Digital Commons Network^™

Exploring The Root Factors Impacting Work Zone Accidents: A Mixed-Methods Study, Bahaa Chammout, Muaz O. Ahmed, Islam H. El-Adaway

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Work Zones Are Vital For Improving Infrastructural Utilities Yet Pose Significant Dangers For Workers And Drivers Who Are Often Unfamiliar With These Areas. Prior Research Examined Various Aspects Of Work Zone Accident Causation; However, The Interrelationships And Critical Combinations Among The Contributing Factors Have Not Been Fully Analyzed. This Study Aims To Identify The Underlying Factors Contributing To Work Zone Accidents And Evaluate The Different Combinations Among Them. To This Purpose, Accident Factors Were Derived From A Total Of 133 Research Articles Addressing Work Zone Safety. Social Network Analysis (SNA) And Clustering Were Used To Comprehensively Model The Identified Factors. …

Investigating Price Fluctuation Transmission Among Construction Materials, Mohamad Abdul Nabi, Islam H. El-Adaway, Rayan H. Assaad

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Generally, Fluctuation In One Material's Price Can Cause A Series Of Chain Reactions In The Supply Chain System, Known As Price Fluctuation Transmission, As All Materials Are Interconnected And Interrelated. None Of The Previous Studies Have Investigated Price Fluctuation Transmission Among All Construction Materials. This Paper Aims To Fill This Gap In Knowledge. The Authors Collected Producer Price Index (PPI) Data For 16 Construction Materials, Modeled The Relationship Between Each Pair Of Materials Using Vector Autoregression Technique, And Validated The Causality Using Granger Causality Test. Network Analysis Was Performed To Identify The Price Fluctuation Transmission Capacity, Susceptibility, And Intermediatory Capacity …

An Accurate-Pricing Estimate Game-Theoretic Model For Determining Price Escalations In Construction Projects During Economic Uncertainties, Yasser Jezzini, Rayan H. Assaad, Islam H. El-Adaway, Mohamad Abdul Nabi

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Economic Market Uncertainties, Such As Those Experienced During The COVID-19 Pandemic, Can Make Determining Accurate Prices Estimate For Construction Materials A Challenging Task. While Previous Research Focused On The Contractual Aspect Of This Issue By Studying Price Escalation Clauses, There Is Still A Gap In The Literature When It Comes To Proposing An Accurate Pricing Model. Thus, This Study Develops An Accurate Pricing-Estimate Game-Theoretical Model That Can Efficiently And Competitively Account For Escalations In Construction Materials Prices During Uncertain Market Conditions. First, Data On Past Producer Price Indexes (PPIs) Of Different Construction Materials Were Collected. Second, The Percentage Changes In …

Achieving Project Objectives And Improving Functions: The Benefits Of Ai And Construction Technologies, Fareed Salih, Islam H. El-Adaway

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The Construction Industry Is Increasingly Incorporating Artificial Intelligence (AI) And Construction Technologies Into Projects. However, It Lags Behind Other Industries In Terms Of Digital Transformation. One Of The Reasons For This Disparity Is The Lack Of Evidence-Based Information On AI And Technologies In Construction Projects. Hence, This Research Aims To Comprehensively Understand The Benefits Of AI Techniques And Construction Technologies And Their Role In Achieving Objectives And Improving Functions. To This End, The Authors Followed A Three-Step Research Methodology. Firstly, An Extensive Literature Review Was Conducted To Identify 4 AI Techniques, 13 Construction Technologies, And 28 Benefits Relevant To Their …

Influence Of Nanofiller Surface Treatment On Mechanical Properties Of Pyrolyzed Ceramic Nanocomposites, Laxmi Sai Viswanadha, Chenglin Wu, Jeremy Watts, Mohammad Naraghi

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The brittleness and limited plastic deformation of ceramics restrict their applications. In this work, the effects of pristine (CNTP), functionalized (CNTOH, CNTCOOH) and silanized MWCNTs on the mechanical properties of Silicon Carbide obtained by pyrolyzing polycarbosilane SMP-10 were studied. Functionalization with 3-glycidoxypropyltrimethoxy was analyzed through dispersion stability, zeta potential, and EDS analyses, revealing increased silicon content and colloidal stability in silanized MWCNTs. However, silanized MWCNTs led to reduced mechanical properties in composites, while untreated MWCNTs (CNTP, CNTOH, CNTCOOH), showed a substantial increase in modulus by 74.2 %, 86.9 %, and 30.5 %, respectively. The observed enhancement in mechanical properties exceeded …

Quantifying The Impact Of A Constructed Wetland On Downstream Nitrate Concentrations And Loads In The U.S. Midwest, Elliot Anderson, Keith E. Schilling, Craig L. Just, Bong Chul Seo

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Constructed wetlands are standard conservation practices used to reduce nitrate loads in agricultural watersheds. Many studies have examined the efficiency of denitrification in wetlands under various scenarios, but quantifying the watershed-scale impact of wetlands on downstream nitrate levels is rarely done using field observations. In this study, we estimated nitrate removal in a constructed wetland in the headwaters of Mud Creek, a HUC12 watershed in eastern Iowa, from May–September 2022 and May–September 2023 (a ten-month period). We also measured nitrate loads at four successive downstream sites, three along Mud Creek and one below its confluence with the larger Cedar River. …

Collect Spatiotemporally Correlated Data In Iot Networks With An Energy-Constrained Uav, Wenzheng Xu, Heng Shao, Qunli Shen, Jian Peng, Wen Huang, Weifa Liang, Tang Liu, Xin Wei Yao, Tao Lin, Sajal K. Das

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) Are Promising Tools For Efficient Data Collections Of Sensors In IoT Networks. Existing Studies Exploited Both Spatial And Temporal Data Correlations To Reduce The Amount Of Collected Redundant Data, In Which Sensors Are First Partitioned Into Different Clusters, A Master Sensor In Each Cluster Then Collects Raw Data From Other Sensors And Compresses The Received Data. An Energy-Constrained UAV Finally Collects The Maximum Amount Of Compressed Data From Different Master Sensors. We However Notice That The Compressed Data From Only A Portion Of Clusters Are Collected By The UAV In The Existing Studies, While The Data …

Resource Aware Clustering For Tackling The Heterogeneity Of Participants In Federated Learning, Rahul Mishra, Hari Prabhat Gupta, Garvit Banga, Sajal K. Das

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Federated Learning Is A Training Framework That Enables Multiple Participants To Collaboratively Train A Shared Model While Preserving Data Privacy. The Heterogeneity Of Devices And Networking Resources Of The Participants Delay The Training And Aggregation. The Paper Introduces A Novel Approach To Federated Learning By Incorporating Resource-Aware Clustering. This Method Addresses The Challenges Posed By The Diverse Devices And Networking Resources Among Participants. Unlike Static Clustering Approaches, This Paper Proposes A Dynamic Method To Determine The Optimal Number Of Clusters Using Dunn Indices. It Enables Adaptability To The Varying Heterogeneity Levels Among Participants, Ensuring A Responsive And Customized Approach To …

Personalized Federated Graph Learning On Non-Iid Electronic Health Records, Tao Tang, Zhuoyang Han, Zhen Cai, Shuo Yu, Xiaokang Zhou, Taiwo Oseni, Sajal K. Das

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Understanding The Latent Disease Patterns Embedded In Electronic Health Records (EHRs) Is Crucial For Making Precise And Proactive Healthcare Decisions. Federated Graph Learning-Based Methods Are Commonly Employed To Extract Complex Disease Patterns From The Distributed EHRs Without Sharing The Client-Side Raw Data. However, The Intrinsic Characteristics Of The Distributed EHRs Are Typically Non-Independent And Identically Distributed (Non-IID), Significantly Bringing Challenges Related To Data Imbalance And Leading To A Notable Decrease In The Effectiveness Of Making Healthcare Decisions Derived From The Global Model. To Address These Challenges, We Introduce A Novel Personalized Federated Learning Framework Named PEARL, Which Is Designed For …

Undeniable Authentication Of Digital Twin-Managed Smart Microfactory, Anusha Vangala, Ashok Kumar Das, Sajal K. Das

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Smart Microfactories Use Additive Manufacturing to Create Products with Mixed Materials and Variable Sizes. Digital Twin Technology Enhances Control of the Additive Manufacturing Equipment in These Factories, Increasing Productivity and Minimizing Errors. the Digital Twins Communicate with the Machines to Furnish Sensitive Data and Instructions, Which Must Be Protected from Tampering. Authentication Rescues the Digital and Physical Twins from Menacing Attacks Such as Privileged Insider, Impersonation, Ephemeral Secret Leakage (ESL) and Man-In-The-Middle (MiTM) Attacks. to This End, We Propose Lightweight Authentication among the Digital and Physical Twins with the Undeniability of Issued Commands and Deniable Key Agreement. It Achieves Perfect …

Lease: Leveraging Energy-Awareness In Serverless Edge For Latency-Sensitive Iot Services, Aastik Verma, Anurag Satpathy, Sajal K. Das, Sourav Kanti Addya

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Resource Scheduling Catering to Real-Time IoT Services in a Serverless-Enabled Edge Network is Particularly Challenging Owing to the Workload Variability, Strict Constraints on Tolerable Latency, and Unpredictability in the Energy Sources Powering the Edge Devices. This Paper Proposes a Framework LEASE that Dynamically Schedules Resources in Serverless Functions Catering to Different Microservices and Adhering to their Deadline Constraint. to Assist the Scheduler in Making Effective Scheduling Decisions, We Introduce a Priority-Based Approach that Offloads Functions from over-Provisioned Edge Nodes to Under-Provisioned Peer Nodes, Considering the Expended Energy in the Process Without Compromising the Completion Time of Microservices. for Real-World Implementations, …

Early Detection Of Driving Maneuvers For Proactive Congestion Prevention, Debasree Das, Shameek Bhattacharjee, Sandip Chakraborty, Bivas Mitra, Sajal K. Das

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Road Traffic Congestion Affects Not Only the Commute Delay but Also a city's overall Social, Economic, and Environmental Growth. Existing Approaches for Road Congestion Mitigation Primarily Adopt a Reactive Approach by Detecting Congestion after It Occurs and Recommending Alternate Routes to the Vehicles, Which Fails to Prevent Congestion Cascading. in Contrast, We Propose a Pervasive Platform Called ProCon that Proactively Infers the Driving Micro-Behaviors that Can Contribute to Congestion Formation and Assist the Drivers in Avoiding Such Maneuvers in Real-Time during the Navigation. Thorough Evaluations over Multiple Real-Life and Simulated Datasets Indicate that ProCon Can Reduce Congestion for More Than …

Incivility In Open Source Projects: A Comprehensive Annotated Dataset Of Locked Github Issue Threads, Ramtin Ehsani, Mia Mohammad Imran, Robert Zita, Kostadin Damevski, Preetha Chatterjee

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

In the dynamic landscape of open-source software (OSS) development, understanding and addressing incivility within issue discussions is crucial for fostering healthy and productive collaborations. This paper presents a curated dataset of 404 locked GitHub issue discussion threads and 5961 individual comments, collected from 213 OSS projects. We annotated the comments with various categories of incivility using Tone Bearing Discussion Features (TBDFs), and, for each issue thread, we annotated the triggers, targets, and consequences of incivility. We observed that Bitter frustration, Impatience, and Mocking are the most prevalent TBDFs exhibited in our dataset. The most common triggers, targets, and consequences of …

On The K-Weak Coverage Of Random Mobile Sensors, Sajal K. Das, Rafal Kapelko

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper studies the fundamental problem of energy consumption in the movement of mobile random sensors ensuring k-weak coverage on the domain. In particular, we analyze two notions of k-weak coverage on the unit square, namely (1) (k, x)-weak coverage in which every straight-line path across the width of the unit square passes through the sensing range of at least k sensors; and (2) (k, x, y)-weak coverage in which every straight-line path across the width and the length of the unit square passes through the sensing range of at least k sensors. The number of reliable and p-reliable sensors …

Posca: Path Optimization For Solar Cover Amelioration In Urban Air Mobility, Debjyoti Sengupta, Anurag Satpathy, Sajal K. Das

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Urban Air Mobility (UAM) encompasses both piloted and autonomous aerial vehicles, spanning from small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) like drones to passenger-carrying personal air vehicles (PAVs), to revolutionize smart transportation in congested urban areas. This emerging paradigm is anticipated to offer disruptive solutions to the mobility challenges in congested cities. In this context, a pivotal concern centers on the sustainability of transitioning to this mode of transportation, especially with the focus on incorporating clean technology into developing innovative solutions from the ground up. Recent studies highlight that a significant portion of the total energy consumption in UAM can be attributed …

Tasr: A Novel Trust-Aware Stackelberg Routing Algorithm To Mitigate Traffic Congestion, Doris E.M. Brown, Venkata Sriram Siddhardh Nadendla, Sajal K. Das

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

A Stackelberg routing platform (SRP) reduces congestion in one-shot traffic networks by proposing optimal route recommendations to the selfish travelers. Traditionally, Stackel-berg routing is cast as a partial control problem where a fraction of the traveler flow complies with route recommendations, while the remaining responds as selfish travelers. In this paper, we formulate a novel Stackelberg routing framework where the agents exhibit probabilistic compliance by accepting SRP's route recommendations with a trust probability. Specifically, we propose a greedy Trust-Aware Stackelberg Routing algorithm (in short, TASR) for SRP to compute unique path recommendations to each traveler flow with a unique demand. …

Traffic Prediction-Based Vnf Auto-Scaling And Deployment Mechanism For Flexible And Elastic Service Provision, Bo Yi, Jiacheng Wang, Qiang He, Xingwei Wang, Min Huang, Sajal K. Das, Keqin Li

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Network Function Virtualization (NFV) provides a flexible way to provision new services by decoupling network functions from hardware and implementing them as Virtual Network Functions (VNFs). However, the rapid development of technologies greatly promotes the explosion of diverse services, which directly results in the exponential increase of heterogeneous traffic. In addition, such a tremendous amount of heterogeneous traffic will generate bursts in a more dynamic and unexpected manner, so it becomes extremely hard to satisfy the customer demands. Aiming at addressing these challenges, this work proposes a positive and elastic VNF deployment mechanism for service provisioning, which introduces three novelties: …

L3geocast: Enabling P4-Based Customizable Network-Layer Geocast At The Network Edge, Xindi Hou, Shuai Gao, Ningchun Liu, Fangtao Yao, Hongke Zhang, Sajal K. Das

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Geocast is a one-to-many communication paradigm that enables the transmission of data packets to a designated area rather than an IP address. The most common geocast solutions rely on the application-layer Geolocation-to-IP database. But these IP-based approaches cannot cope with the challenges of flexibility and mobility in a granularity-customizable geocast scenario. While some non-IP network-layer (L3) attempts have resulted in low addressing accuracy and poor routing scalability. Besides, the clean-slate design is incompatible with the existing network. To address these issues, this article proposes an innovative network-layer geographic addressing scheme that leverages P4-based Software Defined Networks (SDN) to enable flexible …

Learning Social Fairness Preferences From Non-Expert Stakeholder Opinions In Kidney Placement, Mukund Telukunta, Sukruth Rao, Gabriella Stickney, Venkata Sriram Siddardh Nadendla, Casey I. Canfield

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Modern kidney placement incorporates several intelligent recommendation systems which exhibit social discrimination due to biases inherited from training data. Although initial attempts were made in the literature to study algorithmic fairness in kidney placement, these methods replace true outcomes with surgeons' decisions due to the long delays involved in recording such outcomes reliably. However, the replacement of true outcomes with surgeons' decisions disregards expert stakeholders' biases as well as social opinions of other stakeholders who do not possess medical expertise. This paper alleviates the latter concern and designs a novel fairness feedback survey to evaluate an acceptance rate predictor (ARP) …

Book Review: Wapsipinicon Almanac: Selections From Thirty Years, Andy Oler

Publications

The Wapsipinicon Almanac: Selections from Thirty Years, edited by Timothy Fay. Iowa City: University of Iowa press, 2023. xi, 249 pp. Illustrations. $27.50 paperback.

Preempting The Buzz: Challenges For State And Local Regulation Of Drone Noise, Daniel Friedenzohn, Trevor Simoneau

Publications

From carrying life-saving medical supplies to delivering Amazon packages, drones are increasingly playing a more significant role in our society. Such operations, however, raise a variety of legal and public policy questions, all requiring answers before drone deliveries become commonplace in the package delivery ecosystem. One legal issue that remains significantly underexplored is the challenge of regulating drone noise. This issue raises vital questions of federalism and preemption in the broader debate over federal versus state and local power to govern different aspects of civilian drone operations.

Even though the noise generated by drones is much quieter than other types …

Fundamentals Of Sustainability, Eva Maleviti

Publications

Fundamentals of Sustainable Aviation is the frst textbook to survey the critical feld of sustainability within the aviation industry. Taking a systems thinking approach, it presents the foundational principles of sustainability and methodically applies them to diferent aviation sectors. Opening with the basics of sustainability, emphasising the Sustainable Development Goals, the book then considers the environmental, economic and social dimensions of aviation. The following chapters apply these insights to aviation design, supply chains, operations, maintenance and facilities. The fnal chapter examines the concept of resilience in sustainable aviation. Overall, the textbook shows how future sustainability can be achieved by making …

Validating The Critical Teaching Behaviors Midterm Feedback Instrument For Enhanced Teaching Effectiveness And Student Engagement, Claudia Cornejo Happel, Chad Rohrbacher, Teha Cooks, Jenna Korentsides, Joseph R. Keebler, Carmen Van Ommen, Kimberly N. Williams, Lauren Barbeau

Publications

This study, conducted at a private STEM university in the Southeastern United States, presents a series of qualitative and quantitative data validating the Critical Teaching Behaviors Midterm Feedback Instrument (CTB-MFI). The instrument’s validity and reliability were tested through a mixed-methods approach involving faculty surveys, statistical analyses, and a student experience survey and focus groups. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) suggests that the CTB-MFI model has excellent fit across multiple indicators, as well as excellent convergent validity. However, low discriminant validity indicates possible correlations between categories of critical teaching behaviors. Data further show that faculty and students perceive the instrument as …

Comprehensive Investigation Of Using Tire-Derived Aggregate In Chip Seal Subjected To Various Traffic And Environmental Conditions, Alireza Pourhassan

Doctoral Dissertations

"Chip seal is one of the most cost- and performance-effective pavement preservation treatments commonly used in the United States. Using crumb rubber obtained from scrap tires as a partial or full replacement for mineral aggregate has been proposed as a sustainable solution to reduce the negative environmental impacts of scrap tire accumulation and excessive consumption of natural resources. However, there was no data available regarding the performance of rubberized chip seal under traffic loads and environmental conditions. An extensive study using laboratory specimens and conditioning as well as field implementation and assessments were conducted to bridge this gap. Different traffic …

Novel Supercritical Biodiesel Plant Design & Process Scale-Up, Ghana Shyam Paudel

Doctoral Dissertations

"Current energy prices, national energy security, and global climate change fuel our momentum to find efficient advanced fuels choices. In this study, biodiesel processing, and a novel design for next generation biodiesel plants are explored. During a National Science Foundation (NSF) I-Corps project we identified three creative and profitable improvements to the process: 1. Incorporating Energy intensive separations and reactions 2. Utilizing Low commodity glycerol and 3. Applying process intensification principles.

Current biodiesel processes are catalyzed processes using continuous stir reactors with distillation systems to separate material constituents. We tested a lab-scale nocatalyst supercritical biodiesel process using waste cooking oil …

Reducing Emergency Department Decision To Admit To Disposition Time Using The Sydney Triage To Admission Risk Tool, Jolyn Sackmann

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Practice Innovation Projects

Background: Long emergency department (ED) length of stay (LOS) is associated with increased mortality, delay in care, longer inpatient (IP) stays, readmission risk, poor patient satisfaction, and opportunity for error. Within the ED LOS is a quality indicator measuring the time a provider determines a patient will be admitted to the time the patient leaves the ED for an IP unit, called ED-2. Prolonged ED-2 indicates impaired ED output.
/="/">Local Problem: Despite previous interventions, the ED-2 at a rural Midwest hospital was about 63.5 minutes; the goal set forth by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid is 35 minutes …

Advanced Manufacturing Of Nanomaterials For Energy Storage And Biomedical Applications, Hiep Pham

Doctoral Dissertations

"Nanomaterials have emerged as an important component to the advancement of many fields, ranging from advanced energy materials in the energy field to highly sophisticated treatment vehicles in the biomedical field. Understanding the physical behavior of nanomaterials is critical to design materials with excellent properties and performance for the many disciplines in which they are utilized and is necessary to master the various manufacturing processes that influence nanomaterial properties and behavior. This research focused on a fundamental study into the behaviors of newly developed nanomaterials under both conventional and new manufacturing processes for high performance lithium-ion batteries and for advanced …

Field Scale Evaluation Of A Flow-Through Filtration System With Mixed Media To Remove E. Coli From Stormwater, Ankur Debnath

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The main goal of this research was to establish a field-scale stormwater filtration system which is flow-through and cost-effective in terms of construction and maintenance. The filter is constructed in a downstream drainage of a retention pond where the stormwater goes through the porous space of media so that it maintains low retention time with minimum disturbance in flow. The filter consists of two 20ft long sections with concrete channel and ripraps on the inlet & outlet side. 30% Steel chips and 70% steel slags in the size range of 6.00-12.5 mm have been used as media which has been …

Development And Characterization Of Transparent Soil Using Biodegradable Polysaccharides, Said Badshah

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Using The Microbiome To Assess The Health Status Of The Individuals Recovered From The East Marshall Street Well, Arian Karim

Master of Science in Forensic Science Directed Research Projects

In 1994, during the construction of the Kontos Building on the Medical College of Virginia Campus, a well on East Marshall Street was discovered to contain artifacts and human remains of African descent. Upon archaeological analysis by the Smithsonian, the ancestral remains can be dated back to the mid-19th century, when grave robbing and the use of cadavers for anatomical purposes [BS1] in medical schools were common. The human oral microbiome is the second largest human microbiota, containing over 600 species of organisms. Dysbiosis of the oral microbiome can lead to the overgrowth of pathogenic species, resulting in illness and …