Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

System-Wide Prediction Of General, All-Cause, Preventable Hospital Readmissions, Ken Musselman, Brandon Pope, Steve Witz, Zhiyi Tian, Lingsong Zhang, Linda Leon, Ann Davis

RCHE Publications

Existing studies of hospital readmissions typically focus on specific diagnoses, age groups, discharge dispositions, payer classes, or hospitals, and often use small samples. It is not clear how predictive models generated from such studies generalize across diseases, hospitals, or time periods. In this study, a logistic regression model of readmission risk within 30 days based on hospital administrative data was constructed and validated across hospitals and time periods. The hospitals included both general and specialty hospitals such as long-term care, women’s, and children’s hospitals. The administrative data included information on patient’s demographics, diagnoses, procedures, and discharge disposition. Derivation and validation …

Autonomous Pipeline Monitoring And Maintenance System: A Rfid-Based Approach, Jong-Hoon Kim, Gokarna Sharma, Noureddine Boudriga, S.S. Iyengar, Nagarajan Prabakar

School of Computing and Information Sciences

Pipeline networks are one of the key infrastructures of our modern life. Proactive monitoring and frequent inspection of pipeline networks are very important for sustaining their safe and efficient functionalities. Existing monitoring and maintenance approaches are costly and inefficient because pipelines can be installed in large scale and in an inaccessible and hazardous environment. To overcome these challenges, we propose a novel Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID)-based Autonomous Maintenance system for Pipelines, called RAMP, which combines robotic, sensing, and RFID technologies for efficient and accurate inspection, corrective reparation, and precise geo-location information. RAMP can provide not only economical and scalable remedy …

From Boolean Equalities To Constraints, Sergio Antoy, Michael Hanus

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Although functional as well as logic languages use equality to discriminate between logically different cases, the operational meaning of equality is different in such languages. Functional languages reduce equational expressions to their Boolean values, True or False, logic languages use unification to check the validity only and fail otherwise. Consequently, the language Curry, which amalgamates functional and logic programming features, offers two kinds of equational expressions so that the programmer has to distinguish between these uses. We show that this distinction can be avoided by providing an analysis and transformation method that automatically selects the appropriate operation. Without this distinction …

Evaluation Of Viirs Land Surface Temperature Using Crest-Safe Air, Snow Surface, And Soil Temperature Data, Carlos L. Pérez Díaz, Tarendra Lakhankar, Peter Romanov, Reza Khanbilvardi, Yunyue Yu

Publications and Research

In this study, the Visible Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) Land Surface Temperature (LST) Environmental Data Record (EDR) was evaluated against snow surface (T-skin) and near-surface air temperature (T-air) ground observations recorded at the Cooperative Remote Sensing Science and Technology Center—Snow Analysis and Field Experiment (CREST-SAFE), located in Caribou, ME, USA during the winters of 2013 and 2014. The satellite LST corroboration of snow-covered areas is imperative because high-latitude regions are often physically inaccessible and there is a need to complement the data from the existing meteorological station networks. T-skin is not a standard meteorological parameter commonly observed at synoptic …

All Your Sessions Are Belong To Us: Investigating Authenticator Leakage Through Backup Channels On Android, Guangdong Bai, Jun Sun, Jianliang Wu, Quanqi Ye, Li Li, Jin Song Dong, Shanqing Guo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Security of authentication protocols heavily relies on the confidentiality of credentials (or authenticators) like passwords and session IDs. However, unlike browser-based web applications for which highly evolved browsers manage the authenticators, Android apps have to construct their own management. We find that most apps simply locate their authenticators into the persistent storage and entrust underlying Android OS for mediation. Consequently, these authenticators can be leaked through compromised backup channels. In this work, we conduct the first systematic investigation on this previously overlooked attack vector. We find that nearly all backup apps on Google Play inadvertently expose backup data to any …

Gpu Accelerated On-The-Fly Reachability Checking, Zhimin Wu, Yang Liu, Jun Sun, Jianqi Shi, Shengchao Qin

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Model checking suffers from the infamous state space explosion problem. In this paper, we propose an approach, named GPURC, to utilize the Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) to speed up the reachability verification. The key idea is to achieve a dynamic load balancing so that the many cores in GPUs are fully utilized during the state space exploration.To this end, we firstly construct a compact data encoding of the input transition systems to reduce the memory cost and fit the calculation in GPUs. To support a large number of concurrent components, we propose a multi-integer encoding with conflict-release accessing approach. We …

The Effect Of Manure Application Method On Nutrient And Microbial Runoff Transport And Soil Biological Health Indicators, Nicole R. Schuster

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Two projects were completed to provide significant new information to the agricultural industry regarding the environmental implications and soil health impacts related to land application of swine manure. The first study reports on the runoff transport of nutrients and microbials as affected by manure application method and time following application. The second study provides information about the effect of application method and time following application on soil health indicators using arthropod abundance and diversity as a biological indicator. The information gained through these studies will provide beneficial information to the pork industry on the impact of manure application method and …

College Of Engineering Senior Design Competition Fall 2015, University Of Nevada, Las Vegas

Fred and Harriet Cox Senior Design Competition Projects

Part of every UNLV engineering student’s academic experience, the senior design project stimulates engineering innovation and entrepreneurship. Each student in their senior year chooses, plans, designs, and prototypes a product in this required element of the curriculum. A capstone to the student’s educational career, the senior design project encourages the student to use everything learned in the engineering program to create a practical, real world solution to an engineering challenge. The senior design competition helps focus the senior students in increasing the quality and potential for commercial application for their design projects. Judges from local industry evaluate the projects on …

Toward A More Scientifically Literate Public, Michael Bass

UCF Forum

As a society we do a terrible job of educating our children to become scientifically literate. Sure, we have STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) programs throughout the country, and with some justification we can brag about the successes of students that are in or who have graduated from such learning experiences.

An Organic Mixed Ion-Electron Conductor For Power Electronics, Abdellah Malti, Jesper Edberg, Hjalmar Granberg, Zia Ullah Khan, Jens W. Andreasen, Xianjie Liu, Dan Zhao, Hao Zhang, Yulong Yao, Joseph W. Brill, Isak Engquist, Mats Fahlman, Lars Wågberg, Xavier Crispin, Magnus Berggren

Physics and Astronomy Faculty Publications

A mixed ionic–electronic conductor based on nanofibrillated cellulose composited with poly(3,4-ethylene-dioxythio­phene):­poly(styrene-sulfonate) along with high boiling point solvents is demonstrated in bulky electrochemical devices. The high electronic and ionic conductivities of the resulting nanopaper are exploited in devices which exhibit record values for the charge storage capacitance (1F) in supercapacitors and transconductance (1S) in electrochemical transistors.

Energy Forecasting For Event Venues: Big Data And Prediction Accuracy, Katarina Grolinger, Alexandra L'Heureux, Miriam Am Capretz, Luke Seewald

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

Advances in sensor technologies and the proliferation of smart meters have resulted in an explosion of energy-related data sets. These Big Data have created opportunities for development of new energy services and a promise of better energy management and conservation. Sensor-based energy forecasting has been researched in the context of office buildings, schools, and residential buildings. This paper investigates sensor-based forecasting in the context of event-organizing venues, which present an especially difficult scenario due to large variations in consumption caused by the hosted events. Moreover, the significance of the data set size, specifically the impact of temporal granularity, on energy …

On The Discovery Of Social Roles In Large Scale Social Systems, Derek Doran

Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Publications

The social role of a participant in a social system is a label conceptualizing the circumstances under which she interacts within it. They may be used as a theoretical tool that explains why and how users participate in an online social system. Social role analysis also serves practical purposes, such as reducing the structure of complex systems to relationships among roles rather than alters, and enabling a comparison of social systems that emerge in similar contexts. This article presents a data-driven approach for the discovery of social roles in large scale social systems. Motivated by an analysis of the present …

The Impact Of Crystal Morphology On The Thermal Responses Of Ultrasonically-Excited Energetic Materials, J. K. Miller, J. O. Mares, I. E. Gunduz, Steven F. Son, Jeff Rhoads

Purdue Energetics Research Center Articles

The ability to detect explosive materials may be significantly enhanced with local increases in vapor pressure caused by an elevation of the materials'temperature. Recently, ultrasonic excitation has been shown to generate heat within plastic-bonded energetic materials. To investigate the impact of crystal morphology on this heating, samples of elastic binder are implanted with single ammonium perchlorate crystals of two distinct shape groups. Contact piezoelectric transducers are then used to excite the samples at ultrasonicfrequencies. The thermal responses of the crystals are recorded using infrared thermography, and the rate of heating is estimated. Surface temperature increases up to 15 °C …

Modeling Of Gas Production From Shale Reservoirs Considering Multiple Transport Mechanisms, Chaohua Guo, Mingzhen Wei, Hong Liu

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Gas transport in unconventional shale strata is a multi-mechanism-coupling process that is different from the process observed in conventional reservoirs. In micro fractures which are inborn or induced by hydraulic stimulation, viscous flow dominates. And gas surface diffusion and gas desorption should be further considered in organic nano pores. Also, the Klinkenberg effect should be considered when dealing with the gas transport problem. In addition, following two factors can play significant roles under certain circumstances but have not received enough attention in previous models. During pressure depletion, gas viscosity will change with Knudsen number; and pore radius will increase when …

Learning Query And Image Similarities With Ranking Canonical Correlation Analysis, Ting Yao, Tao Mei, Chong-Wah Ngo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

One of the fundamental problems in image search is to learn the ranking functions, i.e., similarity between the query and image. The research on this topic has evolved through two paradigms: feature-based vector model and image ranker learning. The former relies on the image surrounding texts, while the latter learns a ranker based on human labeled query-image pairs. Each of the paradigms has its own limitation. The vector model is sensitive to the quality of text descriptions, and the learning paradigm is difficult to be scaled up as human labeling is always too expensive to obtain. We demonstrate in this …

Adaptive Scaling Of Cluster Boundaries For Large-Scale Social Media Data Clustering, Lei Meng, Ah-Hwee Tan, Donald C. Wunsch

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The large scale and complex nature of social media data raises the need to scale clustering techniques to big data and make them capable of automatically identifying data clusters with few empirical settings. In this paper, we present our investigation and three algorithms based on the fuzzy adaptive resonance theory (Fuzzy ART) that have linear computational complexity, use a single parameter, i.e., the vigilance parameter to identify data clusters, and are robust to modest parameter settings. The contribution of this paper lies in two aspects. First, we theoretically demonstrate how complement coding, commonly known as a normalization method, changes the …

Integrating Freight Into Livable Communities, Kristine M. Williams, Alexandria Carroll

TREC Final Reports

Where livability is a goal of the planning process, freight runs the risk of not being considered except as an afterthought or as something to be excluded. Yet, freight is an integral part of local economic development. Because economic prosperity is a key characteristic of livable communities, freight must be incorporated into the planning process. This study explores the relationship between freight and livability through a comprehensive literature review and case study research. The final report includes a menu of strategies and case study perspectives that highlight the importance of transportation and land use integration, interagency coordination, and context-sensitivity in …

Faster Maximium Priority Matchings In Bipartite Graphs, Jonathan Turner

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

A maximum priority matching is a matching in an undirected graph that maximizes a priority score defined with respect to given vertex priorities. An earlier paper showed how to find maximum priority matchings in unweighted graphs. This paper describes an algorithm for bipartite graphs that is faster when the number of distinct priority classes is limited. For graphs with k distinct priority classes it runs in O(kmn1/2) time, where n is the number of vertices in the graph and m is the number of edges.

The Bounded Edge Coloring Problem And Offline Crossbar Scheduling, Jonathan Turner

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

This paper introduces a variant of the classical edge coloring problem in graphs that can be applied to an offline scheduling problem for crossbar switches. We show that the problem is NP-complete, develop three lower bounds bounds on the optimal solution value and evaluate the performance of several approximation algorithms, both analytically and experimentally. We show how to approximate an optimal solution with a worst-case performance ratio of 3/2 and our experimental results demonstrate that the best algorithms produce results that very closely track a lower bound.

College Students' Perceptions Of Sustainability: A Regional Survey, Michael Myung Jeong, Younghan Jung, Dan Daehyun Koo

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

Understanding college students’ perception of sustainability is paramount as today’s students will soon be driving our economy and taking on the responsibility of maintaining a sustainable society. This study conducted a survey of college students attending two regional universities in the United States to capture their current experience levels, expectations, and perceptions with regard to various aspects of sustainability utilizing a questionnaire consisting of structured questions about sustainability knowledge/familiarity levels, green product purchase behavior, attitude-behavior relationship, and sustainability education. The results reveal useful insights into the students’ views on these topics and the demographic data collected were further analyzed to …

Transforming C Openmp Programs For Verification In Civl, Michael Rogers

Department of Computer Science and Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

There are numerous way to express parallelism which can make it challenging for developers to verify these programs. Many tools only target a single dialect but the Concurrency Intermediate Verification Language (CIVL) targets MPI, Pthreads, and CUDA. CIVL provides a general concurrency model that can represent pro- grams in a variety of concurrency dialects. CIVL includes a front-end that support all of the dialects mentioned above. The back-end is a verifier that uses model checking and symbolic execution to check standard properties.

In this thesis, we have designed and implemented a transformer that will take C OpenMP programs and transform …

Robust Execution Strategies For Project Scheduling With Unreliable Resources And Stochastic Durations, Na Fu, Hoong Chuin Lau, Pradeep Varakantham

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The resource-constrained project scheduling problem with minimum and maximum time lags (RCPSP/max) is a general model for resource scheduling in many real-world problems (such as manufacturing and construction engineering). We consider RCPSP/max problems where the durations of activities are stochastic and resources can have unforeseen breakdowns. Given a level of allowable risk, (Formula presented.), our mechanisms aim to compute the minimum robust makespan execution strategy. Robust makespan for an execution strategy is any makespan value that has a risk less than (Formula presented.). The risk for a makespan value, (Formula presented.) given an execution strategy, is the probability that a …

Adaptive Duty Cycling In Sensor Networks With Energy Harvesting Using Continuous-Time Markov Chain And Fluid Models, Ronald Wai Hong Chan, Pengfei Zhang, Ido Nevat, Sai Ganesh Nagarajan, Alvin Cerdena Valera, Hwee Xian Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The dynamic and unpredictable nature of energy harvesting sources available for wireless sensor networks, and the time variation in network statistics like packet transmission rates and link qualities, necessitate the use of adaptive duty cycling techniques. Such adaptive control allows sensor nodes to achieve long-run energy neutrality, where energy supply and demand are balanced in a dynamic environment such that the nodes function continuously. In this paper, we develop a new framework enabling an adaptive duty cycling scheme for sensor networks that takes into account the node battery level, ambient energy that can be harvested, and application-level QoS requirements. We …

Maximum Priority Matchings, Jonathan Turner

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Let G=(V,E) be an undirected graph with n vertices and m edges, in which each vertex u is assigned an integer priority in [1,n], with 1 being the ``highest'' priority. Let M be a matching of G. We define the priority score of M to be an n-ary integer in which the i-th most-significant digit is the number of vertices with priority i that are incident to an edge in M. We describe a variation of the augmenting path method (Edmonds' algorithm) that finds a matching with maximum priority score in O(mn) time.

Development Of A Two-Fluid Drag Law For Clustered Particles Using Direct Numerical Simulation And Validation Through Experiments, Ahmadreza Abbasi Baharanchi

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation focused on development and utilization of numerical and experimental approaches to improve the CFD modeling of fluidization flow of cohesive micron size particles. The specific objectives of this research were: (1) Developing a cluster prediction mechanism applicable to Two-Fluid Modeling (TFM) of gas-solid systems (2) Developing more accurate drag models for Two-Fluid Modeling (TFM) of gas-solid fluidization flow with the presence of cohesive interparticle forces (3) using the developed model to explore the improvement of accuracy of TFM in simulation of fluidization flow of cohesive powders (4) Understanding the causes and influential factor which led to improvements and …

Robust Modeling And Predictions Of Greenhouse Gas Fluxes From Forest And Wetland Ecosystems, Khandker S. Ishtiaq

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The land-atmospheric exchanges of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and methane (CH₄) are major drivers of global warming and climatic changes. The greenhouse gas (GHG) fluxes indicate the dynamics and potential storage of carbon in terrestrial and wetland ecosystems. Appropriate modeling and prediction tools can provide a quantitative understanding and valuable insights into the ecosystem carbon dynamics, while aiding the development of engineering and management strategies to limit emissions of GHGs and enhance carbon sequestration. This dissertation focuses on the development of data-analytics tools and engineering models by employing a range of empirical and semi-mechanistic approaches to robustly …

Shopminer: Mining Customer Shopping Behavior In Physical Clothing Stores With Passive Rfids, Longfei Shangguan, Zimu Zhou, Xiaolong Zheng, Lei Yang, Yunhao Liu, Jinsong Han

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Shopping behavior data are of great importance to understand the effectiveness of marketing and merchandising efforts. Online clothing stores are capable capturing customer shopping behavior by analyzing the click stream and customer shopping carts. Retailers with physical clothing stores, however, still lack effective methods to identify comprehensive shopping behaviors. In this paper, we show that backscatter signals of passive RFID tags can be exploited to detect and record how customers browse stores, which items of clothes they pay attention to, and which items of clothes they usually match with. The intuition is that the phase readings of tags attached on …

Exploring Rapid Radiochemical Separations At The University Of Tennessee Radiochemistry Center Of Excellence, Howard L. Hall, John D. Auxier Ii

Faculty Publications and Other Works -- Institute for Nuclear Security

The University of Tennessee formed its Radiochemistry Center of Excellence (RCoE) in 2013 with support from the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration. One of the major thrusts of the RCoE is to develop deeper understanding of rapid methods for radiochemical separations that are relevant to both general radiochemical analyses as well as post-detonation nuclear forensics. Early work has included the development and demonstration of rapid separations of lanthanide elements in the gas phase, development of a gas-phase separation front-end for ICP-TOF-MS analysis, and the development of realistic analytical surrogates for post-detonation debris to support methods development.

Evaluation Of The Snow Thermal Model (Sntherm) Through Continuous In Situ Observations Of Snow’S Physical Properties At The Crest-Safe Field Experiment, José Alberto Infante Corona, Jonathan Muñoz, Tarendra Lakhankar, Peter Romanov, Reza Khanbilvardi

Publications and Research

Snowpack properties like temperature or density are the result of a complex energy and mass balance process in the snowpack that varies temporally and spatially. The Snow Thermal Model (SNTHERM) is a 1-dimensional model, energy and mass balance-driven, that simulates these properties. This article analyzes the simulated snowpack properties using SNTHERM forced with two datasets, namely measured meteorological data at the Cooperative Remote Sensing Science and Technology-Snow Analysis and Field Experiment (CREST-SAFE) site and the National Land Data Assimilation System (NLDAS). The study area is located on the premises of Caribou Municipal Airport at Caribou (ME, USA). The model evaluation …

Science Is Helpful For Engineering Applications: A Theoretical Explanation Of An Empirical Observation, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Empirical evidence shows that when engineering design uses scientific analysis, we usually get a much better performance that for the system designed by using a trial-and-error engineering approach. In this paper, we provide a quantitative explanation for this empirical observation.