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Articles 1 - 30 of 31
Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Optimization And Application Of Graph Neural Networks, Shuo Zhang
Optimization And Application Of Graph Neural Networks, Shuo Zhang
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) are widely recognized for their potential in learning from graph-structured data and solving complex problems. However, optimal performance and applicability of GNNs have been an open-ended challenge. This dissertation presents a series of substantial advances addressing this problem. First, we investigate attention-based GNNs, revealing a critical shortcoming: their ignorance of cardinality information that impacts their discriminative power. To rectify this, we propose Cardinality Preserved Attention (CPA) models that can be applied to any attention-based GNNs, which exhibit a marked improvement in performance. Next, we introduce the Directional Node Pair (DNP) descriptor and the Robust Molecular Graph …
Machine Learning And Network Embedding Methods For Gene Co-Expression Networks, Niloofar Aghaieabiane
Machine Learning And Network Embedding Methods For Gene Co-Expression Networks, Niloofar Aghaieabiane
Dissertations
High-throughput technologies such as DNA microarrays and RNA-seq are used to measure the expression levels of large numbers of genes simultaneously. To support the extraction of biological knowledge, individual gene expression levels are transformed into Gene Co-expression Networks (GCNs). GCNs are analyzed to discover gene modules. GCN construction and analysis is a well-studied topic, for nearly two decades. While new types of sequencing and the corresponding data are now available, the software package WGCNA and its most recent variants are still widely used, contributing to biological discovery.
The discovery of biologically significant modules of genes from raw expression data is …
Biomarker Identification For Breast Cancer Types Using Feature Selection And Explainable Ai Methods, David E. La Rosa Giraud
Biomarker Identification For Breast Cancer Types Using Feature Selection And Explainable Ai Methods, David E. La Rosa Giraud
Honors Undergraduate Theses
This paper investigates the impact the LASSO, mRMR, SHAP, and Reinforcement Feature Selection techniques on random forest models for the breast cancer subtypes markers ER, HER2, PR, and TN as well as identifying a small subset of biomarkers that could potentially cause the disease and explain them using explainable AI techniques. This is important because in areas such as healthcare understanding why the model makes a specific decision is important it is a diagnostic of an individual which requires reliable AI. Another contribution is using feature selection methods to identify a small subset of biomarkers capable of predicting if a …
Methods For Improving Potassium Fertilizer Recommendations For Corn In South Dakota, Andrew J. Ahlersmeyer
Methods For Improving Potassium Fertilizer Recommendations For Corn In South Dakota, Andrew J. Ahlersmeyer
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Corn (Zea mays L.) is a vital commodity in South Dakota’s agricultural sector. Optimal corn production occurs when there are sufficient mineral nutrients in the soil, especially potassium (K). Applications of K fertilizer are used when soil test K (STK) levels are deficient. Therefore, producers need reliable, thoroughly tested fertilizer recommendations to make profitable decisions and maintain environmental stewardship. South Dakota K fertilizer recommendations have not been updated in nearly 20 years. Simultaneously, changes in corn genetics, management practices, and climate patterns suggest that the critical soil test value (CSTV) for STK may have shifted in that same time frame. …
Leveraging A Machine Learning Based Predictive Framework To Study Brain-Phenotype Relationships, Sage Hahn
Leveraging A Machine Learning Based Predictive Framework To Study Brain-Phenotype Relationships, Sage Hahn
Graduate College Dissertations and Theses
An immense collective effort has been put towards the development of methods forquantifying brain activity and structure. In parallel, a similar effort has focused on collecting experimental data, resulting in ever-growing data banks of complex human in vivo neuroimaging data. Machine learning, a broad set of powerful and effective tools for identifying multivariate relationships in high-dimensional problem spaces, has proven to be a promising approach toward better understanding the relationships between the brain and different phenotypes of interest. However, applied machine learning within a predictive framework for the study of neuroimaging data introduces several domain-specific problems and considerations, leaving the …
The Role Of Machine Learning And Network Analyses In Understanding Microbial Composition In An Experimental Prairie, Ali Eastman Oku
The Role Of Machine Learning And Network Analyses In Understanding Microbial Composition In An Experimental Prairie, Ali Eastman Oku
Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations
Machine learning and network analyses are powerful modern tools can process and map out connections between large amount of ecological data from complex environmental communities. Random forests, an ensemble machine learning algorithm, are particularly powerful as they can capture complex patterns in data while remaining easily interpretable. These tools are specifically useful in experimental settings where different types of data are collected. The aim of this study was to demonstrate the utility of machine learning models and network analyses at analyzing diverse ecological data from dynamic plant-soil microbial communities in a prairie ecosystem. Our experimental system is an experimental prairie …
Development Of Nucleic Acid Diagnostics For Targeted And Non-Targeted Biosensing, Christopher William Smith
Development Of Nucleic Acid Diagnostics For Targeted And Non-Targeted Biosensing, Christopher William Smith
Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)
The field of nucleic acid technology is rapidly expanding with new impactful discoveriesbeing made each year. Starting from the discovery of the double-helix structure, cloning, gene editing, polymerase chain reaction (PCR), CRISPR technology, and even the late mRNA vaccines; nucleic acid technology is at the forefront of improving medicine. Nucleic acid technology is extremely versatile due to its easy programmability, automated cheap synthesis, and even its catalog for numerous chemical modifications that can be used to alter structure stability. For example, the number of permutations that can be made with DNA just by altering the code for adenine (A), cytosine …
Development Of The Assessment Of Clinical Prediction Model Transportability (Apt) Checklist, Sean Chonghwan Yu
Development Of The Assessment Of Clinical Prediction Model Transportability (Apt) Checklist, Sean Chonghwan Yu
McKelvey School of Engineering Theses & Dissertations
Clinical Prediction Models (CPM) have long been used for Clinical Decision Support (CDS) initially based on simple clinical scoring systems, and increasingly based on complex machine learning models relying on large-scale Electronic Health Record (EHR) data. External implementation – or the application of CPMs on sites where it was not originally developed – is valuable as it reduces the need for redundant de novo CPM development, enables CPM usage by low resource organizations, facilitates external validation studies, and encourages collaborative development of CPMs. Further, adoption of externally developed CPMs has been facilitated by ongoing interoperability efforts in standards, policy, and …
Better Understanding Genomic Architecture With The Use Of Applied Statistics And Explainable Artificial Intelligence, Jonathon C. Romero
Better Understanding Genomic Architecture With The Use Of Applied Statistics And Explainable Artificial Intelligence, Jonathon C. Romero
Doctoral Dissertations
With the continuous improvements in biological data collection, new techniques are needed to better understand the complex relationships in genomic and other biological data sets. Explainable Artificial Intelligence (X-AI) techniques like Iterative Random Forest (iRF) excel at finding interactions within data, such as genomic epistasis. Here, the introduction of new methods to mine for these complex interactions is shown in a variety of scenarios. The application of iRF as a method for Genomic Wide Epistasis Studies shows that the method is robust in finding interacting sets of features in synthetic data, without requiring the exponentially increasing computation time of many …
Hyperspectral Image Analysis Of Food For Nutritional Intake, Shirin Nasr Esfahani
Hyperspectral Image Analysis Of Food For Nutritional Intake, Shirin Nasr Esfahani
UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones
The primary object of this dissertation is to investigate the application of hyperspectral technology to accommodate for the growing demand in the automatic dietary assessment applications. Food intake is one of the main factors that contribute to human health. In other words, it is necessary to get information about the amount of nutrition and vitamins that a human body requires through a daily diet. Manual dietary assessments are time-consuming and are also not precise enough, especially when the information is used for the care and treatment of hospitalized patients. Moreover, the data must be analyzed by nutritional experts. Therefore, researchers …
Development Of Graphical Models And Statistical Physics Motivated Approaches To Genomic Investigations, Yashwanth Lagisetty
Development Of Graphical Models And Statistical Physics Motivated Approaches To Genomic Investigations, Yashwanth Lagisetty
Dissertations & Theses (Open Access)
Identifying genes involved in disease pathology has been a goal of genomic research since the early days of the field. However, as technology improves and the body of research grows, we are faced with more questions than answers. Among these is the pressing matter of our incomplete understanding of the genetic underpinnings of complex diseases. Many hypotheses offer explanations as to why direct and independent analyses of variants, as done in genome-wide association studies (GWAS), may not fully elucidate disease genetics. These range from pointing out flaws in statistical testing to invoking the complex dynamics of epigenetic processes. In the …
Machine Learning Analysis Of Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (Snp) Data To Predict Bone Mineral Density In African American Women, Erick Githua Wakayu
Machine Learning Analysis Of Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (Snp) Data To Predict Bone Mineral Density In African American Women, Erick Githua Wakayu
UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones
Osteoporosis is a debilitating disease in which an individual’s bones weaken, making bones fragile and more susceptible to fracture. While commonly found amongst postmenopausal Caucasian and Asian women based on previous studies, those of African descent (African American/Black) have largely been ignored when it comes to osteoporotic studies, especially when it comes to Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS). From GWA studies, we gain access to single nucleotide poly-morphisms (SNPs) that may contribute to certain illnesses, such as osteoporosis. With low Bone Mineral Density (BMD) being one of the primary markers of potential osteoporosis, it is prudent that proper research is …
Machine Learning Models For Deciphering Regulatory Mechanisms And Morphological Variations In Cancer, Saman Farahmand
Machine Learning Models For Deciphering Regulatory Mechanisms And Morphological Variations In Cancer, Saman Farahmand
Graduate Doctoral Dissertations
The exponential growth of multi-omics biological datasets is resulting in an emerging paradigm shift in fundamental biological research. In recent years, imaging and transcriptomics datasets are increasingly incorporated into biological studies, pushing biology further into the domain of data-intensive-sciences. New approaches and tools from statistics, computer science, and data engineering are profoundly influencing biological research. Harnessing this ever-growing deluge of multi-omics biological data requires the development of novel and creative computational approaches. In parallel, fundamental research in data sciences and Artificial Intelligence (AI) has advanced tremendously, allowing the scientific community to generate a massive amount of knowledge from data. Advances …
Mapping Transcription Factor Networks And Elucidating Their Biological Determinants, Yiming Kang
Mapping Transcription Factor Networks And Elucidating Their Biological Determinants, Yiming Kang
McKelvey School of Engineering Theses & Dissertations
A central goal in systems biology is to accurately map the transcription factor (TF) network of a cell. Such a network map is a key component for many downstream applications, from developmental biology to transcriptome engineering, and from disease modeling to drug discovery. Building a reliable network map requires a wide range of data sources including TF binding locations and gene expression data after direct TF perturbations. However, we are facing two roadblocks. First, rich resources are available only for a few well-studied systems and cannot be easily replicated for new organisms or cell types. Second, when TF binding and …
Exposure Assessment Of Emerging Contaminants: Rapid Screening And Modeling Of Plant Uptake, Majid Bagheri
Exposure Assessment Of Emerging Contaminants: Rapid Screening And Modeling Of Plant Uptake, Majid Bagheri
Doctoral Dissertations
"With the advent of new chemicals and their increasing uses in every aspect of our life, considerable number of emerging contaminants are introduced to environment yearly. Emerging contaminants in forms of pharmaceuticals, detergents, biosolids, and reclaimed wastewater can cross plant roots and translocate to various parts of the plants. Long-term human exposure to emerging contaminants through food consumption is assumed to be a pathway of interest. Thus, uptake and translocation of emerging contaminants in plants are important for the assessment of health risks associated with human exposure to emerging contaminants. To have a better understanding over fate of emerging contaminants …
Neural Network Supervised And Reinforcement Learning For Neurological, Diagnostic, And Modeling Problems, Donald Wunsch Iii
Neural Network Supervised And Reinforcement Learning For Neurological, Diagnostic, And Modeling Problems, Donald Wunsch Iii
Masters Theses
“As the medical world becomes increasingly intertwined with the tech sphere, machine learning on medical datasets and mathematical models becomes an attractive application. This research looks at the predictive capabilities of neural networks and other machine learning algorithms, and assesses the validity of several feature selection strategies to reduce the negative effects of high dataset dimensionality. Our results indicate that several feature selection methods can maintain high validation and test accuracy on classification tasks, with neural networks performing best, for both single class and multi-class classification applications. This research also evaluates a proof-of-concept application of a deep-Q-learning network (DQN) to …
Machine Learning Applications For Drug Repurposing, Hansaim Lim
Machine Learning Applications For Drug Repurposing, Hansaim Lim
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
The cost of bringing a drug to market is astounding and the failure rate is intimidating. Drug discovery has been of limited success under the conventional reductionist model of one-drug-one-gene-one-disease paradigm, where a single disease-associated gene is identified and a molecular binder to the specific target is subsequently designed. Under the simplistic paradigm of drug discovery, a drug molecule is assumed to interact only with the intended on-target. However, small molecular drugs often interact with multiple targets, and those off-target interactions are not considered under the conventional paradigm. As a result, drug-induced side effects and adverse reactions are often neglected …
An Investigation Into Multi-View Error Correcting Output Code Classifiers Applied To Organ Tissue Classification, Daniel Alvarez
An Investigation Into Multi-View Error Correcting Output Code Classifiers Applied To Organ Tissue Classification, Daniel Alvarez
UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones
Large amounts of data is being generated constantly each day, so much data that it is difficult to find patterns in order to predict outcomes and make decisions for both humans and machines alike. It would be useful if this data could be simplified using machine learning techniques. For example, biological cell identity is dependent on many factors tied to genetic processes. Such factors include proteins, gene transcription, and gene methylation. Each of these factors are highly complex mechanism with immense amounts of data. Simplifying these can then be helpful in finding patterns in them. Error-Correcting Output Codes (ECOC) does …
Machine Learning With Digital Signal Processing For Rapid And Accurate Alignment-Free Genome Analysis: From Methodological Design To A Covid-19 Case Study, Gurjit Singh Randhawa
Machine Learning With Digital Signal Processing For Rapid And Accurate Alignment-Free Genome Analysis: From Methodological Design To A Covid-19 Case Study, Gurjit Singh Randhawa
Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository
In the field of bioinformatics, taxonomic classification is the scientific practice of identifying, naming, and grouping of organisms based on their similarities and differences. The problem of taxonomic classification is of immense importance considering that nearly 86% of existing species on Earth and 91% of marine species remain unclassified. Due to the magnitude of the datasets, the need exists for an approach and software tool that is scalable enough to handle large datasets and can be used for rapid sequence comparison and analysis. We propose ML-DSP, a stand-alone alignment-free software tool that uses Machine Learning and Digital Signal Processing to …
Deriving Statistical Inference From The Application Of Artificial Neural Networks To Clinical Metabolomics Data, Kevin M. Mendez
Deriving Statistical Inference From The Application Of Artificial Neural Networks To Clinical Metabolomics Data, Kevin M. Mendez
Theses: Doctorates and Masters
Metabolomics data are complex with a high degree of multicollinearity. As such, multivariate linear projection methods, such as partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) have become standard. Non-linear projections methods, typified by Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) may be more appropriate to model potential nonlinear latent covariance; however, they are not widely used due to difficulty in deriving statistical inference, and thus biological interpretation. Herein, we illustrate the utility of ANNs for clinical metabolomics using publicly available data sets and develop an open framework for deriving and visualising statistical inference from ANNs equivalent to standard PLS-DA methods.
Relation Prediction Over Biomedical Knowledge Bases For Drug Repositioning, Mehmet Bakal
Relation Prediction Over Biomedical Knowledge Bases For Drug Repositioning, Mehmet Bakal
Theses and Dissertations--Computer Science
Identifying new potential treatment options for medical conditions that cause human disease burden is a central task of biomedical research. Since all candidate drugs cannot be tested with animal and clinical trials, in vitro approaches are first attempted to identify promising candidates. Likewise, identifying other essential relations (e.g., causation, prevention) between biomedical entities is also critical to understand biomedical processes. Hence, it is crucial to develop automated relation prediction systems that can yield plausible biomedical relations to expedite the discovery process. In this dissertation, we demonstrate three approaches to predict treatment relations between biomedical entities for the drug repositioning task …
Automatic Identification Of Animals In The Wild: A Comparative Study Between C-Capsule Networks And Deep Convolutional Neural Networks., Joel Kamdem Teto, Ying Xie
Automatic Identification Of Animals In The Wild: A Comparative Study Between C-Capsule Networks And Deep Convolutional Neural Networks., Joel Kamdem Teto, Ying Xie
Master of Science in Computer Science Theses
The evolution of machine learning and computer vision in technology has driven a lot of
improvements and innovation into several domains. We see it being applied for credit decisions, insurance quotes, malware detection, fraud detection, email composition, and any other area having enough information to allow the machine to learn patterns. Over the years the number of sensors, cameras, and cognitive pieces of equipment placed in the wilderness has been growing exponentially. However, the resources (human) to leverage these data into something meaningful are not improving at the same rate. For instance, a team of scientist volunteers took 8.4 years, …
Computational Modelling Of Human Transcriptional Regulation By An Information Theory-Based Approach, Ruipeng Lu
Computational Modelling Of Human Transcriptional Regulation By An Information Theory-Based Approach, Ruipeng Lu
Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository
ChIP-seq experiments can identify the genome-wide binding site motifs of a transcription factor (TF) and determine its sequence specificity. Multiple algorithms were developed to derive TF binding site (TFBS) motifs from ChIP-seq data, including the entropy minimization-based Bipad that can derive both contiguous and bipartite motifs. Prior studies applying these algorithms to ChIP-seq data only analyzed a small number of top peaks with the highest signal strengths, biasing their resultant position weight matrices (PWMs) towards consensus-like, strong binding sites; nor did they derive bipartite motifs, disabling the accurate modelling of binding behavior of dimeric TFs.
This thesis presents a novel …
Scalable Feature Selection And Extraction With Applications In Kinase Polypharmacology, Derek Jones
Scalable Feature Selection And Extraction With Applications In Kinase Polypharmacology, Derek Jones
Theses and Dissertations--Computer Science
In order to reduce the time associated with and the costs of drug discovery, machine learning is being used to automate much of the work in this process. However the size and complex nature of molecular data makes the application of machine learning especially challenging. Much work must go into the process of engineering features that are then used to train machine learning models, costing considerable amounts of time and requiring the knowledge of domain experts to be most effective. The purpose of this work is to demonstrate data driven approaches to perform the feature selection and extraction steps in …
Machine Learning Techniques Implementation In Power Optimization, Data Processing, And Bio-Medical Applications, Khalid Khairullah Mezied Al-Jabery
Machine Learning Techniques Implementation In Power Optimization, Data Processing, And Bio-Medical Applications, Khalid Khairullah Mezied Al-Jabery
Doctoral Dissertations
"The rapid progress and development in machine-learning algorithms becomes a key factor in determining the future of humanity. These algorithms and techniques were utilized to solve a wide spectrum of problems extended from data mining and knowledge discovery to unsupervised learning and optimization. This dissertation consists of two study areas. The first area investigates the use of reinforcement learning and adaptive critic design algorithms in the field of power grid control. The second area in this dissertation, consisting of three papers, focuses on developing and applying clustering algorithms on biomedical data. The first paper presents a novel modelling approach for …
Knowledge Driven Approaches And Machine Learning Improve The Identification Of Clinically Relevant Somatic Mutations In Cancer Genomics, Benjamin John Ainscough
Knowledge Driven Approaches And Machine Learning Improve The Identification Of Clinically Relevant Somatic Mutations In Cancer Genomics, Benjamin John Ainscough
Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations
For cancer genomics to fully expand its utility from research discovery to clinical adoption, somatic variant detection pipelines must be optimized and standardized to ensure identification of clinically relevant mutations and to reduce laborious and error-prone post-processing steps. To address the need for improved catalogues of clinically and biologically important somatic mutations, we developed DoCM, a Database of Curated Mutations in Cancer (http://docm.info), as described in Chapter 2. DoCM is an open source, openly licensed resource to enable the cancer research community to aggregate, store and track biologically and clinically important cancer variants. DoCM is currently comprised of 1,364 variants …
Machine Learning Based Protein Sequence To (Un)Structure Mapping And Interaction Prediction, Sumaiya Iqbal
Machine Learning Based Protein Sequence To (Un)Structure Mapping And Interaction Prediction, Sumaiya Iqbal
University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations
Proteins are the fundamental macromolecules within a cell that carry out most of the biological functions. The computational study of protein structure and its functions, using machine learning and data analytics, is elemental in advancing the life-science research due to the fast-growing biological data and the extensive complexities involved in their analyses towards discovering meaningful insights. Mapping of protein’s primary sequence is not only limited to its structure, we extend that to its disordered component known as Intrinsically Disordered Proteins or Regions in proteins (IDPs/IDRs), and hence the involved dynamics, which help us explain complex interaction within a cell that …
Signet: A Neural Network Architecture For Predicting Protein-Protein Interactions, Muhammad S. Ahmed
Signet: A Neural Network Architecture For Predicting Protein-Protein Interactions, Muhammad S. Ahmed
Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository
The study of protein-protein interactions (PPI) is critically important within the field of Molecular Biology, as proteins facilitate key organismal functions including the maintenance of both cellular structure and function. Current experimental methods for elucidating PPIs are greatly hindered by large operating costs, lengthy wait times, as well as low accuracy. The recent development of computational PPI predicting techniques has worked to address many of these issues. Despite this, many of these methods utilize over-engineered features and naive learning algorithms. With the recent advances in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, we attempt to view this problem through a novel, deep …
Stage-Specific Predictive Models For Cancer Survivability, Elham Sagheb Hossein Pour
Stage-Specific Predictive Models For Cancer Survivability, Elham Sagheb Hossein Pour
Theses and Dissertations
Survivability of cancer strongly depends on the stage of cancer. In most previous works, machine learning survivability prediction models for a particular cancer, were trained and evaluated together on all stages of the cancer. In this work, we trained and evaluated survivability prediction models for five major cancers, together on all stages and separately for every stage. We named these models joint and stage-specific models respectively. The obtained results for the cancers which we investigated reveal that, the best model to predict the survivability of the cancer for one specific stage is the model which is specifically built for that …
Lexical Mechanics: Partitions, Mixtures, And Context, Jake Ryland Williams
Lexical Mechanics: Partitions, Mixtures, And Context, Jake Ryland Williams
Graduate College Dissertations and Theses
Highly structured for efficient communication, natural languages are complex systems. Unlike in their computational cousins, functions and meanings in natural languages are relative, frequently prescribed to symbols through unexpected social processes. Despite grammar and definition, the presence of metaphor can leave unwitting language users "in the dark," so to speak. This is not problematic, but rather an important operational feature of languages, since the lifting of meaning onto higher-order structures allows individuals to compress descriptions of regularly-conveyed information. This compressed terminology, often only appropriate when taken locally (in context), is beneficial in an enormous world of novel experience. However, what …