Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Defining Safe Training Datasets For Machine Learning Models Using Ontologies, Lynn C. Vonder Haar

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Machine Learning (ML) models have been gaining popularity in recent years in a wide variety of domains, including safety-critical domains. While ML models have shown high accuracy in their predictions, they are still considered black boxes, meaning that developers and users do not know how the models make their decisions. While this is simply a nuisance in some domains, in safetycritical domains, this makes ML models difficult to trust. To fully utilize ML models in safetycritical domains, there needs to be a method to improve trust in their safety and accuracy without human experts checking each decision. This research proposes …

Women In Sustainable Leadership: A Case Study On The Perspectives, Opportunities, And Challenges Of Biologist And Conservationist Estrela Matilde, Ella Lyons

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Despite the relatively small population of 8,000 occupants and the minimal international recognition of the Island of Príncipe, located off of the Gulf of Guinea on the Western Coast of Central Africa, the region has increasingly become a leading example of sustainable practices to be taken on a global scale in the near future to combat our current climate crisis. This case study explores the sustainable practices that Príncipe has learned to embrace under the leadership of Portuguese conservation biologist and project manager for the NGO Fundação Príncipe, Estrela Matilde. Estrela integrates social, cultural, and environmental conservation to align with …

Anuran Species Diversity And Abundance Between Three Locations In El Valle De Antón, Coclé, Panamá, Xena Gehring

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Panama is an incredibly biodiverse country that houses 230 species of amphibians including 188 species of frogs, 35 of which are endemic to Panama. Commonly found in terrestrial and aquatic habitats, frogs play a very important role in the regulation of insect populations and serve as a valuable food resource to other predators. The greatest threat to amphibian species at this time is Chytridiomycosis, a fungal pathogen that infects the skin and often results in death. Many species of amphibians have already gone completely extinct or are extinct in the wild due to the proliferation of this disease. The skin …

Impact Of Wildlife Provisioning On Species Diversity, Relative Frequency, And Richness In New South Wales, Alanah Cohen-Tigör

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Wildlife provisioning and camera trapping are two recently evolving methods of conservation and wildlife management, aimed at protecting animals in the face of ever worsening climate change. Habitats are being destroyed by climate disruption, decreasing species diversity and abundance worldwide. It is imperative that methods of protecting species are developed to slow or reverse this era of extinction. By providing supplementary food and water to ecological communities, the hope is that species will have improved survivorship and reproduction, making them more resilient and resistant to population decline. Camera trapping is product of modern technology, allowing researchers to monitor species without …

Computational Design Of Fiber-Optic Probes For Biosensing, Suwarna Karna

Electrical Engineering Theses

This thesis presents a study on the optical characteristics of hollow-core photonic crystal fibers (HC-PCFs) with a band gap cladding structure and their applications in optical fiber sensing. This 800B HC-PCF exhibited excellent optical properties and has a flexible structure, which makes them suitable for a wide range of industrial applications. Finite element simulations and structural optimization designs were conducted using the surface plasmon resonance (SPR) technique to determine the optimal performance parameters of the 800B HC-PCF. The fiber was further modified using the SPR technique to improve its practical detection capabilities. The performance of the modified fiber was observed …

That’S My Deity: An Examination Of Online Lokean Cultures Through Log-Linear Modeling, Mary Bernstein

Senior Theses

A rise in online religious communities and the growth of so-called ‘Old World’ religions are reflected in the internet’s subcultures of Neopaganism, a growing religious movement that has been documented in America since the 1960s. The religions under this umbrella movement vary drastically and include belief systems such as Wicca, Druidry, and deity worship. Belief systems under this movement lack the traditional hierarchy found in structured religion and lack a singular sacred text. As such, believers usually find and support one another not through a physical sacred place of meeting, but through an online community that acts as sacred space. …

Consumers And Eco-Labels: A Quantitative Analysis Of The Effects Of Various Sustainability Certification Models On Consumer Opinions, William F. Joseph

Senior Theses

This research consists of an econometric analysis of the efficacy of a privatized sustainability certification model versus a proposed government-endorsed sustainability certification model within the United Sates market. Today, the widely accepted model of sustainability certification is constituted by a large market of private certifiers. By analyzing the effects of the current model and alongside the effects of a hypothetical government-endorsed system on consumer preferences for sustainably produced goods, the thesis aims to motivate further discussion into the possible benefit of adopting a government-sponsored sustainability certification system. In general, analysis of the data suggests much more promising and significant effects …

Making Music Social: Creating A Spotify-Based Social Media Platform, Dalton J. Craven

Senior Theses

DKMS is a new type of social media platform for music lovers and groups of friends. It integrates tightly with Spotify, one of the largest music streaming services in the world. Users of DKMS can see what their friends are listening to, receive recommendations of new songs to listen to, and analyze their several key numerical metrics (happiness, danceability, loudness, and energy) of their top songs.

DKMS was built as part of the year-long Capstone senior design course at the University of South Carolina. A deployed app is visible at https://dkms.vercel.app, and the open-source code is visible at https://github.com/SCCapstone/DKMS.

Using Caulobacter Crescentus As A Model To Probe The Environmental Reactivity Of Silver Nanoparticles, Madeline M. Farber , '23

Senior Theses, Projects, and Awards

Silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) are an increasingly common environmental pollutant with antimicrobial and antibacterial properties. The elucidation of their interaction with cellular membranes and subsequent mechanisms of toxicity are critical areas of research that need to be better understood in order to manage potential adverse environmental effects. This work investigates the interaction of AgNPs with large unilamellar vesicles (LUVs) as a model membrane system. Similar studies conducted by others in this field have largely been conducted with uncoated AgNPs, ignoring the effect of environmental conditions on the formation of an eco-corona on AgNPs. Thus, in this study, the spent medium (SM) …

Everyone's A Waiter: A Data-Driven Queuing Simulation Model Of Mike's Clam Shack, Natalie Robinson

Honors College

This thesis seeks to understand the mathematical foundation of several prominent concepts in queuing theory and apply them to gain a better understanding of nightly business levels and dining room queue behavior during the summer tourist season at Mike’s Clam Shack, which is a restaurant located in Wells, Maine. To do so, a variety of queue and server section data has been collected from Mike’s and analyzed to determine probability distributions for interarrival and service times. In addition, a queuing simulation model has been constructed in the R Programming Language, which uses this data to generate dining room and queue …

Incel Bonding: Masculinity And Storytelling In Online Misogynist Spaces, Gunnar Eastman

Honors College

The incel subculture, short for “involuntary celibate,” is one that exists mostly online, but boasts a relatively large number of dedicated members. The goal of this research is to determine how the incel subculture shares their ideology and develops a sense of group identity. The study reviewed 76 threads of posts across two incel forum websites, and was able to conduct three interviews of members from one of those sites. That content was analyzed iteratively for cohesive themes. Several themes emerged, chief among them was the activity of storytelling, which appeared to be done in three different major ways, with …

Understanding Community Abundance And Anthropogenic Impact On Acadia National Park's Rocky Intertidal Ecosystem Through Photoplot Analysis, Kayla Mclagan

Honors College

Acadia National Park’s rocky intertidal ecosystem is one that supports a variety of different species and is highly susceptible to changes from human activity. This study aims to assess the pros and cons of using photo plots and community abundance analysis, compared to point-intersect transects, in rapid assessment protocols monitoring Acadia’s rocky intertidal ecosystem. I piloted the photoplot method, a photograph taken of the area contained within a foot-byfoot quadrat, to assess community abundance of the rocky intertidal ecosystem. Histograms and a nonmetric multidimensional scaling ordination were used to analyze the community structure of various testing sites. This method of …

Directional Tensile Strength Of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polylactic Acid In Extrusion Based Additive Manufacturing For Custom Failure Parts, Lucinda Slattery

Honors College

Inherently, additive manufacturing printed parts have faults between layers perpendicular to the direction of printing, both in the plane parallel to the build plate and in the z direction (out of the build plate). For most parts, these “built-in” faults from the manufacturing process act as limiting conditions for the part's mechanical strength. While perpendicular to printing is typically the weakest due to layer adhesion faults, parallel to printing is typically the strongest due to cohesive material and fiber orientation. Fiber orientation can be measured through various methods, with the two explored being X-Ray Microscopy (XRM) for 3D analysis, and …

Analyzing Syntactic Constructs Of Java Programs With Machine Learning, Francisco Ortin, Guillermo Facundo, Miguel Garcia

Department of Computer Science Publications

The massive number of open-source projects in public repositories has notably increased in the last years. Such repositories represent valuable information to be mined for different purposes, such as documenting recurrent syntactic constructs, analyzing the particular constructs used by experts and beginners, using them to teach programming and to detect bad programming practices, and building programming tools such as decompilers, Integrated Development Environments or Intelligent Tutoring Systems. An inherent problem of source code is that its syntactic information is represented with tree structures, while traditional machine learning algorithms use -dimensional datasets. Therefore, we present a feature engineering process to translate …

Investigating Chlorate In Water As A Cause Of Chlorate In Milk, Lorna Twomey, D. Gleeson, A. Furey

Physical Sciences Publications

The findings of this laboratory based experiment suggest that waters with increasing total chlorine levels will have increased chlorate levels and should that water come into contact with milk it has the potential to cause chlorate contamination of said milk. This study provides the information needed to design targeted field based experiments that are required to establish the trends and behaviours of chlorate in water when used as part of the cleaning process on dairy farms and its impact on milk residues and is requisite for the betterment of the dairy industry in terms of its understanding of contamination of …

Synthesis And Characterization Of Terbium(Iii) Complexes: Can We Manipulate The Emission Signature?, Ryan Gagnon

Belmont University Research Symposium (BURS)

Successful Lewis acid/base reactions of terbium(III) nitrate with 2,2’-bipyrdine (22’bpy), 1,10-phenanthroline (phen), and 2,6-pyridine dimethanol (pydm) have yielded the products: Tb(22’bpy)₂(NO₃)₃, Tb(phen)₂(NO₃)_3, and [Tb(pydm)₃](NO₃)₃, respectively. In accord with the well-known antenna-effect, the absorption spectrum of each complex is similar to the spectrum of the free ligand, while the emission spectrum of the complex is identical for the free terbium(III) ion. In contrast, the substitution of a ligand containing a third-row nonmetal strategically placed near the terbium may force interaction between the 3p nonmetal …

Individual-Level Responses To Rapid Climate Change In Common Terns (Sterna Hirundo) And Arctic Terns (Sterna Paradisaea), Kaiulani A. Sund

Student Publications

This study examines fine-scale environmental changes and intraspecific variation in the diet and foraging behavior of two seabirds in the Gulf of Maine, one of the fastest-warming regions of the ocean. This variation on the individual level, or behavioral plasticity, may help long-lived species to persist in rapidly changing environments. As the water warms, seabirds’ preferred prey (hake and herring) follow cooler waters deeper and farther offshore. It is unlikely that all individuals respond to changing food availability in the same way. For common terns (Sterna hirundo) and Arctic terns (Sterna paradisaea) breeding on Petit Manan …

One Man’S Trash: Duke Riley’S Archive And The Social Construction Of Garbage, Deirdre M. Sullivan

Student Publications

In a post-industrial society, Americans have to grapple with the result of seemingly endless production: trash. The amount of trash produced every day is a rising threat to the planet and its inhabitants; every decision made for the future must also take into account waste, rubbish, and refuse that will never break down or be fully removed from our waterways. Some artists, such as contemporary artist Duke Riley, have embraced the use of trash in their art as a critique of capitalism and consumerism. One of his most notable works is the Poly S. Tyrene Memorial Maritime Museum series, a …

Exploring Protein Conformations And Functions Through Molecular Dynamics Simulations And Machine Learning, Hao Tian

Chemistry Theses and Dissertations

Proteins are essential biomacromolecules that perform a variety of critical functions in living organisms. The tertiary structure of a protein plays a crucial role in its biological activity as it determines how the protein interacts with other molecules. Consequently, understanding protein conformation and function is an important area of research with implications in medicine, biotechnology, and other fields.

The first part of this dissertation focuses on protein allostery, a process by which proteins transmit perturbations caused by binding at one site to a distal site, thereby regulating activity. With the development of computational methods like molecular dynamics simulations and machine …

Zonality In Graphs, Andrew Bowling

Dissertations

Graph labeling and coloring are among the most popular areas of graph theory due to both the mathematical beauty of these subjects as well as their fascinating applications. While the topic of labeling vertices and edges of graphs has existed for over a century, it was not until 1966 when Alexander Rosa introduced a labeling, later called a graceful labeling, that brought the area of graph labeling to the forefront in graph theory. The subject of graph colorings, on the other hand, goes back to 1852 when the young British mathematician Francis Guthrie observed that the countries in a map …

The Love Collection Of Chinese Wall Paintings, Donglin Chen

Senior Theses and Projects

The Chinese Fresco Painting (accession #1951.230) at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art is a problematic work. The museum registration document showed that this wall painting is thought to have been painted during the Ming dynasty, ruling from 1368 to 1644. It may depict the Goddess of Sons and Grandsons, Zisun Niangniang. However, this is unprovenanced and unresearched. In this paper, connoisseurship analysis and scientific examination of the painting are carried out to elucidate the mystery of this Chinese mural. This study attempted to confirm the Ming Dynasty dating of this painting by demonstrating stylistic affinities between it and other …

Toi-836: A Super-Earth And Mini-Neptune Transiting A Nearby K-Dwarf, F. Hawthorn, D. Bayliss, T. G. Wilson, A. Bonfanti, V. Adibekyan, Y. Alibert, S. G. Sousa, K. A. Collins, E. M. Bryant, A. Osborn, D. J. Armstrong, L. Abe, J. S. Acton, B. C. Addison, K. Agabi, R. Alonso, D. R. Alves, G. Anglada-Escudé, T. Bárczy, T. Barclay, D. Barrado, S. C. C. Barros, W. Baumjohann, P. Bendjoya, W. Benz, A. Bieryla, X. Bonfils, F. Bouchy, A. Brandeker, C. Broeg, D. J. A. Brown, M. R. Burleigh, M. Buttu, J. Cabrera, D. A. Caldwell, S. L. Casewell, D. Charbonneau, S. Charnoz, R. Cloutier, A. Collier Cameron, K. I. Collins, D. M. Conti, N. Crouzet, S. Czismadia, M. B. Davies, M. Deleuil, E. Delgado-Mena, L. Delrez, O. D. S. Demangeon, B.-O. Demoray, G. Dransfield, X. Dumusque, J. A. Egger, D. Ehrenreich, P. Eigmüller, A. Erickson, Z. Essack, A. Fortier, L. Fossati, M. Fridlund, M. N. Günther, M. Güdel, D. Gandolfi, H. Gillard, M. Gillon, C. Gnilka, M. R. Goad, R. F. Goeke, T. Guillot, A. Hadjigeorghiou, C. Hellier, B. A. Henderson, K. Heng, M. J. Hooton, K. Horne, S. B. Howell, S. Hoyer, J. M. Irwin, J. S. Jenkins, J. M. Jenkins, Eric L.N. Jensen, S. R. Kane, A. Kendall, J. F. Kielkopf, L. L. Kiss, G. Lacedelli, J. Laskar, D. W. Latham, A. Lecavalier Des Etangs, A. Leleu, M. Lendl, J. Lillo-Box, C. Lovis, D. Mékarnia, B. Massey, T. Masters, P. F. L. Maxted, V. Nascimbeni, L. D. Nielsen, S. M. O'Brien, G. Olofsson, H. P. Osborn, I. Pagano, E. Pallé, C. M. Persson, G. Piotto, P. Plavchan, D. Pollacco, D. Queloz, R. Ragazzoni, H. Rauer, I. Ribas, G. Ricker, D. Ségransan, S. Salmon, A. Santerne, N. C. Santos, G. Scandariato, F.-X. Schmider, R. P. Schwarz, S. Seager, A. Shporer, A. E. Simon, A. M. S. Smith, G. Srdoc, M. Steller, O. Suarez, G. M. Szabó, J. Teske, N. Thomas, R. H. Tilbrook, A. H. M. J. Triaud, S. Udry, V. Van Grootel, N. Walton, S. X. Wang, P. J. Wheatley, J. N. Winn, R. A. Wittenmyer, H. Zhang

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Works

We present the discovery of two exoplanets transiting TOI-836 (TIC 440887364) using data from TESS Sector 11 and Sector 38. TOI-836 is a bright (T = 8.5 mag), high proper motion (∼200 mas yr⁻¹), low metallicity ([Fe/H]≈−0.28) K-dwarf with a mass of 0.68 ± 0.05 M_⊙ and a radius of 0.67 ± 0.01 R⊙. We obtain photometric follow-up observations with a variety of facilities, and we use these data sets to determine that the inner planet, TOI-836 b, is a 1.70 ± 0.07 R_⊕ super-Earth in a 3.82-d orbit, placing it directly within the so-called …

Using Object Detection To Navigate A Game Playfield, Peter Kearnan Hyde-Smith

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Perhaps the crown jewel of AI is the self-navigating agent. To take many sources of data as input and use it to traverse complex and varied areas while mitigating risk and damage to the vehicle that is being controlled, visual object detection is a key part of the overall suite of this technology. While much efforts are being put towards real-world applications, for example self-driving cars, healthcare related issues and automated manufacturing, we apply object detection in a different way; the automation of movement across a video game play field. We take the TensorFlow Object Detection API and use it …

Enots Wolley Variations And Related Sequences, Nathan Myles Nichols

Master's Theses (2009 -)

The Enots Wolley sequence is a lexicographically earliest sequence (LES) that is closely related to the Yellowstone sequence. It is an open conjecture by N. J. Sloane that every number with at least two distinct prime factors appears as a term of the Enots Wolley sequence. In this thesis, this conjecture is proved for a variation of the Enots Wolley sequence that operates on the binary representation of a positive integer rather than the prime factorization. The methods used are then applied to prove some new properties of the prime factorization Enots Wolley sequence.

Sebd: A Stream Evolving Bot Detection Framework With Application Of Pac Learning Approach To Maintain Accuracy And Confidence Levels, Eiman Alothali, Kadhim Hayawi, Hany Alashwal

All Works

A simple supervised learning model can predict a class from trained data based on the previous learning process. Trust in such a model can be gained through evaluation measures that ensure fewer misclassification errors in prediction results for different classes. This can be applied to supervised learning using a well-trained dataset that covers different data points and has no imbalance issues. This task is challenging when it integrates a semi-supervised learning approach with a dynamic data stream, such as social network data. In this paper, we propose a stream-based evolving bot detection (SEBD) framework for Twitter that uses a deep …

Open-Set Domain Adaptation By Deconfounding Domain Gaps, Xin Zhao, Shengsheng Wang, Qianru Sun

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Open-Set Domain Adaptation (OSDA) aims to adapt the model trained on a source domain to the recognition tasks in a target domain while shielding any distractions caused by open-set classes, i.e., the classes “unknown” to the source model. Compared to standard DA, the key of OSDA lies in the separation between known and unknown classes. Existing OSDA methods often fail the separation because of overlooking the confounders (i.e., the domain gaps), which means their recognition of “unknown classes” is not because of class semantics but domain difference (e.g., styles and contexts). We address this issue by explicitly deconfounding domain gaps …

Hydrological Patterns Of The Chimborazo Reserve: Streamflow, Climate, And Glacier Recession Data Show A Loss Of Glacial Influence On The Southwestern Aspect Of The Chimborazo Volcano, Ecuador., William F. M. Patrick

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The Chimborazo volcano of the central Ecuadorian Andean Cordillera (6310 m) has been shown to currently be undergoing extreme glacial recession due to climate change. For this reason, this study sought to analyze climate and glacier recession data in conjunction with streamflow from kryal (glacial-fed), rhithral (non-glacial-fed), and intermediate streams to not only evaluate the current health of Chimborazo’s glaciers, but also determine how hydrology in the region will respond to future climate change. The rate of glacial recession on the volcano was determined using satellite imagery between 1965 and 2019. Measurements of stream elevation, pH, water temperature, width, depth, …

Neoliberalismo Y La Mar: Los Efectos Del Sistema Neoliberal Y La Pesca Artesanal De Caleta Portales, Isaac Bronfine

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This study is meant to explore the fundamental conflict between the neoliberal system implemented in Chilean society and the artisanal fishing sector, represented by Caleta Diego Portales in Valparaíso, Chile. The struggle of the artisanal fishing sector has been made more salient in the minds of the general Chilean public due to the estallido social or “social explosion” in 2019 which lead to a process of drafting a new constitution, and the recent corruption scandals regarding government officials and fishing law reforms.

Beginning with how neoliberal theory gained traction in intellectual spaces around the world, this study then examines how …

A Package Of Smartphone And Sensor-Based Objective Measurement Tools For Physical And Social Exertional Activities For Patients With Illness-Limiting Capacities, Arafat Mahmood

Dissertations (1934 -)

Patients with several incompletely diagnosed and understood chronic diseases suffer from symptoms that limit their functional capacity. In particular, patients with chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME) and long covid syndromes have variable fatigue, malaise, poor and unrefreshing sleep, and delayed post-exertional exacerbations of these symptoms. There are no specific tests for these patients to diagnose their diseases properly. These patients must be aware of their daily activities and energy expenditure. Even a little physical effort or socially extroverted behavior can make them tired and incapable of continuing their daily routine. A comprehensive summary of the measured activities at any particular …

Exploring New Techniques For Precision Deuteration Of Alkenes And Alkynes, Zoua Pa Vang

Dissertations (1934 -)

Deuterium labeled compounds are often utilized in chemical research as internal standards in mass spectrometry, to study reaction mechanisms and in the pharmaceutical industry to slow the rate of metabolism. With the increase interest for deuterium labeled molecules, there is a renewed interest in selective methods for the installation of deuterium atoms into small organic molecules. However, current methods to incorporate deuterium atoms into organic molecules can lead to isotopic mixtures such as isotopologues and isotopomers. These isotopic species are indistinguishable due to their similar physical properties, leading to inseparable products by common purification techniques. Furthermore, common spectroscopic techniques to …