. Network and device hardening minimizes security gaps on the network and streamlines functions and processes.

The objectives of this project were to stand up a functioning small business network, to harden the network and to offer recommendations to further secure the overall environment for a small business.

The …

Assessing Household Gac Water Filters For Pfas Removal From Private Drinking Water Wells, Mccallah Ferry

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This research paper delves into the efficacy of a typical household water filter in removing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), a concerning class of chemicals prevalent in water sources. PFAS, known for their persistence and potential health risks, have prompted regulatory actions such as the Third Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule (UCMR 3) and the National Primary Drinking Water Regulation (NPDWR) by the U.S. EPA. While municipal water utilities are subject to regulatory oversight, individuals relying on private wells face challenges in ensuring water quality.

The study employs a model to assess the performance of a SAMSUNG Ice and Water Refrigerator …

Propulsion Heat Analysis Nuclear Trajectory Optimization (Phantom), Ana Clecia Alves Almeida, Jonathan Davis, Ryan Dippolito

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Interplanetary Travel requirements necessitate the use of increasingly complex propulsion systems. Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP) is a cutting-edge concept that holds immense potential for the future of space exploration. By utilizing nuclear fission to heat a propellant and generate thrust, NTP offers the potential for unprecedented efficiency, enabling faster interplanetary travel and extended mission capabilities. A nuclear thermal rocket engine is a type of propulsion system that utilizes the heat generated by a nuclear reactor to heat and expel a propellant, typically hydrogen, at high velocities to produce thrust. The engine consists of three main subsystems: the nuclear reactor, the …

Tympanostomy Tube Efficiency Study, Reem Ghumrawi, Kristi Weir

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The ventilation of the middle ear, crucial for maintaining optimal ear health, is often impeded by factors such as swelling, inflammation, and mucus in the eustachian tubes, particularly during upper respiratory infections or allergies. This issue, prevalent in children due to their narrow and horizontal eustachian tubes, prompts the insertion of tympanostomy tubes by ENT surgeons to establish an alternative airway for pressure equalization and fluid drainage. Despite the common belief in the effectiveness of these tubes, there is a notable dearth of research validating their optimal functionality. This study aims to address this gap by systematically comparing the efficiency …

Declining Approval In The Supreme Court Of The United States, Gabriella Thompson

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

American citizens are granted several freedoms by the Bill of Rights in the United States Constitution. The First Amendment established protections for the rights of assembly, petition, press, religion, and speech, the lattermost of which enables people to express ideas without fear of suppression from their government. Therefore, the general public is empowered to hold various opinions about the institutions that wield authority over them. Measuring public opinion is a crucial endeavor to those in power, as such work yields intuition for how different branches of government are perceived over time. The federal judiciary is helmed by the Supreme Court …

Grace House Akron Volunteer Information And Training Kit, Lilly Wright

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Grace House Akron is a non-profit organization that provides housing and care to people on hospice who are homeless, living in indignant conditions, or do not have an able and/or willing caregiver. Over the course of Grace House’s first year in operation, they have worked alongside over 200 volunteers. Now, they are seeking to expand the demographic makeup of these volunteers. The objective of this project is to create a deliverable volunteer kit that will include 4 sections: Introduction, In-House Volunteering, Out-of-House Volunteering, and Reference Materials. This kit will streamline the process of onboarding volunteers by introducing them to the …

Revisiting Rockafellar’S Theorem On Relative Interiors Of Convex Graphs With Applications To Convex Generalized Differentiation, Boris S. Mordukhovich, Nguyen Mau Nam, Dang Van Cuong, G. Sandine

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this paper we revisit a theorem by Rockafellar on representing the relative interior of the graph of a convex set-valued mapping in terms of the relative interior of its domain and function values. Then we apply this theorem to provide a simple way to prove many calculus rules of generalized differentiation for set-valued mappings and nonsmooth functions in finite dimensions. Using this important theorem by Rockafellar allows us to improve some results on generalized differentiation of set-valued mappings in [13] by replacing the relative interior qualifications on graphs with qualifications on domains and/or ranges.

A Wavegan Approach For Mmwave-Based Fanet Topology Optimization, Enas Odat, Hakim Ghazzai, Ahmad Alsharoa

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The integration of dynamic Flying Ad hoc Networks (FANETs) and millimeter Wave (mmWave) technology can offer a promising solution for numerous data-intensive applications, as it enables the establishment of a robust flying infrastructure with significant data transmission capabilities. However, to enable effective mmWave communication within this dynamic network, it is essential to precisely align the steerable antennas mounted on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) with their corresponding peer units. Therefore, it is important to design a novel approach that can quickly determine an optimized alignment and network topology. In this paper, we propose a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN)-based approach, called WaveGAN, …

Modified Thermographic Signal-To-Noise Ratio For Active Microwave Thermography, Logan M. Wilcox, Kristen M. Donnell

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Active microwave thermography (AMT) is an active thermographic nondestructive testing and evaluation (NDT&E) technique that utilizes an active electromagnetic-based excitation. This excitation is achieved through a radiating antenna and is spatially nonuniform in nature. As such, the electromagnetically-induced heat is also spatially nonuniform, as it is directly related to the radiated power density incident on the specimen under test (SUT). After excitation, infrared measurements on the surface of the SUT are completed using an infrared camera. Common post processing techniques including thermal contrast (TC) and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) are often applied to these measured results. As these post processing techniques …

Chinese Fintech Goes Global: Political Challenges And Business Strategies, Yujia He

Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce Faculty Publications

Fintech (the application of digital technology to financial services) has witnessed unprecedented growth, bringing significant implications for the financial system and sustainable development.1 The Financial Stability Board, an international body that monitors and makes recommendations about the global financial system, defines fintech as “technologically enabled financial innovation that could result in new business models, applications, processes, or products with an associated material effect on financial markets and institutions and the provision of financial services.”2 The use of technology in finance is certainly not new—consider the growth of electronic banking and high-frequency trading in the early 2000s. In the past two …

Prompt, Accurate, And Noncontact Material Identification Using A Single Microwave Sensor With Machine Learning Analysis, Chen Zhu, Osamah Alsalman, Jie Huang

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In This Article, a Novel Approach to Microwave Sensors is Proposed and Demonstrated that Allows for Prompt, Accurate, and Noncontact Material Identification Even with Arbitrary Lift-Off Distances between the Sensor and the Material under Test (MUT). a Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) is Trained to Directly Learn the Relation of the Measured Reflection Spectra of a Homemade Open-Ended Coaxial Cable Resonator Probe with Respect to Different MUTs and Then Achieve One-To-One Mapping between a Measured Spectrum and the MUT. as a Proof-Of-Concept Demonstration, the Performance of the MLP Model is Tested using Easily Accessible Materials, Including Wood, Glass, Water, and Metal. Reflection …

Electromagnetic-Circuital-Thermal-Mechanical Multiphysics Numerical Simulation Method For Microwave Circuits, Huan Huan Zhang, Zheng Lang Jia, Peng Fei Zhang, Ying Liu, Li Jun Jiang, Da Zhi Ding

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

An electromagnetic-circuital-thermal-mechanical Multiphysics numerical method is proposed for the simulation of microwave circuits. The discontinuous Galerkin time-domain (DGTD) method is adopted for electromagnetic simulation. The time-domain finite element method (FEM) is utilized for thermal simulation. The circuit equation is applied for circuit simulation. The mechanical simulation is also carried out by FEM method. A flexible and unified Multiphysics field coupling mechanism is constructed to cover various electromagnetic, circuital, thermal and mechanical Multiphysics coupling scenarios. Finally, three numerical examples emulating outer space environment, intense electromagnetic pulse (EMP) injection and high-power microwave (HPM) illumination are utilized to demonstrate the accuracy, efficiency, and …

Modeling Wideband Radiated Emissions From Pcbs In Shielding Enclosures Based On Single-Plane Phaseless Near-Field Scanning, Zhifei Xiao, Zi An Wang, Li Jun Jiang, Ping Li

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This article presents a wideband phase less source reconstruction method (SRM) for the evaluation of the radiated emissions from printed circuit boards (PCBs) in shielding enclosures. The PCBs are modeled with equivalent dipoles, and the numerical Green's function (NGF) is deployed to establish the relationship between the equivalent source and the input near-field (NF) data, thus the electromagnetic influences of the surrounding environments comprehensively accounted. This method only requires magnitude-only NF scanning over a single plane, thus significantly decreasing the NF measurement difficulty. To remedy the lack of phase information of the NF data, the input NF data are equally …

Adaptive Critic Optimal Control Of An Uncertain Robot Manipulator With Applications, Ravi Prakash, Laxmidhar Behera, Sarangapani Jagannathan

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Realistic manipulation tasks involve a prolonged sequence of motor skills in varying control environments consisting of uncertain robot dynamic models and end-effector payloads. To address these challenges, this article proposes an adaptive critic (AC)-based basis function neural network (BFNN) optimal controller. Using a single neural network (NN) with a basis function, the proposed optimal controller simultaneously learns task-related optimal cost function, robot internal dynamics, and optimal control law. This is achieved through the development of a novel BFNN tuning law using closed-loop system stability. Therefore, the proposed optimal controller provides real-time, implementable, cost-effective control solutions for practical robotic tasks. The …

Influence Of Variations In Imbalanced Lisn Termination Impedances On Radiated Emissions, Hossein Rezaei, Morten Sørensen, Kim Jensen, David Pommerenke, Daryl G. Beetner

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Radiated emissions measurements are often performed using a line impedance stabilization network (LISN) with a balanced termination, but in the real-world the common-mode characteristic of the termination may be highly variable. An asymmetric LISN allows testing under more realistic asymmetric termination conditions. The common-mode termination impedance of these LISNs must fall within set tolerances, but the impact of these tolerances is unknown. An analysis of the radiated emissions from a device under test (DUT) for a wide variety of power cable termination impedances is performed in the following paper to estimate the impact of allowed variations in imbalanced LISN termination …

A Method For Measuring The Transfer Function Inside A Compact Metallic Enclosure Using A Slot Antenna, Xiangrui Su, Wenchang Huang, Junghee Cho, Joonki Paek, Chulsoon Hwang

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Radio frequency desensitization issues comprise two components: noise radiation sources and the transfer function from noise sources to the victim antenna. For modern electronic products, noise sources are often located inside a compact metal enclosure, making it difficult to measure the transfer function using conventional methods. Moreover, opening the metallic enclosure would dramatically change the transfer function, and inserting a near-field probe into the enclosure is challenging and may not even be possible because of the limited space inside. In this article, a novel practical method for measuring the transfer function inside a compact metallic enclosure is proposed and experimentally …

Vertical Interconnect Technology In Silicon, Package, And Printed Circuit Board (Pcb) With Coaxial Structure, Junyong Park, Chaofeng Li, Eddie Mok, Joe Dickson, Joan Tourne, Donghyun Kim

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper introduces vertical interconnect technology in silicon, package, and printed circuit board (PCB) levels with a coaxial structure, respectively. The coaxial structure has been known to be advantageous in terms of signal integrity (SI) compared to the non-coaxial structure. The coaxial structure is easy to control the characteristic impedance Z0 and robust to crosstalk. The silicon-level interconnect includes the wire bonding (WB) and through-silicon via (TSV) technology, the package-level interconnect includes an elastomer package test socket. The PCB-level interconnect includes the vias, and vertical conductive structure (VeCS). For each level, the non-coaxial and coaxial interconnects are compared with the …

Mechanisms For Unwanted Magnetic Field Coupling To A Shielded Magnetic Near-Field Probe, Xin Yan, Wei Zhang, Sajjad Sadeghi, Mehdi Gholizadeh, David J. Pommerenke, Daryl G. Beetner

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Unwanted field coupling is a major concern when using magnetic near-field probes for high-frequency scanning. The unwanted coupling of the tangential electric field to a tangential magnetic field probe has been studied extensively. This article shows a second unwanted coupling mechanism: coupling from a vertical magnetic field. The standing wave of a shorted pure TEM microstrip in air is utilized to separate the magnetic and electric field coupling. Simulations show that the eddy currents induced within the probe by the vertical magnetic field couple inductively to the pickup loop if the layer stack up is not symmetric. The unwanted magnetic …

Coupling-Informed Data-Driven Scheme For Joint Angle And Frequency Estimation In Uniform Linear Array With Mutual Coupling Present, Yanming Zhang, Wenchao Xu, A. Long Jin, Min Li, Peifeng Ma, Lijun Jiang, Steven Gao

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper proposes a novel coupling-informed data-driven algorithm tailored for the concurrent estimation of frequency and angle within a uniform linear array (ULA), while addressing the complicating influence of mutual coupling. Leveraging the hybrid dynamic mode decomposition (DMD) methodology, termed as averaged DMD, we incorporate moving average techniques to achieve effective denoising. The averaged DMD further decomposes the received signal into eigenvalues and corresponding eigenvectors. The frequency information is derived from the eigenvalues and the corresponding eigenvectors represent the steering vectors of sources. Subsequently, mutual coupling is informed into the calibration of the steering vector for each source. Specifically, the …

A Tensor-Based Data-Driven Approach For Multidimensional Harmonic Retrieval And Its Application For Mimo Channel Sounding., Yanming Zhang, Wenchao Xu, A. Long Jin, Min Li, Ping Yuan, Lijun Jiang, Steven Gao

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In wireless channel sounding, accurately estimating multiple parameters within a multipath signal, such as azimuth, elevation, Doppler shift, and delay, necessitates addressing the challenges posed by the multidimensional harmonic retrieval (MHR) problem. To overcome these complexities, we propose a framework based on high-order dynamic mode decomposition (HODMD) that designed for robustly estimating frequencies of interest from high-dimensional sinusoidal signals, particularly in additive white Gaussian noise conditions. The HODMD approach, a hybrid algorithm amalgamating high-order singular value decomposition (HOSVD) and dynamic mode decomposition (DMD), operates by initially decomposing observed tensorial data into a core tensor and R mode matrices through HOSVD. …

Cascading Of 2d And 3d Simulations Of Asic Substrate Interconnect Up To 100 Ghz, Zhekun Peng, Junyong Park, Sathvika Bandi, Santosh Pappu, Srinivas Venkataraman, Xu Wang, Granthana Ranzaswamy, Donghyun Kim

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

A method of cascading 3D models and 2D models to model the full channel of ASIC package substrate interconnects is proposed, showing good match to full-wave results in S-parameter and TDR up to 100 GHz.

Saint Benedict’S Woods, Lodge And Lake Sarah, Peggy L. Roske

Archives History Lessons

Learn some of the history of the Sisters’ woods, their Lodge, the turkey industry there, Lake Sarah, and other historical information about the southwest corner of the CSB campus.

“I’M Especially Sorry To Those Impacted”: Conventional Visions Of Leadership In The 2022/2023 Tech Layoffs, Jared J. Watkins

Student Theses and Dissertations

In 2022 and 2023, over 400,000 employees in the technology sector were laid off. This study conducted a thematic analysis using coding on memos announcing layoffs sent by leaders at Meta, Google, and Microsoft in late 2022 and early 2023. This study also conducted an analysis of layoff memos sent by leaders of Google and Microsoft in 2009 for comparison. Key findings include that writing to multiple stakeholders in the 2022/2023 memos produced novel contradictions and paradoxes that may impede employee sensemaking, that 2022/2023 memos used more passive and distancing language that disconnected the leader from the layoff decision and …

Profitability Analysis Of Time-Restricted Double-Spending Attack On Pow-Based Large Scale Blockchains With The Aid Of Multiple Attacks, Yiming Jiang, Jiangfan Zhang

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

We consider the time-restricted double-spending attack (TR-DSA) on the Proof-of-Work-based blockchain, where an adversary conducts a DSA within a finite timeframe and simultaneously launches multiple types of attacks on the blockchain. To be specific, the adversary can conduct attacks to isolate some honest miners and cause block propagation delays among miners to enhance the success probability of the TR-DSA. We first develop the closed-form expression for the success probability of a TR-DSA with the aid of multiple types of attacks, which is leveraged to develop the closed-form expression for the expected profit of a TR-DSA. The numerical analysis reveals that …

Frequency Division Multiplexing And Random Phasing For Improved Uniformity In Microwave Heating Applications, Logan M. Wilcox, Ali Mirala, Mohammad Tayeb Al Qaseer, Kristen M. Donnell

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Microwave heating has been recently used as an active thermal excitation method in thermography. Within the nondestructive testing and evaluation (NDT&E) realm, this method is referred to as active microwave thermography, or AMT. In AMT, unlike other thermal excitation methods utilized in thermography, microwave heating inherently provides a nonuniform heating pattern. This is a direct result of the radiating antenna used to deliver the energy. This nonuniform pattern may result in defect detection errors (i.e., false positives and/or negatives). To reduce this potential for detection error and improve the overall robustness of the technique, a new electromagnetic system, consisting of …

High-Sensitivity Fabry-Perot Interferometric Sensor Based On Microwave Photonics With Phase Demodulation, Ruimin Jie, Hongkun Zheng, Osamah Alsalman, Jie Huang, Chen Zhu

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Optical fiber sensors have emerged as vital tools in various applications. Among them, Fabry-Perot interferometers (FPIs), have gained prominence due to their compactness and versatility in sensor design. Microwave photonics (MWP) techniques offer enhanced performance and flexibility for developing optical sensor interrogation methods. This paper proposes and experimentally demonstrates a novel MWP interrogation technique based on phase measurement for short-cavity FPI sensors. The technique utilizes the phase response of the FPI sensor within an MWP-assisted single radio frequency bandpass filter, providing improved sensitivity and dynamic sensing capabilities compared to traditional methods. Simulation and experimental results validate the effectiveness of the …

Lidar From The Sky: Uav Integration And Fusion Techniques For Advanced Traffic Monitoring, Baya Cherif, Hakim Ghazzai, Ahmad Alsharoa

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Light detection and ranging (LiDAR) technology's expansion within the autonomous vehicles industry has rapidly motivated its application in numerous growing areas, such as smart cities, agriculture, and renewable energy. In this article, we propose an innovative approach for enhancing aerial traffic monitoring solutions through the application of LiDAR technology. The objective is to achieve precise and real-time object detection and tracking from aerial perspectives by integrating unmanned aerial vehicles with LiDAR sensors, thereby creating a potent Aerial LiDAR (A-LiD) solution for traffic monitoring. First, we develop a novel deep learning algorithm based on pointvoxel-region-based convolutional neural network (RCNN) to conduct …

Effect Of Signal Modulation On Active Microwave Thermography, Logan M. Wilcox, Mathias Bonmarin, Kristen M. Donnell

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Active microwave thermography (AMT) is a coupled electromagnetic and thermographic nondestructive testing and evaluation (NDT&E) technique. AMT utilizes an active electromagnetic source to induce heat on or within a specimen under test (SUT) with subsequential infrared measurements via an infrared camera. AMT has been successfully employed in multiple fields, including aerospace, space, and infrastructure, among others. Generally, for AMT, the excitation (electromagnetic source) is applied over a specified period of time (referred to as the heating time). If inspection continues for additional time after the excitation is removed (turned off), this period is referred to as the cooling time. This …