Digital Commons Network^™

Shifting Satellite Control Paradigms: Operational Cybersecurity In The Age Of Megaconstellations, Carl A. Poole, Robert A. Bettinger, Mark Reith

Faculty Publications

The introduction of automated satellite control systems into a space-mission environment historically dominated by human-in-the-loop operations will require a more focused understanding of cybersecurity measures to ensure space system safety and security. On the ground-segment side of satellite control, the debut of privately owned communication antennas for rent and a move to cloud-based operations or mission centers will bring new requirements for cyber protection for both Department of Defense and commercial satellite operations alike. It is no longer a matter of whether automation will be introduced to satellite operations, but how quickly satellite operators can adapt to the onset of …

Solar Cell Brdf Measurement And Modeling With Out-Of-Plane Data, Todd V. Small, Samuel D. Butler, Michael A. Marciniak

Faculty Publications

In this work, a CCD-augmented complete angle scatter instrument (CASI) with a visible red laser source was used to measure the BRDF of a commercially available solar cell designed for small satellites, simultaneously capturing both in-plane and out-of-plane data with high angular resolution surrounding the specular direction. The measurements exhibited three distinct scatter features: a central specular peak, an offset specular peak, and a diffraction pattern. The two peaks were caused by different material surfaces with slightly different normal directions, and the diffraction pattern arose from periodically-spaced metal conducting bars running in one direction across the solar cell surface. The …

Corporate Venture Capital, Darian M. Ibrahim

Faculty Publications

This Article makes the case for corporate venture capital as a potentially game-changing entrant into entrepreneurial finance. Part II begins by retracing the ancillary players in entrepreneurial finance and their roles in the startup ecosystem. After finding each of them incapable of denting the venture capitalist’s current dominance, Part III introduces the large corporation as venture capitalist. Part III discusses the growing scale of corporate venture capital and why it may be desirable for startups, innovation, and society as a whole. Part IV looks at legal differences that may become important for corporate venture capitalists to consider, including securities, antitrust, …

Explaining Florida Man, Ira P. Robbins

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

"Florida Man" is a popular cultural phenomenon in which journalists report on Floridians' unusual (and often criminal) behavior, and readers relish in and share the stories, largely on social media. A meme based on Florida Man news stories emerged in 2013 and continues to capture people's attention nationwide. Florida man is one of the latest unique trends to come from the Sunshine State and contributes to Florida's reputation as a quirky place.

Explanations for Florida Man center on Florida's Public Records Law, which is known as one of the most expansive open records laws in the country. All states and …

A Mathematical Model For Predicting The Performance Of The Solar Energy Assisted Hybrid Air Conditioning System (Seahacs) With One-Rotor Six-Stage Rotary Desiccant Cooling System., A. Elzahaby, A. Kabeel, M. Bassuoni, M. Ahmed

Mansoura Engineering Journal

A mathematical model for predicting the performance of solar energy assisted hybrid air conditioning system (SEAHACS) is presented. The honeycombed silica gel desiccant wheel was used in this study, one-rotor six-stage rotary desiccant cooling system, in which two-stage dehumidification process, two –stage pre-cooling process and two-stage regeneration process are realized by only one wheel. Three air streams are involved in the present system. The mathematical model has been validated with the experimental data. As the key operating and design parameters, the range of regeneration air inlet temperature from 65-140 oC, area ratio of process air to generation air change from …

Reinvigorating A Technical Countering Weapons Of Mass Destruction Distance Learning Graduate Certificate Program, James C. Petrosky, Gaiven Varshney, Jeremy Slagley, Sara Shaghaghi

Faculty Publications

Current Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction (CWMD) demands can be divided broadly into policy and science. The science of chemical, biological, and radiological/nuclear weapons informs the limits of development, production, employment, operation, detection, risk characterization, human and material protection, and medical intervention. In short, the science of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) should precede and inform the development of policy. It is to this end that the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) CWMD program was re-established, providing a technical educational option for practitioners to understand the science behind a very technically challenging subject.

The Impact Of Separate Opinions On International Criminal Law, Nancy Amoury Combs

Faculty Publications

Dissents have had a tumultuous history in national and international courts throughout the world. Initially reviled, dissents have come to be a well-accepted, even praiseworthy, component of the American judicial system, and they have traversed the same trajectory in other countries as well as in international courts and tribunals. Particularly noteworthy among international courts are those created to prosecute perpetrators of mass atrocities, such as genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. And nowhere are dissents more common than in these mass atrocity courts. Yet, as prevalent as these dissents are, they have received virtually no scholarly or practical attention. …

How Analogizing Socio-Legal Responses To Organ Transplantation Can Further The Legalization Of Reproductive Genetic Innovation, Myrisha S. Lewis

Faculty Publications

The Nobel Foundation emphasized the significance of genetic innovation to society, science, and medicine by awarding the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to “the CRISPR/Cas9 genetic scissors.” This Article focuses on “reproductive genetic innovation,” a term that includes cytoplasmic transfer, mitochondrial transfer, and germline or heritable gene editing techniques that are all categorized as “experimental” in the United States. These techniques all use in vitro fertilization, a legal and widely available practice. Yet reproductive genetic innovation has resulted in controversy and numerous barriers including a recurring federal budget rider, threats of federal enforcement action, and the unavailability of federal funding. …

The Influences Of Covid-19 On The Job Satisfaction Of Student Conduct Administrators At Institutions Of Higher Education In The State Of Florida, Kenneth L. Maddox

Doctor of Education (Ed.D)

The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to explore the job satisfaction of student conduct administrators (SCAs) at institutions of higher education in the state of Florida during times of COVID-19. Student conduct issues constantly change on college campuses, and the demands for SCAs to evolve with the changes take a toll on their mental and physical health. SCAs are responsible for maintaining ethical, academic, and social integrity by providing oversight and enforcement of codes of student conduct at institutions of higher education. In times of crisis, like the COVID-19 pandemic, the role of the SCA increases to take …

A Small Rna Is Functional In Escherichia Fergusonii Despite Containing A Large Insertion., Austin P. Wright, H. Auguste Dutcher, Brianna Butler, Timothy J. Nice, Rahul Raghavan

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Bacterial small RNAs (sRNAs) are important regulators of gene expression; however, the impact of natural mutations on sRNA functions has not been studied extensively. Here we show that the sRNA MgrR contains a unique 53 bp insertion in Escherichia fergusonii, a close relative of Escherichia coli and Salmonella enterica. The insertion is a repetitive extragenic palindromic (REP) sequence that could block transcription, but full-length MgrR is produced in E. fergusonii, showing that the insertion has not affected sRNA production. Additionally, despite containing the large insertion, the sRNA appears to be functional because deletion of mgrR made E. fergusonii …

Major Loss Of Coralline Algal Diversity In Response To Ocean Acidification, Viviana Peña, Ben P. Harvey, Sylvain Agostini, Lucia Porzio, Marco Milazzo, Paulo Horta, Line Le Gall, Jason Hall‐Spencer

School of Biological and Marine Sciences

Calcified coralline algae are ecologically important in rocky habitats in the marine photic zone worldwide and there is growing concern that ocean acidification will severely impact them. Laboratory studies of these algae in simulated ocean acidification conditions have revealed wide variability in growth, photosynthesis and calcification responses, making it difficult to assess their future biodiversity, abundance and contribution to ecosystem function. Here, we apply molecular systematic tools to assess the impact of natural gradients in seawater carbonate chemistry on the biodiversity of coralline algae in the Mediterranean and the NW Pacific, link this to their evolutionary history and evaluate their …

Impact Of Graphene On Microstructure And Compressive Strength Of Cement Mortars Utilizing Two Different Dispersion Methods, Elhussien Khaled Elbatanouny

Theses and Dissertations

Carbon-based nanomaterials are currently used to reinforce cement-based composite materials based on their superior properties. This study investigates the mechanical property (compressive strength) of cement mortars incorporated with pristine graphene. The dosages of graphene materials used were 0.01%, 0.02%, 0.03%, and 0.04% by weight of cement. Moreover, this study compares two dispersion techniques: ultrasonication with surfactant coating and mechanical blending with surfactant coating to promote the use of graphene in cement mortars. A commonly used polycarboxylate superplasticizer Sika-Viscocrete Ultra 2100, was used as a dispersant agent (surfactant) of graphene with a surfactant to graphene weight ratio of 9 to 1. …

Assessing The Impacts Of Sea Level Rise On Land-Use Across The North-Eastern Parts Of The Uae Coastal Areas Using Remote Sensing Technology, Khawla Ali Mohammed Albedwawi

Theses

The consequences of global warming and climate change would result in a considerable rise in sea level. Other larger consequences on coastal lands, agriculture, buildings, and facilities are expected. The goal of this study is to assess the effects of Sea-Level Rise (SLR) on various land uses in the UAE's North-Eastern coastal districts (Fujairah and Kalba cities). Four SLR scenarios will be developed through the QGIS platform and the Landsat images that have been acquired from the USGS Earth Explorer. The area will be observed over 20 years (2000 – 2020). The second goal of this study is to develop …

The Red Palm Weevil In The Uae: Morphological Diversity And Rnai-Mediated Gene Silencing Of Two Cuticle-Related Genes, Safa Hashem Mohammed Musaed

Theses

Red Palm Weevil (RPW), Rhynchophorus ferrugineus (Coleoptera: Curculionidae), threatens palm trees worldwide. A better understanding of this insect can help with designing an adequate management strategy. This study aimed to a better understand the morphological diversity of RPW and examined RNAi-mediated gene silencing of two cuticle-related genes, vestigial (vg) gene, and Laccase (Lac2) gene by injecting the last larval stage with double-stranded RNA (dsRNA). For the morphological diversity study, adults of RPW were collected and classified by their prothoracic spots. Additional morphological characters were measured such as Pronotum Length (PL), Pronotum Width (PW), Elytra Length (EL), Elytra Width (EW), and …

Soliton Based All-Optical Data Processing In Waveguides, Amaria Javed

Dissertations

The growing demand for higher data processing speed and capacity motivates the replacement of the current electronic data processing by optical data processing in analogy with the successful replacement of electronic data communication by optical data communication. In a quest to achieve comprehensive optical data processing we aim at using solitons in waveguide arrays to perform all-optical data processing operations. Solitons are special nonlinear waves appreciated for their ability to conserve their shape and velocity before and after scattering. They are observed naturally in diverse fields of science, namely, nonlinear physics, mathematics, hydrodynamics, biophysics, and quantum field theory, etc. with …

Improving The Performance Of Transportation Networks: A Semi-Centralized Pricing Approach, Zhiguang Cao, Hongliang Guo, Wen Song, Kaizhou Gao, Liujiang Kang, Xuexi Zhang, Qilun Wu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Improving the performance of transportation network is a crucial task in traffic management. In this paper, we start with a cooperative routing problem, which aims to minimize the chance of road network breakdown. To address this problem, we propose a subgradient method, which can be naturally implemented as a semi-centralized pricing approach. Particularly, each road link adopts the pricing scheme to calculate and adjust the local toll regularly, while the vehicles update their routes to minimize the toll costs by exploiting the global toll information. To prevent the potential oscillation brought by the subgradient method, we introduce a heavy-ball method …

Uncovering Patterns In Reviewers' Feedback To Scene Description Authors, Rosiana Natalie, Jolene Kar Inn Loh, Huei Suen Tan, Joshua Shi-Hao Tseng, Hernisa Kacorri, Kotaro Hara

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Audio descriptions (ADs) can increase access to videos for blind people. Researchers have explored different mechanisms for generating ADs, with some of the most recent studies involving paid novices; to improve the quality of their ADs, novices receive feedback from reviewers. However, reviewer feedback is not instantaneous. To explore the potential for real-time feedback through automation, in this paper, we analyze 1,120 comments that 40 sighted novices received from a sighted or a blind reviewer. We find that feedback patterns tend to fall under four themes: (i) Quality; commenting on different AD quality variables, (ii) Speech Act; the utterance or …

A First Look At Accessibility Issues In Popular Github Projects, Tingting Bi, Xin Xia, David Lo, Aldeida Aleti

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Accessibility design elements allow people to access software products and services independent of their different abilities. However, accessibility is challenging to handle and whether accessibility is widely considered in software projects is unclear. In this work, we aim to understand if accessibility is a prevalent consideration in practice, what accessibility issues are discussed in GitHub projects, what potential reasons cause accessibility issues, and what solutions (e.g., tools and standards) are applied for addressing accessibility issues. In this work, we collect 11,820 accessibility issues and their threads discussed by developers in popular GitHub projects. We manually analyzed and grouped the collected …

Deep Learning For Image Super-Resolution: A Survey, Zhihao Wang, Jian Chen, Steven C. H. Hoi

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Image Super-Resolution (SR) is an important class of image processing techniqueso enhance the resolution of images and videos in computer vision. Recent years have witnessed remarkable progress of image super-resolution using deep learning techniques. This article aims to provide a comprehensive survey on recent advances of image super-resolution using deep learning approaches. In general, we can roughly group the existing studies of SR techniques into three major categories: supervised SR, unsupervised SR, and domain-specific SR. In addition, we also cover some other important issues, such as publicly available benchmark datasets and performance evaluation metrics. Finally, we conclude this survey by …

Online Learning: A Comprehensive Survey, Steven C. H. Hoi, Doyen Sahoo, Jing Lu, Peilin Zhao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Online learning represents a family of machine learning methods, where a learner attempts to tackle some predictive (or any type of decision-making) task by learning from a sequence of data instances one by one at each time. The goal of online learning is to maximize the accuracy/correctness for the sequence of predictions/decisions made by the online learner given the knowledge of correct answers to previous prediction/learning tasks and possibly additional information. This is in contrast to traditional batch or offline machine learning methods that are often designed to learn a model from the entire training data set at once. Online …

Eargate: Gait-Based User Identification With In-Ear Microphones, Andrea Ferlini, Dong Ma, Cecilia Mascolo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Human gait is a widely used biometric trait for user identification and recognition. Given the wide-spreading, steady diffusion of earworn wearables (Earables) as the new frontier of wearable devices, we investigate the feasibility of earable-based gait identification. Specifically, we look at gait-based identification from the sounds induced by walking and propagated through the musculoskeletal system in the body. Our system, EarGate, leverages an in-ear facing microphone which exploits the earable’s occlusion effect to reliably detect the user’s gait from inside the ear canal, without impairing the general usage of earphones. With data collected from 31 subjects, we show that EarGate …

Noahqa: Numerical Reasoning With Interpretable Graph Question Answering Dataset, Qiyuan Zhang, Lei Wang, Sicheng Yu, Shuohang Wang, Yang Wang, Jing Jiang, Ee-Peng Lim

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

While diverse question answering (QA) datasets have been proposed and contributed significantly to the development of deep learning models for QA tasks, the existing datasets fall short in two aspects. First, we lack QA datasets covering complex questions that involve answers as well as the reasoning processes to get the answers. As a result, the state-of-the-art QA research on numerical reasoning still focuses on simple calculations and does not provide the mathematical expressions or evidences justifying the answers. Second, the QA community has contributed much effort to improving the interpretability of QA models. However, these models fail to explicitly show …

Burst-Induced Multi-Armed Bandit For Learning Recommendation, Rodrigo Alves, Antoine Ledent, Marius Kloft

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper, we introduce a non-stationary and context-free Multi-Armed Bandit (MAB) problem and a novel algorithm (which we refer to as BMAB) to solve it. The problem is context-free in the sense that no side information about users or items is needed. We work in a continuous-time setting where each timestamp corresponds to a visit by a user and a corresponding decision regarding recommendation. The main novelty is that we model the reward distribution as a consequence of variations in the intensity of the activity, and thereby we assist the exploration/exploitation dilemma by exploring the temporal dynamics of the …

Missing Data Imputation For Solar Yield Prediction Using Temporal Multi-Modal Variational Auto-Encoder, Meng Shen, Huaizheng Zhang, Yixin Cao, Fan Yang, Yonggang Wen

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The accurate and robust prediction of short-term solar power generation is significant for the management of modern smart grids, where solar power has become a major energy source due to its green and economical nature. However, the solar yield prediction can be difficult to conduct in the real world where hardware and network issues can make the sensors unreachable. Such data missing problem is so prevalent that it degrades the performance of deployed prediction models and even fails the model execution. In this paper, we propose a novel temporal multi-modal variational auto-encoder (TMMVAE) model, to enhance the robustness of short-term …

Quantum-Inspired Algorithm For Vehicle Sharing Problem, Whei Yeap Suen, Chun Yat Lee, Hoong Chuin Lau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Recent hardware developments in quantum technologies have inspired a myriad of special-purpose hardware devices tasked to solve optimization problems. In this paper, we explore the application of Fujitsu’s quantum-inspired CMOS-based Digital Annealer (DA) in solving constrained routing problems arising in transportation and logistics. More precisely in this paper, we study the vehicle sharing problem and show that the DA as a QUBO solver can potentially fill the gap between two common methods: exact solvers like Cplex and heuristics. We benchmark the scalability and quality of solutions obtained by DA with Cplex and with a greedy heuristic. Our results show that …

Using Role Play To Develop An Empathetic Mindset In Executive Education, Siu Loon Hoe, Tamsin Greulich-Smith

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The purpose of this article is to discuss the importance of a role play activity as part of an experiential instructional strategy to develop an empathetic mindset among professionals, managers, and executives (PMEs) attending an executive education program in change management. This article provides an approach and process for management educators and facilitators of executive education programs to introduce and teach role play for the busy executives to learn about empathy. Role play is a useful teaching method that helps adult learners understand the importance of seeing things from another person’s point of view especially within a short period of …

Disentangling Hate In Online Memes, Ka Wei, Roy Lee, Rui Cao, Ziqing Fan, Jing Jiang, Wen Haw Chong

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Hateful and offensive content detection has been extensively explored in a single modality such as text. However, such toxic information could also be communicated via multimodal content such as online memes. Therefore, detecting multimodal hateful content has recently garnered much attention in academic and industry research communities. This paper aims to contribute to this emerging research topic by proposing DisMultiHate, which is a novel framework that performed the classification of multimodal hateful content. Specifically, DisMultiHate is designed to disentangle target entities in multimodal memes to improve the hateful content classification and explainability. We conduct extensive experiments on two publicly available …

Design Of A Two-Echelon Freight Distribution System In Last-Mile Logistics Considering Covering Locations And Occasional Drivers, Vincent F. Yu, Panca Jodiawan, Ming-Lu Hou, Aldy Gunawan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This research addresses a new variant of the vehicle routing problem, called the two-echelon vehicle routing problem with time windows, covering options, and occasional drivers (2E-VRPTW-CO-OD). In this problem, two types of fleets are available to serve customers, city freighters and occasional drivers (ODs), while two delivery options are available to customers, home delivery and alternative delivery. For customers choosing the alternative delivery, their demands are delivered to one of the available covering locations for them to pick up. The objective of 2E-VRPTW-CO-OD is to minimize the total cost consisting of routing costs, connection costs, and compensations paid to ODs …

Towards Source-Aligned Variational Models For Cross-Domain Recommendation, Aghiles Salah, Thanh-Binh Tran, Hady W. Lauw

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Data sparsity is a long-standing challenge in recommender systems. Among existing approaches to alleviate this problem, cross-domain recommendation consists in leveraging knowledge from a source domain or category (e.g., Movies) to improve item recommendation in a target domain (e.g., Books). In this work, we advocate a probabilistic approach to cross-domain recommendation and rely on variational autoencoders (VAEs) as our latent variable models. More precisely, we assume that we have access to a VAE trained on the source domain that we seek to leverage to improve preference modeling in the target domain. To this end, we propose a model which learns …

Covid-19 One Year On: Security And Privacy Review Of Contact Tracing Mobile Apps, Wei Yang Ang, Lwin Khin Shar

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic caused 3.8 million deaths since December 2019. At the current vaccination pace, this global pandemic could persist for several years. Throughout the world, contact tracing (CT) apps were developed, which play a significant role in mitigating the spread of COVID-19. This work examines the current state of security and privacy landscape of mobile CT apps. Our work is the first attempt, to our knowledge, which provides a comprehensive analysis of 70 CT apps used worldwide as of year Q1 2021. Among other findings, we observed that 80% of them may have handled sensitive data without adequate …