Digital Commons Network^™

A Stronger Strong Schottky Lemma For Euclidean Buildings, Michael E. Ferguson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

We provide a criterion for two hyperbolic isometries of a Euclidean building to generate a free group of rank two. In particular, we extend the application of a Strong Schottky Lemma to buildings given by Alperin, Farb and Noskov. We then use this extension to obtain an infinite family of matrices that generate a free group of rank two. In doing so, we also introduce an algorithm that terminates in finite time if the lemma is applicable for pairs of certain kinds of matrices acting on the Euclidean building for the special linear group over certain discretely valued fields.

Dynamics In Designed Elastins And Enzymes, Jonathan M. Preston

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation I present experimental results on the structure and dynamics of elastin, an elastomeric extracellular component in vertebrates that, in mammals, provides structure and elasticity to the circulatory system, lungs, skin and joints. These experiments, using a set of designed elastin like proteins with properties analogous to the natural protein, show that elastin is highly disordered and connect this disorder to its mechanism of assembly and elasticity. In addition, I also present preliminary work on imparting flexibility into a set of computationally designed metalloenzymes to broaden the range of catalytic activities they perform.

Salty: A Diffractive Inquiry Of Visceral Knowing And Embodied Aesthetics, Mei Ling Chua

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation takes a diffractive, onto-epistemological approach to everyday practices with salt in order to articulate an expanded understanding of meaning making and knowledge production. This research reckons with and challenges dominant modes of knowing that engage a Cartesian perspective to situate knowing as the exclusive domain of the mind in both form and topic of inquiry. This research acts simultaneously as both a direct practice of and metacognition about knowledge production by examining 1. the embodied (including sensory and emotional aspects) and 2. the relational (including interpersonal and socio-cultural) dimensions of experience as visceral knowing. This articulation of …

Synthesis And Analysis Of Novel Troponoid-Based Chemical Probes, Alex Berkowitz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Troponoids are a class of non-benzenoid aromatic species featuring a cycloheptatrienone ring and varying degrees of oxygenation. These scaffolds have proven ubiquitous amongst natural products, and have displayed promise as therapeutic agents against a variety of diseases. Herein, we will describe our efforts towards furthering troponoids as potential pharmaceuticals. In Chapter 1, we outline a kojic acid-derived oxidopyrylium cycloaddition/ring-opening method developed in our lab to generate ahydroxytropolones (aHTs). This route was successfully adapted to synthesize a small library of lipophilic aHTs that were proven to be effective against herpes simplex virus-1 (HSV-1) replication, while providing further insight into the mechanism …

One-Loop Corrections To Dihadron Production In Dis At Small X, Filip Bergabo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

We calculate the one-loop corrections to dihadron production in Deep Inelastic Scattering (DIS) at small x using the Color Glass Condensate formalism. We show that all UV and soft singularities cancel while the collinear divergences are absorbed into quark and anti quark-hadron fragmentation functions. Rapidity divergences lead to JIMWLK evolution of dipoles and quadrupoles describing multiple-scatterings of the quark anti-quark dipole on the target proton/nucleus. The resulting cross section is finite and can be used for phenomenological studies of dihadron angular correlations at small x in a future Electron-Ion Collider (EIC).

Beam-Based Target Alignment For Mu2e, Helenka Casler

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Mu2e Experiment is a precision experiment at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, searching for charged lepton flavor violation (CLFV) in the conversion of a muon to an electron in the presence of an atomic nucleus. In order to achieve the expected single-event sensitivity of 3 × 10^-17 , Mu2e will require an intense muon beam, generated via pion decay. These pions are the product of a proton beam striking a radiatively-cooled tungsten target. In order to maximize pion production and prevent target failure, the beam will have to be aligned with the target center to within 0.5 mm. The …

It Has Always Been The “Business Model”: Racism And Sexism In Creative Arts Therapy Higher Education, Yasmine J. Awais

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Part of the Neoliberal drive is to privatize the structure and operation of public and private organizations and institutions. Managerialism has shaped higher education since the mid to late 1970s through a focus on productivity, efficiency, accountability, and standardization. Workers employed in social service organizations and universities have employed strategies for managing organizations based on the neoliberal business philosophy for the last 40 years. This research examines the impact of managerialism in higher education through the experience of faculty teaching in creative arts therapy master’s professional programs. During 2021, twenty-three faculty of color and white faculty who identified as women …

Analyzing Relationships With Machine Learning, Oscar Ko

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Procedurally, this project aims to take a dataset, analyze it, and offer insights to the audience in an easy-to-digest format. Conceptually, this project will seek to explore questions like: “Do couples that meet through online dating or dating apps have higher or lower quality relationships?”, “Can any features in this dataset help predict how a subject would rate their relationship quality?”, and “What other insights can I derive from using machine learning for exploratory analysis?” The intended audience for this project is anyone interested in romantic relationships or machine learning.

The dataset is from a Stanford University survey, “How Couples …

Nanoscale Imaging Of Electrocatalytic Nanomaterials By High-Resolution Scanning Electrochemical Microscopy, Xiang Wang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Numerous insights of the structure–electrochemical activity relationship of nanocatalysts have been obtained by using macroscopic electrochemical measurements over the last several decades. However, signals measured by large electrodes are inevitably averaged out of many nanocatalysts, non-uniformed sizes, uneven morphologies, and multiple crystallographic facets. Over the last ten years, Scanning Electrochemical Microscopy (SECM) has advanced electrochemical measurements toward micro- to nanoscale level at a high spatial resolution. The advantages of using nanoelectrode in SECM include fast mass transfer of reactive species, dominated radial diffusion pattern, small double layer capacitance and small RC constant. In this thesis, high-resolution SECM is applied to …

Revealing The Three-Dimensional Magnetic Texture With Machine Learning Models, Shihua Zhao

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Revealing three-dimensional (3D) magnetic textures with vector field electron tomography (VFET) is essential in studying novel magnetic materials with topologically protected spin textures potentially being used in the next-generation semiconductor industry. In this dissertation, we use machine learning (ML) models to reconstruct 3D magnetic textures from electron holography (EH) data.

We can feed the EH data, a series of two-dimensional (2D) phasemaps, into a neural network (NN) architecture directly or feed the EH data into a conventional VFET and then feed the reconstructed results into a NN. Thus, perceptive NN, either a simple convolutional neural network (CNN) or Unet architecture, …

E Pluribus Unum: Prospective Acceptability Benchmarking From The Contouring Collaborative For Consensus In Radiation Oncology Crowdsourced Initiative For Multiobserver Segmentation, Diana Lin, Kareem A Wahid, Benjamin E Nelms, Renjie He, Mohammed A Naser, Simon Duke, Michael V Sherer, John P Christodouleas, Abdallah S R Mohamed, Michael Cislo, James D Murphy, Clifton D Fuller, Erin F Gillespie

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Purpose: Contouring Collaborative for Consensus in Radiation Oncology (C3RO) is a crowdsourced challenge engaging radiation oncologists across various expertise levels in segmentation. An obstacle to artificial intelligence (AI) development is the paucity of multiexpert datasets; consequently, we sought to characterize whether aggregate segmentations generated from multiple nonexperts could meet or exceed recognized expert agreement.

Approach: Participants who contoured ≥1 region of interest (ROI) for the breast, sarcoma, head and neck (H&N), gynecologic (GYN), or gastrointestinal (GI) cases were identified as a nonexpert or recognized expert. Cohort-specific ROIs were combined into single simultaneous truth and performance level estimation (STAPLE) consensus segmentations. …

Biosynthesis Of Chlorophyll And Other Isoprenoids In The Plastid Of Red Grape Berry Skins, António Teixeira, Henrique Noronha, Sarah Frusciante, Gianfranco Diretto, Hernâni Gerós

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Despite current knowledge showing that fruits like tomato and grape berries accumulate different components of the light reactions and Calvin cycle, the role of green tissues in fruits is not yet fully understood. In mature tomato fruits, chlorophylls are degraded and replaced by carotenoids through the conversion of chloroplasts in chromoplasts, while in red grape berries, chloroplasts persist at maturity and chlorophylls are masked by anthocyanins. To study isoprenoid and lipid metabolism in grape skin chloroplasts, metabolites of enriched organelle fractions were analyzed by high-performance liquid chromatography-high-resolution mass spectrometry (HPLC-HRMS) and the expression of key genes was evaluated by real-time …

A Theoretical Framework For The Ecological Role Of Three-Dimensional Structural Diversity, Elizabeth A. Larue, Robert T. Fahey, Brandon C. Alveshere, Jeff W. Atkins, Parth Bhatt, Brian Buma, Anping Chen, Stella Cousins, Jessica M. Elliott, Andrew J. Elmore, Christopher R. Hakkenberg, Brady S. Hardiman, Jeremy S. Johnson, Daniel M. Kashian, Anil Koirala, Monica Papeş, Jamille B. St Hilaire, Thilina D. Surasinghe, Jenny Zambrano, Lu Zhai, Songlin Fei

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

The three-dimensional (3D) physical aspects of ecosystems are intrinsically linked to ecological processes. Here, we describe structural diversity as the volumetric capacity, physical arrangement, and identity/traits of biotic components in an ecosystem. Despite being recognized in earlier ecological studies, structural diversity has been largely overlooked due to an absence of not only a theoretical foundation but also effective measurement tools. We present a framework for conceptualizing structural diversity and suggest how to facilitate its broader incorporation into ecological theory and practice. We also discuss how the interplay of genetic and environmental factors underpin structural diversity, allowing for a potentially unique …

Selectively Modified Lactose And N-Acetyllactosamine Analogs At Three Key Positions To Afford Effective Galectin-3 Ligands †, Shuay Abdullayev, Priyanka Dipak Kadav, Purnima Bandyopadhyay, Francisco Javier Medrano, Gabriel A. Rabinovich, Tarun K. Dam, Antonio Romero, René Roy

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

Galectins constitute a family of galactose-binding lectins overly expressed in the tumor microenvironment as well as in innate and adaptive immune cells, in inflammatory diseases. Lactose ((β-D-galactopyranosyl)-(1→4)-β-D-glucopyranose, Lac) and N-Acetyllactosamine (2-acetamido-2-deoxy-4-O-β-D-galactopyranosyl-D-glucopyranose, LacNAc) have been widely exploited as ligands for a wide range of galectins, sometimes with modest selectivity. Even though several chemical modifications at single positions of the sugar rings have been applied to these ligands, very few examples combined the simultaneous modifications at key positions known to increase both affinity and selectivity. We report herein combined modifications at the anomeric position, C-2, and O-3′ of each of the two …

A Catalog Of The Highest-Energy Cosmic Rays Recorded During Phase I Of Operation Of The Pierre Auger Observatory, A. Abdul Halim, P. Abreu, M. Aglietta, I. Allekotte, P. Allison, K. Almeida Cheminant, J. Chirinos, B. Fick, D. Nitz, I. Norwood, A. Puyleart, Et Al.

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

A catalog containing details of the highest-energy cosmic rays recorded through the detection of extensive air showers at the Pierre Auger Observatory is presented with the aim of opening the data to detailed examination. Descriptions of the 100 showers created by the highest-energy particles recorded between 2004 January 1 and 2020 December 31 are given for cosmic rays that have energies in the range 78-166 EeV. Details are also given on a further nine very energetic events that have been used in the calibration procedure adopted to determine the energy of each primary. A sky plot of the arrival directions …

The Effects Of Robot Voices And Appearances On Users' Emotion Recognition And Subjective Perception, Sangjin Ko, Jaclyn A. Barnes, Jiayuan Dong, Chung Hyuk Park, Ayanna Howard, Myounghoon Jeon

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

As the influence of social robots in people's daily lives grows, research on understanding people's perception of robots including sociability, trust, acceptance, and preference becomes more pervasive. Research has considered visual, vocal, or tactile cues to express robots' emotions, whereas little research has provided a holistic view in examining the interactions among different factors influencing emotion perception. We investigated multiple facets of user perception on robots during a conversational task by varying the robots' voice types, appearances, and emotions. In our experiment, 20 participants interacted with two robots having four different voice types. While participants were reading fairy tales to …

Order Sum Graph Of A Group, Javeria Amreen, Sudev Naduvath

Baghdad Science Journal

The concept of the order sum graph associated with a finite group based on the order of the group and order of group elements is introduced. Some of the properties and characteristics such as size, chromatic number, domination number, diameter, circumference, independence number, clique number, vertex connectivity, spectra, and Laplacian spectra of the order sum graph are determined. Characterizations of the order sum graph to be complete, perfect, etc. are also obtained.

Efficient Approach For Solving (2+1) D- Differential Equations, Luma N. M. Tawfiq, Noor A. Hussein

Baghdad Science Journal

In this article, a new efficient approach is presented to solve a type of partial differential equations, such (2+1)-dimensional differential equations non-linear, and nonhomogeneous. The procedure of the new approach is suggested to solve important types of differential equations and get accurate analytic solutions i.e., exact solutions. The effectiveness of the suggested approach based on its properties compared with other approaches has been used to solve this type of differential equations such as the Adomain decomposition method, homotopy perturbation method, homotopy analysis method, and variation iteration method. The advantage of the present method has been illustrated by some examples.

3-D Packing In Container Using Teaching Learning Based Optimization Algorithm, Linda Fitriyani, Larissa Alva Zerinda, Asri Bekti Pratiwi, Edi Winarko

Baghdad Science Journal

The paper aims to propose Teaching Learning based Optimization (TLBO) algorithm to solve 3-D packing problem in containers. The objective which can be presented in a mathematical model is optimizing the space usage in a container. Besides the interaction effect between students and teacher, this algorithm also observes the learning process between students in the classroom which does not need any control parameters. Thus, TLBO provides the teachers phase and students phase as its main updating process to find the best solution. More precisely, to validate the algorithm effectiveness, it was implemented in three sample cases. There was small data …

Breast Cancer Mri Classification Based On Fractional Entropy Image Enhancement And Deep Feature Extraction, Ali M. Hasan, Asaad F. Qasim, Hamid A. Jalab, Rabha W. Ibrahim

Baghdad Science Journal

Disease diagnosis with computer-aided methods has been extensively studied and applied in diagnosing and monitoring of several chronic diseases. Early detection and risk assessment of breast diseases based on clinical data is helpful for doctors to make early diagnosis and monitor the disease progression. The purpose of this study is to exploit the Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) in discriminating breast MRI scans into pathological and healthy. In this study, a fully automated and efficient deep features extraction algorithm that exploits the spatial information obtained from both T2W-TSE and STIR MRI sequences to discriminate between pathological and healthy breast MRI scans. …

A Quantum Approach To Language Modeling, Constantijn Van Der Poel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of six chapters. . . Chapter 1: We introduce language modeling, outline the software used for this thesis, and discuss related work. Chapter 2: We will unpack the transition from classical to quantum probabilities, as well as motivate their use in building a model to understand language-like datasets. Chapter 3: We motivate the Motzkin dataset, the models we will be investigating, as well as the necessary algorithms to do calculations with them. Chapter 4: We investigate our models’ sensitivity to various hyperparameters. Chapter 5: We compare the performance and robustness of the models. Chapter 6: We conclude …

Pronunciation Ambiguities In Japanese Kanji, Wen Zhang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Japanese writing is a complex system, and a large part of the complexity resides in the use of kanji. A single kanji character in modern Japanese may have multiple pronunciations, either as native vocabulary or as words borrowed from Chinese. This causes a problem for text-to-speech synthesis (TTS) because the system has to predict which pronunciation of each kanji character is appropriate in the context. The problem is called homograph disambiguation. In Japanese TTS technology, the trick in any case is to know which is the right reading, which makes reading Japanese text a challenge. To solve the problem, …

Engineered Plga Nanofibers For Drug Delivery, Andrew Mancuso

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Poly-lactic-co-glycolic acid (PLGA) polymers are rapidly gaining momentum as a platform for next-generation drug delivery systems due to their ease and low cost of synthesis, favorable biocompatibility and biodegradability, and lack of toxicity. In particular, the application of drug-loaded PLGA nanofibers directly to a target tissue may represent a promising alternative to traditional routes of drug administration (e.g., oral, injectable) as they offer the potential to greatly improve bioavailability, increase efficacy, and reduce off-target toxicity. Furthermore, the use of such a system may potentially allow for greater flexibility in clinical drug development, by enabling the use of compounds which have …

Combinatorial Identities Associated With A Bivariate Generating Function For Overpartition Pairs, Atul Dixit, Ankush Goswami

School of Mathematical & Statistical Sciences Faculty Publications

We obtain a three-parameter q-series identity that generalizes two results of Chan and Mao. By specializing our identity, we derive new results of combinatorial significance in connection with N(r,s,m,n), a function counting certain overpartition pairs recently introduced by Bringmann, Lovejoy and Osburn. For example, one of our identities gives a closed-form evaluation of a double series in terms of Chebyshev polynomials of the second kind, thereby resulting in an analogue of Euler's pentagonal number theorem. Another of our results expresses a multi-sum involving N(r,s,m,n) in terms of just the partition function p(n). Using a result of Shimura we also relate …

Coloring Complexes And Combinatorial Hopf Monoids, Jacob A. White

School of Mathematical & Statistical Sciences Faculty Publications

We generalize the notion of a coloring complex of a graph to linearized combinatorial Hopf monoids. We determine when a linearized combinatorial Hopf monoid has such a construction, and discover some inequalities that are satisfied by the quasisymmetric function invariants associated to the combinatorial Hopf monoid. We show that the collection of all such coloring complexes forms a linearized combinatorial Hopf monoid, which is the terminal object in the category of combinatorial Hopf monoids with convex characters. We also study several examples of combinatorial Hopf monoids.

On Viscoelastic Fiber Jet Formation By Forcespinning At High Rotation Rate, Daniel N. Riahi, Saulo Orizaga

School of Mathematical & Statistical Sciences Faculty Publications

We consider a nonlinear three-dimensional viscoelastic fiber jet that is generated during a forcespinning process. We provide a particular case for such a rotating jet at a high rotation rate. We use a viscoelastic constitutive model for the jet equations and then applying a new slender body approach, we continue with proper scaling and perturbation technique to develop a new model for such a jet system. We find that the profiles for jet quantities versus arc length are notably different from all those in related studies reported before for either high or low rotation rates. In particular, jet radius first …

Wallaby Pilot Survey: H I Gas Kinematics Of Galaxy Pairs In Cluster Environment, Shin-Jeong Kim, Se-Heon Oh, Jing Wang, Lister Staveley-Smith, Bärbel S. Koribalski, Minsu Kim, Hye-Jin Park, Shinna Kim, Kristine Spekkens, Juan P. Madrid

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Publications

We examine the H I gas kinematics of galaxy pairs in two clusters and a group using Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) WALLABY pilot survey observations. We compare the H I properties of galaxy pair candidates in the Hydra I and Norma clusters, and the NGC 4636 group, with those of non-paired control galaxies selected in the same fields. We perform H I profile decomposition of the sample galaxies using a tool, BAYGAUD, which allows us to deblend a line-of-sight velocity profile with an optimal number of Gaussian components. We construct H I superprofiles of the sample galaxies via …

Design And Characterization Of A Single Lever Bicycle Brake With Hydraulic Pressure Proportioning, Michael D. Machado, Vimal K. Viswanathan

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Featured Application: The work described here aims to design and characterize a more efficient bicycle braking system. In 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that 329,000 Americans were injured in cycling-related incidents. Since the first bicycle brake in 1817, there has been an individual brake lever for decelerating each wheel, while on cars, there has been a single control lever for decelerating multiple wheels since 1921. To perform an emergency stop on a bicycle, the rider must proportion hand pressure on each brake lever and simultaneously vary hand pressure throughout the duration of the maneuver to match …

Defining A Cyber Operations Performance Framework Via Computational Modeling, Briant Becote

Masters Theses & Doctoral Dissertations

Cyber operations are influenced by a wide range of environmental characteristics, strategic policies, organizational procedures, complex networks, and the individuals who attack and defend these cyber battlegrounds. While no two cyber operations are identical, leveraging the power of computational modeling will enable decision-makers to understand and evaluate the effect of these influences prior to their impact on mission success. Given the complexity of these influences, this research proposes an agent-based modeling framework that will result in an operational performance dashboard for user analysis. To account for cyber team behavioral characteristics, this research includes the development and validation of the Cyber …

Enhanced Convolutional Neural Network For Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Classification, Yahya Tashtoush, Rasha Obeidat, Abdallah Al-Shorman, Omar Darwish, Mohammad A. Al-Ramahi, Dirar Darweesh

Computer Information Systems Faculty Publications (Archived)

Lung cancer is a common type of cancer that causes death if not detected
early enough. Doctors use computed tomography (CT) images to diagnose
lung cancer. The accuracy of the diagnosis relies highly on the doctor's
expertise. Recently, clinical decision support systems based on deep learning
valuable recommendations to doctors in their diagnoses. In this paper, we
present several deep learning models to detect non-small cell lung cancer in
CT images and differentiate its main subtypes namely adenocarcinoma,
large cell carcinoma, and squamous cell carcinoma. We adopted standard
convolutional neural networks (CNN), visual geometry group-16 (VGG16),
and VGG19. Besides, we …