Digital Commons Network^™

Study On Effect Of Thermal Aging On Electrical Tree Characteristics Of Xlpe Cables, Yaru Liu, Yuruo Zhang, Zihan Guo, Wuyi Wan, Yiru Cheng, Zhijin Zhang, Zhuang Ma, Dongdong Zhang

Journal of Electric Power Science and Technology

The physicochemical properties and dielectric properties of cross-linked polyethylene (XLPE) insulated cables can change under long-term thermal aging, affecting their electrical behavior, such as the growth process of electrical trees. This paper investigates the impact of thermal aging on the growth characteristics of electrical trees in XLPE cable insulation. Electrical tree growth tests were conducted on accelerated thermally aged samples, and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and broadband dielectric spectroscopy tests were used to study changes in the microstructure and dielectric properties of XLPE materials. The results indicate that recrystallization reactions and thermal-oxidative reactions are the …

Machine Visual Perception From Sim-To-Real Transfer Learning For Autonomous Docking Maneuvers, Derek Worth, Jeffrey Choate, Ryan M. Raettig, Scott L. Nykl, Clark N. Taylor

Faculty Publications

This paper presents a comprehensive approach to enhancing autonomous docking maneuvers through machine visual perception and sim-to-real transfer learning. By leveraging relative vectoring techniques, we aim to replicate the human ability to execute precise docking operations. Our study focuses on autonomous aerial refueling as a use case, demonstrating significant advancements in relative navigation and object detection. We introduce a novel method for aligning digital twins using fiducial targets and motion capture data, which facilitates accurate pose estimation from real-world imagery. Additionally, we develop cost-efficient annotation automation techniques for generating high-quality You Only Look Once training data. Experimental results indicate that …

Graph Neural Networks Powered Scientific Paper Recommendation, Junhao Shen

Computer Science and Engineering Theses and Dissertations

Scientific paper recommendation systems aim to help researchers discover relevant papers amidst the vast and ever-growing body of literature. With the exponential yearly increase in scientific publications, the demand for effective paper recommendation solutions has become both critical and increasingly challenging. In recent years, deep learning techniques have revolutionized recommender systems, and scientific paper recommendations have naturally integrated these advancements. In this dissertation, we address these challenges through three progressive contributions.

First, we enhance traditional content-based methods using Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) by introducing a Graph Convolutional Network-strengthened Topic Modeling (GCN-TM) approach. This method improves upon conventional topic modeling techniques …

Using The Lehmer Mean To Assess Business Data Protection: Statistical Disclosure Control And The Truncated Moment Problem, Mark Stander, Julian Stander

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

Confidential business data needs protection against disclosure. Often this data is protected by releasing sample means, variances and higher power moments. Motivated by statistical disclosure control obligations and the need to publish business data safely, we explain how calculating the Lehmer mean from released power moments can lead to the unwanted disclosure of the largest data value. We explain how similar disclosure can apply to smaller data values and provide an approximate solution to the Truncated Moment Problem. We briefly discuss the Gini mean and the relationship between sample central and raw moments.

The Hoynes Code, Notre Dame Law School

Hoynes Code

A COMPILATION OF FACULTY RESOLUTIONS AND ADMINISTRATIVE REGULATIONS GOVERNING NOTRE DAME LAW SCHOOL

This code governs legal education at the University of Notre Dame in all programs and in all locations. Requirements for the LL.M. and J.S.D. degrees are included in the appendices.

Placing The Four Rounds Of Israeli Palestinian Negotiations In The Twenty-First Century In The Context Of Ir Theory, Notably Realism Theory, Michael J. Reimer Dr

Department of Political Science and Law Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

On October 7, 2023, Hamas unleashed a vicious attack on Israeli civilians in the southern part of Israel. The plans for this attack were likely many years in the making. Nine hundred miles of tunnels crisscrossed Gaza with the terrorist infrastructure coinciding with the location of hospitals, school, Mosques and shelters above. On October 6, 2023, the history of the four rounds of Israeli Palestinian negotiations of the earlier part of the twenty-first century had been largely forgotten and completely ignored. The Likud coalition in Israel in 2023 - 2024 was in complete agreement with Hamas’ sponsor that no negotiations …

Target-Driven Exploration: Intrinsic Rewards For Sparse Reward Problems, Chengyu Li

Electrical and Systems Engineering Undergraduate Student Research

Sparse reward environments present a significant challenge in reinforcement learning (RL) due to the limited feedback from extrinsic rewards. This research proposes a target-driven exploration framework that leverages intrinsic rewards derived from self-supervised feature extraction to guide agents toward meaningful states. The framework employs three feature extraction methods—Raw Pixels, Random Fixed Features, and Variational Autoencoders (VAEs)—to represent state embeddings and compute intrinsic motivation. Evaluations on benchmark environments, such as SpaceInvaders, demonstrate improved exploration efficiency and learning capabilities. The results highlight the framework's ability to utilize intrinsic rewards effectively, enabling agents to navigate and learn in complex, sparse reward settings. Future …

Solar Module Material And Support Testing, Darbi Dorr

Honors Theses

Sunseeker Solar Car Project manufactures and uses solar modules with a specific material composition to power their car. The current composition consists of many expired materials that are also too expensive to repurchase. In order to find new materials, they need to meet the material requirements while also being affordable for the team. A material analysis was done, and new materials were chosen based on specific properties like transmissibility, UV wavelength range, volume resistivity, adhesion strength, and the thickness. Power losses were then measured using an IV tracer at a set irradiance. This was done before and after encapsulating solar …

Ethics Of Ai In The Classroom, Kyle Kos

Honors Theses

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly evolving and is increasingly being used in classrooms. Several different forms of artificial intelligence have gained popularity within the past, one form of AI with widespread use in the classroom is Generative Pre-Trained Transformer (ChatGPT). This paper explores how the recent surge of popularity of ChatGPT has caused concerns of ethical use in the classroom. Additionally, this paper explores the capabilities and strategies for students to use AI, specifically in nursing.

ChatGPT can offer extraordinary resources to students through capabilities such as essay writing and editing, generation of answers to questions instantly from a vast …

Evolving Treatment Strategies For Systemic Lupus Erythematosus In Clinical Practice: A Narrative Review, Alan D. Kaye, Joseph P. Tassin, William C. Upshaw, Chandni R. Patel, Alison M. Hawkins, Caroline R. Burroughs, Kristin Nicole Bembenick, Chizoba N. Mosieri, Shahab Ahmadzadeh, Adam M. Kaye, Sahar Shekoohi, Giustino Varrassi

School of Dentistry Faculty Publications

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an autoimmune disease that more commonly affects African American people, although it is seen in people of all racial backgrounds. This condition is characterized by a dysregulated immune response resulting in widespread inflammation. Clinical manifestations caused by this inflammation include arthritis, anemia, cutaneous rashes, pleuritis, and nephritis. Treatment for SLE aims to reduce disease activity and maintain a state of low inflammation. In this regard, numerous treatments are used, such as hydroxychloroquine, glucocorticoids, and non-glucocorticoid immunosuppressants such as methotrexate. Related to these drugs resulting in significant adverse effects and being ineffective in controlling SLE symptoms …

Gender Differences: The Impact Of Gender Grouping On Egyptian Stem Undergraduates’ Online Group Work1, Wesam Khairy Morsi, Hala Medhat Assem Ms

English Language and Literature

This paper reports a study that compares teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) through face-to-face (FTF) and CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning) methods, comparing them with the interdisciplinary perspectives of sociology, social psychology, and educational technology. Based on the sociocultural theory, the influence of gender grouping on the academic performance of 141 English as a foreign language (EFL) Egyptian undergraduates enrolled in a technical writing course in the Faculty of Engineering was examined in a CALL context. Students’ academic performance was measured by overall grades on group work assignments and submitted peer evaluation forms. Sixty six students were assigned …

Deployable Assembly Structure And Harnessing For A Langmuir Probe (Dash-Lp), Sean Cowell

Honors Theses

The nanosatellite being designed by the Western Aerospace Launch Initiative (WALI) will demonstrate the technology of single-polarity electrospray thrusters. Essential to the mission is the collection of information from the ionospheric plasma surrounding the CubeSat in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Due to the plasma sheath generated by the spacecraft, a 1.75 m boom is required to extend the Langmuir probe (LP) outside of the region of disturbed plasma. This project, Deployable Assembly Structure and Harnessing for a Langmuir Probe (DASH-LP), developed components that accompany the boom deployment system. In particular, a cable stowage system to store the RG403 shielded triaxial …

2024-12-03 Minutes, Morehead State University. Staff Congress.

Staff Congress Records

Staff Congress meeting minutes from December 3, 2024.

Breaking The Yoke: A Systematic Unmasking Of Challenges To Sustainable Rural Development In South Sudan, Gai Chol Paul

Journal of Sustainable Social Impact

South Sudan, a young nation grappling with the legacy of protracted conflict, faces significant challenges in fostering sustainable rural development. While the immense potential of its vast agricultural lands remains largely untapped, the persistent triple threat of insecurity, deficient infrastructure, and the absence of robust government policy actively hinders progress. The ongoing armed conflict, characterized by inter-communal violence and sporadic attacks, casts a long shadow over rural areas in South Sudan. Thus, I developed this mixed-method multiple-case study, grounded in the sustainable livelihoods framework, to explore challenges that hinder sustainable rural development in South Sudan. I collected data through document …

Deep Generative And Discriminative Models For Cognitive Load Prediction From Small And Noisy Eeg, Felix Havugimana

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

While Intelligent systems such as Intelligent tutoring system (ITS), assistive technology solutions, and video gaming has the potential to significantly reduce cognitive load by automating tasks and providing timely information, it can also increase demand on a user's working memory (WM) capacity, if not designed and implemented thoughtfully. WM is responsible for temporarily storing and processing information to execute cognitive tasks. However, due to its limited capacity and duration, excessive use of WM can lead to high cognitive load (CL), adversely affecting performance on various mental tasks (e.g., learning, comprehension, driving, and problem-solving). Cognitive load refers to the amount of …

Mechanical Degradation Of Plastics: An Implication For Agricultural Soil Health, Linkon Bhattacharjee

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

The growing public awareness of plastic pollution and its harmful environmental impacts on public health and ecological safety has raised multiple questions regarding the rate of its accumulation, long-term fate, and transport within the environment. However, the extent of plastic release into the terrestrial environment, such as farmlands, remains inadequately understood, though it is expected to exceed that of the ocean. Therefore, this dissertation focuses on investigating the mechanical degradation of plastics that leads to the generation of microplastics through fragmentation in agricultural farmlands. This dissertation addresses several knowledge gaps regarding the influence of environmental conditions on the mechanical degradation …

On The Logistic Polynomials And Logistic Kernels With Applications In Machine Learning, Alexander Saint Jefferson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

Orthogonal polynomials have had vast historical applications in applied mathematics, particularly in differential equations and numerical analysis. In recent years, they have become instrumental as a natural basis for constructing kernel systems in machine learning (ML). In this thesis, we orthogonalize a set of polynomials, the Logistic Polynomials, first developed by George and Rousseau, using the Gram-Schmidt process. We show that this new Logistic Orthogonal Polynomial System (LOPS) satisfies the hypergeometric differential equation and we relate the system to the Legendre polynomials. The connection to the Legendre polynomials has motivated this study to explore applications of the LOPS in ML, …

Butte Priority Soils Operable Unit (Bpsou) Final Bpsou Insufficiently Reclaimed Sites Belle Of Butte (Bres No. 8 & Ur-39) Remedial Action Work Plan (Rawp) Request For Change Ir- 2024-Ra-01, Mike Mcanulty

Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund Site

No abstract provided.

Academic Senate - Minutes, 12/3/2024, Academic Senate

Academic Senate Minutes

No abstract provided.

Solutions To Mitigate Information Security Breaches And Protect Personally Identifiable Information In A Public-Sector Cloud Computing Environment, Valerie Johneeda Rountree

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Information is a significant asset to organizations because more organizations are moving data and applications to the cloud, so it is critical to ensure the protection of personally identifiable information (PII) stored in the cloud. The specific research problem was that information technology project managers (ITPM) lack a unified approach to protecting PII stored on the cloud. The purpose of this generic qualitative study was to understand how ITPMs may implement viable solutions to mitigate the frequent occurrences of information security breaches in a public cloud environment. The National Institute of Standards and Technology provided the conceptual framework for the …

Francesca C'De Baca Academic History, David L. C'De Baca

Oral Histories HIST 300, Fall 2024

Francesa C'de Baca current academic and extracurricular achievements as of December 2024.

Inflammation Mediated By Gut Microbiome Alterations Promotes Lung Cancer Development And An Immunosuppressed Tumor Microenvironment, Zahraa Rahal, Yuejiang Liu, Fuduan Peng, Sujuan Yang, Mohamed A Jamal, Manvi Sharma, Hannah Moreno, Ashish V Damania, Matthew C Wong, Matthew C Ross, Ansam Sinjab, Tieling Zhou, Minyue Chen, Inti Tarifa Reischle, Jiping Feng, Chidera Chukwuocha, Elizabeth Tang, Camille Abaya, Jamie K Lim, Cheuk Hong Leung, Heather Y Lin, Nathaniel Deboever, Jack J Lee, Boris Sepesi, Don L Gibbons, Jennifer A Wargo, Junya Fujimoto, Linghua Wang, Joseph F Petrosino, Nadim J Ajami, Robert R Jenq, Seyed Javad Moghaddam, Tina Cascone, Kristi Hoffman, Humam Kadara

Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy Staff Publications

Accumulating evidence indicates that the gut microbiome influences cancer progression and therapy. We recently showed that progressive changes in gut microbial diversity and composition are closely coupled with tobacco-associated lung adenocarcinoma in a human-relevant mouse model. Furthermore, we demonstrated that the loss of the antimicrobial protein Lcn2 in these mice exacerbates protumor inflammatory phenotypes while further reducing microbial diversity. Yet, how gut microbiome alterations impinge on lung adenocarcinoma development remains poorly understood. In this study, we investigated the role of gut microbiome changes in lung adenocarcinoma development using fecal microbiota transfer and delineated a pathway by which gut microbiome alterations …

Molecular Insights Into The Interaction Between A Disordered Protein And A Folded Rna, Rishav Mitra, Emery T Usher, Selin Dedeoğlu, Matthew J Crotteau, Olivia A Fraser, Neela H Yennawar, Varun V Gadkari, Brandon T Ruotolo, Alex S Holehouse, Loïc Salmon, Scott A Showalter, James C A Bardwell

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Intrinsically disordered protein regions (IDRs) are well established as contributors to intermolecular interactions and the formation of biomolecular condensates. In particular, RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) often harbor IDRs in addition to folded RNA-binding domains that contribute to RBP function. To understand the dynamic interactions of an IDR-RNA complex, we characterized the RNA-binding features of a small (68 residues), positively charged IDR-containing protein, Small ERDK-Rich Factor (SERF). At high concentrations, SERF and RNA undergo charge-driven associative phase separation to form a protein- and RNA-rich dense phase. A key advantage of this model system is that this threshold for demixing is sufficiently high …

Arousal Effects On Oscillatory Dynamics In The Non-Human Primate Brain, Shashank A Anand, Fatih Sogukpinar, Ilya E Monosov

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Arousal states are thought to influence many aspects of cognition and behavior by broadly modulating neural activity. Many studies have observed arousal-related modulations of alpha (~8 to 15 Hz) and gamma (~30 to 50 Hz) power and coherence in local field potentials across relatively small groups of brain regions. However, the global pattern of arousal-related oscillatory modulation in local field potentials is yet to be fully elucidated. We simultaneously recorded local field potentials in numerous cortical and subcortical regions in the primate brain and assessed oscillatory activity and inter-regional coherence associated with arousal state. In high arousal states, we found …

Using Multiplexed Functional Data To Reduce Variant Classification Inequities In Underrepresented Populations, Mason Post, Divya Kalra, Karynne Patterson, Eric Venner, Lara A Muffley, Douglas M Fowler, Alan F Rubin, Jennifer E Posey, Sharon E Plon, James R Lupski, Richard A Gibbs, Lea M Starita, Carla Daniela Robles-Espinoza, Willow Coyote-Maestas, Irene Gallego Romero

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

BACKGROUND: Multiplexed Assays of Variant Effects (MAVEs) can test all possible single variants in a gene of interest. The resulting saturation-style functional data may help resolve variant classification disparities between populations, especially for Variants of Uncertain Significance (VUS).

METHODS: We analyzed clinical significance classifications in 213,663 individuals of European-like genetic ancestry versus 206,975 individuals of non-European-like genetic ancestry from All of Us and the Genome Aggregation Database. Then, we incorporated clinically calibrated MAVE data into the Clinical Genome Resource's Variant Curation Expert Panel rules to automate VUS reclassification for BRCA1, TP53, and PTEN.

RESULTS: Using two orthogonal statistical approaches, we …

Reflections From The Pandemic: Is Connectivism The Panacea For Clinicians?, Ken Masters, Anoop Agrawal, Neil Mehta

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

The COVID-19 pandemic and the recent increased interest in generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) highlight the need for interprofessional communities' collaboration to find solutions to complex problems. A personal narrative experience of one of the authors compels us to reflect on current approaches to learning and knowledge acquisition and use solutions to the challenges posed by GenAI through social learning contexts using connectivism. We recognize the need for constructivism and experiential learning for knowledge acquisition to establish foundational understanding. We explore how connectivist approaches can enhance traditional constructivist paradigms amid rapidly changing learning environments and online communities. Learning in connectivism includes …

Journal Of Response To Writing 10(2)

Journal of Response to Writing

No abstract provided.

Making Video Feedback For The First Time: A Case Study, Dan Martin

Journal of Response to Writing

This paper examines some of the labor three professors from three different disciplines needed to exert to produce effective VF on student writing for the first time. The research on VF demonstrates that students want more video comments but the labor to learn how to make VF has not been fully identified. I completed a case study with three professors to collect data. I interviewed the professors at the beginning, middle, and end of the study. After transcribing and coding the interviews, I identified where the professors exerted a significant amount of labor to make VF for the first time. …

Developing A Learner-Centered Response To Writing Through A Graduate Course In Writing-Across-The-Curriculum, Faqryza Ab Latif, Kristin Winet

Journal of Response to Writing

Although writing-across-the-curriculum (WAC) programs have been commonplace since the 1970s, the focus has largely been at the level of assessment and programmatic development and less on the instructors, particularly graduate teaching assistants (TAs) who adopt these practices. In this article, we describe a pilot WAC graduate-level course in writing pedagogy that our institution developed as part of our recent membership in the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning (CIRTL). We also share how one science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) graduate student revised her approach to assignment design, feedback, and assessment for a general education course and …

Dr. Hatsuo Ishida: Using Macromolecules To Shape The World, Kayleigh Bauer

Discussions

No abstract provided.