Digital Commons Network^™

Characterization Of Nb2o5-Ni Coating Prepared By Dc Sputtering, Hiyam M. Jedy, Rana A. Anaee, Abdullah A. Abdulkarim

Engineering and Technology Journal

The Nb2O5-Ni coating was processed using DC sputtering on structural steel and study characterization of composite coating SEM/EDS inspection indicated clearly perfect incorporation of Nb2O5 within the nickel rich. Increasing in surface roughness and decreasing in average diameters of particles were obtained for coated surface compared with uncoated surface from AFM analysis, in addition, microhardness test and thickness test showed that increasing of the hardness value to 163 HV for Nb2O5 - Ni composite coating compared to 132 HV for uncoated samples, the hardness for Ni coating also increasing to155 HV and the thickness for Nb2O5-Ni composite coatings increased significantly …

Optimal H-Infinity Pid Model Reference Controller Design For Roll Control Of A Tail-Sitter Vtol Uav, Ali H. Mhmood, Hazem I. Ali

Engineering and Technology Journal

In this work, an optimal and robust controller based on consolidating the PID controller and H-infinity approach with the model reference control is proposed. The proposed controller is intended to accomplish a satisfactory transient response by including the reference model. A Tail-Sitter VTOL UAV system is used to show the effectiveness of the proposed controller. A dynamic model of the system is formulated using Euler method. To optimize the design procedure, the Black Hole Optimization (BHO) method is used as a new Calibration method. The deviation between the reference model output and system output will be minimized to obtain the …

A Proposal Video Encryption Using Light Stream Algorithm, Ataa R. Alawi, Nidaa F. Hassan

Engineering and Technology Journal

Video encrypting is one technique to protect digital videos, it used to avoid unwanted interference and viewing of the transmitted videos. In this paper, a new selective video cryptography algorithm is suggested using light stream algorithm. As it known video size is large in size and it consume time in the encryption process, ChaCha a light encryption algorithm has been used to reduce the encryption time, encryption is done by Xoring frames of video with the key generated from ChaCha algorithm, it produced an acceptable results from robustness point view, but still encryption process consumed time, thus to speed up …

Survey Of Recent Video Watermarking Techniques, Taisir N. Hummadia, Nidaa F. Hassanb

Engineering and Technology Journal

With the development of the Internet coupled with expanding the accessibility of multimedia, various copyright issues have resulted. Several researchers have been working on watermarks to provide the security, durability, and a perception of multimedia. This paper a review of some recent works is presented related to video watermarking techniques, this study focuses on the pros and cons of recent video watermarking, areas of application, and the different types and attacks that are standing against these watermarking techniques. The results obtained from this study showed that watermark techniques based on the transfer domain, are more popular than those of the …

A Study Of The Effect Of Starch Content On The Water Absorption Of Pva/Starch Blends, Bushra H. Musa, Nahida J. Hameed

Engineering and Technology Journal

The present work aims to study physical tests such as the water absorption tests of PVA; PVA/corn starch blends at different mass percent (25, 30, 35, 40, and 50%) of corn starch after immersion in distilled water for ten minutes. The blends were also characterized by FTIR analysis, and an optical microscope. Casting method used to prepare samples. The results of water absorption exhibited that the weight losses of the sample increases the starch content rises in the PVA matrix. Also, it was found the highest value of the swelling ratio % at (50% PVA /50% Starch) blend, while minimum …

Fracture Toughness Of Glass Infiltrated (3y-Tzp/Al2o3) Composite, Sara N. Ibrahim, Shihab A. Zaidan, Mudhafar A. Mohammed

Engineering and Technology Journal

Five different 3 mol.% yttria-tetragonal zirconia polycrystals/alumina (3Y-TZP/Al2O3) -glass specimens have been fabricated by the glass infiltration method. graphite additives were added to the (3Y-TZP/20Wt.%Al2O3) to obtain porous structure. The ATZ (Alumina Toughened Zirconia) skeleton have prepared by the normal compaction method. The specimen had been infiltrated by the glass (18Wt.% lithium hydroxide, 72 wt. % feldspar, and 10Wt.% nano Titanium oxide) at 1185ᵒC. Results showed that the porosity of (3Y-TZP/Al2O3) composite was increased while bulk density decreased with increasing graphite additives. The elastic modulus of (3Y-TZP/Al2O3)-glass was decreased (159-109GPa) with increasing the amount of glass infiltrated. Hardness was constant …

Age Estimation In Short Speech Utterances Based On Bidirectional Gated-Recurrent Neural Networks, Ameer A. Badr, Alia K. Abdul-Hassan

Engineering and Technology Journal

Recently, age estimates from speech have received growing interest as they are important for many applications like custom call routing, targeted marketing, or user-profiling. In this work, an automatic system to estimate age in short speech utterances without depending on the text is proposed. From each utterance frame, four groups of features are extracted and then 10 statistical functionals are measured for each extracted dimension of the features, to be followed by dimensionality reduction using Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA). Finally, bidirectional Gated-Recurrent Neural Networks (G- RNNs) are used to predict speaker age. Experiments are conducted on the VoxCeleb1 dataset to …

License Plate Tilt Correction: A Review, Nada N. Kamal, Enas Tariq

Engineering and Technology Journal

Tilt correction is an essential step in the license plate recognition system (LPR). The main goal of this article is to provide a review of the various methods that are presented in the literature and used to correct different types of tilt that appear in the digital image of the license plates (LP). This theoretical survey will enable the researchers to have an overview of the available implemented tilt detection and correction algorithms. That’s how this review will simplify for the researchers the choice to determine which of the available rotation correction and detection algorithms to implement while designing their …

The Effect Of The Number Of Key-Frames On The Facial Emotion Recognition Accuracy, Suhaila N. Mohammed, Alia K. Abdul Hassan

Engineering and Technology Journal

Key-frame selection plays an important role in facial expression recognition systems. It helps in selecting the most representative frames that capture the different poses of the face. The effect of the number of selected keyframes has been studied in this paper to find its impact on the final accuracy of the emotion recognition system. Dynamic and static information is employed to select the most effective key-frames of the facial video with a short response time. Firstly, the absolute difference between the successive frames is used to reduce the number of frames and select the candidate ones which then contribute to …

Eye Diseases Classification Using Back Propagation Artificial Neural Network, Hanaa M. Ahmed, Shrooq R. Hameed

Engineering and Technology Journal

A human eye is a vital organ responsible for a person's vision. So, the early detection of eye diseases is essential. The objective of this paper deals with diagnosing of seven different external eye diseases that can be recognized by a human eye. These diseases cause problems either in eye pupil, in sclera of eye or in both or in eyelid. Color histogram and texture features extraction techniques with classification technique are used to achieve the goal of diagnosing external eye diseases. Hue Min Max Diff (HMMD) color space is used to extract color histogram and texture features which were …

Effect Of Pulse Electric Field On Water Characteristics As A Disinfection Function In Filtration Unit, Ghassan Abukhanafer, Alaa H. Al-Fatlawi, Hassan H. Joni

Engineering and Technology Journal

This paper studied the impact of the addition of pulse electric-filed low voltage (PEF-LV) in the filtration process by designing, constructing, and operating a pilot-scale. The Disinfectant process (DP) demonstrated several benefits in terms of efficiency and ease of application, without the use of any chemical additive. This system contains two pairs of silver mesh electrodes inside the filtration column test with a low pulse voltage for killing microorganisms. The parametric effects of DP performance, such as alternating current pulse frequency and the voltage applied were investigated. The effect of PEF-LV on the biological, physical, and chemical characteristic of water …

Thermal Investigations Of Double Pass Solar Air Heater With Two Types Of Porous Media Of Different Thermal Conductivity, Jalal M. Jalil, Shrooq J. Ali

Engineering and Technology Journal

This study describes an experimental investigation of the thermal efficiency of stainless steel mesh and steel wool as a porous medium in the lower channel of a double pass solar air heater. An experimental setup was planned and developed. Various types of porous media with high thermal conductivity and with different porosities have been tested. The effects of the porosity of wire mesh, the thermal conductivity of porous media, mass flow rate, and the intensity of radiation have been studied. Experimental results show that thermal efficiency with using porous media is greater than without using porous media. When used steel …

Attention-Based Ensemble Deep Learning Model For Arabic And English Fake News Classification, Ameer Alhaq Alshamery

Journal of Intelligent Informatics, Networking, and Cybersecurity

It is difficult to classify articles as fake news since one article may consist of true facts with only some statements being fake. Moreover, classification becomes complicated for the Arabic language owing to its morphology and several ways of spelling, as well as the lack of well-classified and marked data sets. This paper presents an Ensemble Deep Learning Model (EDLM) used for Arabic and English fake news classification. The EDLM consists of CNN, Bi-LSTM with attention, and Bi-GRU with attention networks. Each of them produces one probability of the article, which is then summed up to a final probability via …

Genpix: A Diverse Dataset For Fake Image Detection, Guessoum Dalila, Benblidia Nadjia, Boumahdi Fatima, Remmide Mohamed Abdelkarim, Nouri Tarek-Amine, Bataouche Azeddine-Lotfi

Iraqi Journal for Computer Science and Mathematics

The rapid advancement of sophisticated generative models has intensified the need for robust fake image detection systems. However, many existing benchmark datasets suffer from limited diversity in content types and generation techniques, constraining the generalization ability of detection models. To address these limitations, we introduce GenPix (Generalized Pixels), a comprehensive dataset encompassing over 80,000 images spanning diverse categories, including faces, objects, and scenes, generated by multiple state-of-the-art models such as Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) and diffusion-based architectures. The dataset includes samples from different generation methods to ensure broad coverage of fake image characteristics.

GenPix provides a realistic evaluation environment that …

Topical Enrofloxacin Solution Delays Tympanic Membrane Epithelial Migration In Healthy Dogs, Jinseo Oh, Seulgi Bae

The Thai Journal of Veterinary Medicine

Tympanic membrane epithelial migration (TMEM) is essential for homeostasis and self-cleaning function of the tympanic membrane and external ear canal. Otitis externa is common in small animal practice, and topical preparations are widely used for management. Although several treatments have been reported to alter TMEM rates in dogs, evidence on the effects of topical antibiotics on TMEM is limited. This study evaluated the effect of topical enrofloxacin on TMEM in healthy dogs. TMEM was assessed in both tympanic membranes of three healthy dogs (six ears) using a within-subject design with control and experimental conditions. In the experimental condition, enrofloxacin (5 …

Automated Multimodal Synthesis And Native Ecosystem Handoff Of Artificial Intelligence Generated Knowledge Media To Shared Ambient Displays, Richa Gupta

Defensive Publications Series

The disclosed technology introduces a GenAI knowledge bridge that seamlessly translates customized Gen AI workspace outputs into a native, multimodal television experience for consumption by a user and other viewers. The GenAI knowledge bridge establishes a secure, authenticated, customized synthesized knowledge row for inclusion in a user interface of a homepage of a television application running on a computing device (e.g., a smart television). The GenAI knowledge bridge populates the customized synthesized knowledge row by way of a direct application programming interface (API) sync with a private GenAI workspace of the user. A visualizer engine running on the computing device …

Dynamic Media Device Power Management Using Proximity Inferred From Wireless Signals, Nikita Agarwal

Defensive Publications Series

Power management for media devices can be inefficient when a user is listening to audio content but is not actively viewing the display, potentially leading to increased energy consumption. Systems and methods can manage display power by inferring user proximity. The technology can utilize wireless signal characteristics, such as a received signal strength indicator from a user's personal peripheral device (e.g., a smartwatch, smartphone, or earbuds), to establish virtual zones around a media playback device. When the system infers that a user has moved from a viewing zone to a listening zone, it can automatically deactivate the display panel while …

Implications Of Similarities And Differences Amongst Media Literacy Skills And Trust Across Communities Of Color, Erica Weintraub Austin, Nadia Ishrat Alamgir, Alexandra Elenitsa Fil, Sultana Ismet Jerin, Di Mu, Albert Junior Nyarko, Folake Racheal Okor, Pearl Omolara Oladele, Hae Yeon Seo, Andrew D. Sutherland

Journal of Media Literacy Education Pre-Prints

A 2020 survey of U.S. adults found that nonwhite respondents tended to report lower levels of media literacy than white respondents. However, their media literacy skills were associated with better COVID-19 knowledge and less acceptance of COVID-19 disinformation. This secondary analysis of the dataset (N=1264) explored how aspects of media literacy and media trust varied across communities of color. No significant differences in online information efficacy were found. White respondents scored higher than Hispanic/Latiné and Native American/Indigenous respondents on media literacy for source, and higher than Black and Hispanic/Latiné respondents on media literacy for content. White respondents also …

Southeastern United States Community College Instructors’ Perceptions In Implementing Universal Design For Learning, Marshalle Lockhart

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The problem that was addressed through this study is that community college instructors struggle to implement universal design for learning (UDL) in Southeastern districts in the United States. Grounded in UDL, which was developed by the Center for Applied Technology, the purpose of this qualitative study was to explore community college instructors’ perceptions on the challenges they face when implementing UDL in their classroom. For this basic qualitative study, semistructured interviews were conducted with eight community college instructors. Using deductive coding, the data were analyzed using a thematic approach with five themes emerging: (a) UDL improves access but does not …

Hotter Than The Fire: Analysis Of Indonesia's Forest And Peatland Fire Policy Contention, 2015–2024, Dede Setiono, Nunuk Retnandari, Putri Wulandari

Forest and Society

The catastrophic forest and peatland fires of 2015 served as a critical juncture for Indonesia, catalyzing an unprecedented wave of policy reforms aimed at fire prevention and ecosystem restoration. Despite this, major fire events recurred in 2019 and 2023, exposing a persistent gap between policy ambition and on-the-ground reality. This article investigates the underlying reasons for this continued policy failure. This study employs a qualitative, interpretive approach, drawing on 25 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders across government, the corporate sector, civil society, and local communities conducted between 2023 and 2024. The analysis reveals that Indonesia's fire crisis is not …

Discursive Consciousness And Pedagogical Reasoning Within Teacher Collaborative Inquiry In Rural Mexico, Nelly Yllen Charles Martinez

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines teacher collaborative learning within Matemáticas Equitativas (MATEQ), a school-based professional learning model designed to support equitable mathematics instruction through collaborative inquiry and peer observation. Drawing on Anthony Giddens' structure-agency theory, this research adopts an interpretive qualitative case study with discourse-oriented analysis to examine teachers' pedagogical reasoning by looking at manifestations of discursive consciousness--defined as the capacity to articulate and rationalize one's actions in discourse--during collaborative meetings. Findings show that both the interactional structures and collaborative resources embedded in MATEQ--in particular peer facilitated uses of observation rubrics--mediated teachers' discursive consciousness, strengthening the pedagogical reasoning shared within collaborative inquiry. …

Selective Factors Impacting Charter High School Enrollment, Nathan Marshall

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined factors influencing high school choice among Utah families, comparing parent priorities between charter and traditional public high schools. Using one-way ANOVA with Tukey honestly significant difference (HSD) post hoc comparisons, parental priorities were analyzed across personal, school community, and academic factors. Parents choosing traditional public high schools rated personal and school community factors significantly higher, emphasizing relationships and school climate, while charter high school parents rated academic factors significantly higher, favoring rigor and instructional quality. Charter parents' priorities were not uniform, however, but varied significantly by school model, suggesting that the charter-versus-traditional divide masks meaningful differences within …

Unscripted Urban Interior, Paramita Atmodiwirjo, Yandi Andri Yatmo

Interiority

The urban interior has emerged as a site of unscripted performance. The unscripted urban interior can be understood as a dynamic field where spatial conditions, social practices, and temporal change interact to produce emergent and contingent spatial realities beyond the original script. Through unscripted performance, the urban interior becomes a site of transformative potential, where various forms of practices emerge to transform, appropriate, and mediate the situations. The articles in this Interiority issue highlight the indeterminate characters of the urban interior and the possible transformation practices emerging from such urban contexts through various techniques and media that create distinctive values …

Strategies Used By Silicon Valley Technology Leaders To Advance Latinx Employees Into Leadership Roles To Increase Firm Productivity, Elizabeth A. Garcia

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The underrepresentation of Latinx professionals in leadership roles remains a challenge for technology leaders. Leaders who lack effective leadership development strategies for Latinx employees may experience reduced innovation, lower productivity, and decreased organizational competitiveness. Grounded in the resource-based view, the purpose of this qualitative pragmatic inquiry research project was to identify and explore effective strategies used by Silicon Valley technology leaders to advance Latinx employees into leadership roles to increase firm productivity. Participants were 10 technology leaders with experience implementing strategies to hire, develop, and promote Latinx talent. Data were collected through semistructured interviews, public organizational documents, and industry publications. …

Plurality In Nh Oppose Restricting Birthright Citizenship, Divided On Democratic Socialists Of America 7/29/2026, Unh Survey Center

All UNH Survey Center Polls

In the wake of a Supreme Court decision upholding birthright citizenship, nearly half of Granite Staters oppose a proposed constitutional amendment to restrict birthright citizenship and legislation restricting the entry of pregnant foreign women into the United States. Nearly half of Granite Staters who have at least heard of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) have a negative view of the group, but six in ten Democrats have a positive view. A majority of Granite Staters have a positive overall view of capitalism, while more than one-third have a positive view of socialism, particularly young people. President Trump’s job approval …

Reflections: More Than Memories, Jerry L. Pitts

Faculty Publications and Presentations

What if the memories of your life could become windows into God's faithfulness?

Reflections: More Than Memories is a yearlong devotional journey born from real-life experiences, heartfelt ministry, and a lifelong walk with Christ. Drawing from personal reflections shared over many years, Dr. Jerry L. Pitts invites readers to discover how God works through everyday moments, difficult seasons, unexpected blessings, and enduring faith.

Each daily devotional includes Scripture, a thoughtful reflection, and a prayer designed to encourage spiritual growth and a deeper relationship with God. Through stories of perseverance, worship, gratitude, loss, service, hope, and redemption, readers are reminded that …

Acquisitions Unit Annual Report 2025-2026, Andrée J. Rathemacher

Technical Services Reports and Statistics

Annual Report of the Acquisitions Unit, University Libraries, University of Rhode Island for FY2026. Covers personnel, work flow, special projects, and serial, monograph, and e-resource acquisitions. Supplemental files include data on library materials expenditures by a number of variables as well as important working documents from the year.

Lawyers Behind The Game: How Team General Counsel Shape The Future Of Sports, Jeffrey S. Moorad Sports Law Journal Symposium

Jeffrey S. Moorad Sports Law Journal (1994 - )

No abstract provided.

Love, Hurts: How Third-Party Fine Payments Challenge The Integrity Of Collective Bargaining Agreements In The Nfl, Isabella Astolfi

Jeffrey S. Moorad Sports Law Journal (1994 - )

No abstract provided.

Politics On The Podium: The International Olympic Committee's Selective Enforcement Of Country Bans, Olivia Jaffe

Jeffrey S. Moorad Sports Law Journal (1994 - )

No abstract provided.