Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Computational Analysis To Study The Efficiency Of Shear Activated Nano-Therapeutics In The Treatment Of Atherosclerosis, Nicholas Jefopoulos

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Strokes are the fifth leading cause of death in the United States and can cause long-term disabilities in patients who survive a stroke. The vast majority of these strokes are ischemic, primarily caused by intracranial atherosclerosis. Most therapies to combat intracranial atherosclerosis simply manage it and do not remove the buildup of plaque. Targeted shear-activated nanotherapeutics are currently being developed to remove these plaques. We discuss the roles that aggregate particle density, aggregate particle diameter, vessel geometry, stenosis shape and breakup threshold play in the efficiency of this new technology. Computational studies were performed to test these parameters in three …

Towards Machine Learning-Based Demand Response Forecasting Using Smart Grid Data, Matthew S. Johnson

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Demand response is a valuable tool for improving the reliability, stability, and financial efficiency of smart grids. With the intention of altering customer power consumption patterns, utility companies often implement strategies such as time-of-use (TOU) programs. Although effective in some situations, TOU programs struggle to perform in highly developed countries due to the complexity of human behavior. In this study, we analyze power consumption readings from smart meters from 5567 households in London, UK from November 2011 to February 2014 to measure the success of the TOU program. We additionally consider the variability of weather conditions and customer demographics when …

Understanding Combined Sewer Overflow (Cso) And Green Infrastructure Interaction In New Jersey : An Economic Analysis, Taylor J. Wieczerak

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

New Jersey, as a coastal area, has historically struggled with a variety of problems stemming from stormwater runoff, which have only grown more prevalent and harmful as urbanization and climate change have taken their toll. One such issue that has emerged in recent years is the prevalence of combined sewer overflows (CSOs). These sewer systems are common in urban areas in the United States and abroad, and increased urbanization has them not only obsolete but a persistent danger, as their discharges can contaminate waterways and affect human health. While municipalities across the United States are beginning to move towards mitigating …

A Geo-Economic Framework For Dune Construction And Long-Term Coastal Resiliency In New Jersey, Jesse Charles Kolodin

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Following the extensive coastal impacts (i.e., storm surges) caused by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, the State of New Jersey chose to install large-scale engineered berm-dune structures as their main coastal resiliency strategy. Initially, the project was entirely funded with federal emergency relief funds, but will require state and local beachfront communities to pay a percentage costshare for future renourishment projects. The thesis specifically focuses on three adjacent beachfront communities within the barrier island stretch of Long Beach Island, NJ (i.e., Beach Haven, Long Beach Township, and Ship Bottom), all of which had been provided engineered dunes in 2016. Following installation, …

Cyclic Sulfones From Double Conjugate Addition Of Rongalite, Hao Zong

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

We report a cyclic sulfone synthesis method from the addition of sodium hydroxymethanesulfinate to doubly electrophilic dienone substrates. The novel synthesis of the cyclic sulfone thus avoided the using the toxic and odorous sulfides, and also oxidizing reagents. We prepared both the symmetrical and unsymmetrical substrates, and then used the substrate for the synthesis of cyclic sulfone.

Coastal Onlap/Offlap Amplification Due To Organic Sediment Accumulation And Degradation : Implications For Sea Level Reconstruction, Norjmaa Khosbaatar

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Coastal-plain depositional systems such as fluvial deltas are archives of past external (allogenic) forcing, such as sea-level variations, and their evolution can be described by two geomorphic boundaries: the alluvial-basement transition or upstream boundary, and the shoreline or downstream boundary. Patterns of landward/seaward migration of the shoreline (i.e., transgression/regression) and the alluvial basement transition (i.e., coastal onlap/offlap) in the rock record are often used for reconstruction of past sea-level changes. Theories for stratigraphic interpretation, however, need to be adapted to deal with internal (autogenic) processes that could play a significant role, but are to date largely unexplored. In particular, in-situ …

Interlace Polynomials Of Certain Graphs, Cheyenne Petzold

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

In this research, we investigated the interlace polynomials of a shell graph as well as other related graphs. A shell graph, Tn is constructed by adding edges to a cycle graph such that all vertices are adjacent to one vertex. The main results of this thesis include iterative and explicit formulas for the interlace polynomial of a shell graph, denoted q(Tn; x). A linear algebra application using the adjacency matrices of the chosen graphs is also explored.

Vertical Metal Distributions In Brownfield Soils Drive Enzyme Activities And Plant Success, Eshariah N. Dyson

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

The distribution of contaminants in polluted soils can vary through depth. We measured the vertical distributions of heavy metals and enzyme activities in the top 10 cm of side-by-side, vegetated and barren brownfield soils. The data showed metals significantly accumulated in the top 2 cm of barren soil and uniformly distributed through vegetated soil. When planted, germination rate was significantly lower in the previously barren soil, with the metal layer intact, compared to mixed barren soil. These data suggest a feedback loop in which plant roots redistribute metals, diluting metal-rich regions, yet germination remains initially limited by a metal cap. …

Effect Of Abiotic Factors On Enzyme Activity In Brownfield Soils, Diane Hagmann

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Several factors can influence soil function, including biotic and abiotic. Biotic factors are those that are living, like microorganisms. Abiotic factors are those that are non-living, and include heavy metals, organic contaminants, pH, and nutrients. Liberty State Park in Jersey City (N.J., U.S.A), is a 100-ha brownfield was once a major rail yard that was restricted public access in 1969. The site without any intervention of humans grew a forest. The primary objective of this dissertation is to understand the impacts of both inorganic and organic contaminants on soil function in addition to provide strategies that can override the negative …

Upstream Propagation Of Sea-Level Signals In Fluvio-Deltaic Environments : Time-Lags, And The Dynamics Of The Fluvial Surface, Madeline Pianta Kollegger

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

The sedimentary record of fluvio-deltaic environments holds clues to past climate and sea level change. Although theories for stratigraphic interpretation generally rely upon the assumption that the fluvial surface responds uniformly to sea level changes, recent theoretical work suggests that changes in the relief and concavity of the fluvial surface can influence the propagation of sea level information upstream, and result in geologically long-lived lags in the system response. We test this theoretical result using measurements from an evolving experimental delta subject to sea-level cycles. As predicted by the theoretical results, during sea-level fall the relief increases and the fluvial …

Investigating The Effects Of Catalytic Activity In Mycobacterium Tuberculosis Indole-3-Glycerol Phosphate Synthase In Wildtype, N189l, And E57d Variants, Sarah S. Cho

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Indole-3-glycerol phosphate synthesis (IGPS) is an enzyme that catalyzes the ring closure in 1-(o-carboxylphenylamino)-1-deoxyribulose 5-phosphate (CdRP). Multiple steps are expected to be involved in formation of the pyrrole ring including dehydration, decarboxylation, cyclization, and condensation. IGPS is an essential protein in the pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis and a potential target in the treatment of drug-resistant tuberculosis. In order to better understand the function of Mycobacterium tuberculosis IGPS (mtIGPS), we introduced single-point mutations into active site residues. This was based on the hypothesis that introducing mutations would affect the catalysis in a way where we would be able to obtain more information …

Time Of Flight And Fingerprinting Based Methods For Wireless Rogue Device Detection, Daniel Chege

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Existing network detection techniques rely on SSIDs, network patterns or MAC addresses of genuine wireless devices to identify malicious attacks on the network. However, these device characteristics can be manipulated posing a security threat to information integrity, lowering detection accuracy, and weakening device protection. This research study focuses on empirical analysis to elaborate the relationship between received signal strength (RSSI) and distance; investigates methods to detect rogue devices and access points on Wi-Fi networks using network traffic analysis and fingerprint identification methods. In this paper, we conducted three experiments to evaluate the performance of RSSI and clock skews as features …

Detecting Bots Using A Hybrid Approach, Edmund Kofi Genfi

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Artificial intelligence (AI) remains a crucial aspect for improving our modern lives but it also casts several social and ethical issues. One issue is of major concern, investigated in this research, is the amount of content users consume that is being generated by a form of AI known as bots (automated software programs). With the rise of social bots and the spread of fake news more research is required to understand how much content generated by bots is being consumed. This research investigates the amount of bot generated content relating to COVID-19. While research continues to uncover the extent to …

Fingerprint Classification Using Transfer Learning Technique, Aseel H. Aloweiwi

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Fingerprints play a significant role in many sectors. Nowadays, fingerprints are used for identification purposes in criminal investigations. They are also used as an authentication method since they are considered more secure than passwords. Fingerprint sensors are already widely deployed in many devices, including mobile phones and smart locks. Criminals try to compromise biometric fingerprint systems by purposely altering their fingerprints or entering fake ones. Therefore, it is critical to design and develop a highly accurate fingerprint classification. However, some fingerprint datasets are small and not sufficient to train a neural network. Thus, transfer learning is utilized. A large Sokoto …

On-Focus : A Web-Based Platform For Planning, Organizing, And Managing Focus Groups, Nnamdi Chuka-Maduji

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Focus groups are a research methodology that researchers use to get qualitative data about a subject matter or a product. Owing to the Covid outbreak in 2019 and the prevalence of group think in focus groups, a web-based platform called On-Focus was developed as a means for researchers to organize and manage focus groups online.

On-Focus was developed by following the recommended design approach for conducting focus groups found in literatures. With On-Focus, researchers can filter out participants that are not a fit for the focus group by asking questions that are filled by participants before they send a request …

Fast And Secure Friend Recommendation In Online Social Networks, Raiyan Hossain

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Online Social Networks have completely transformed communication in the world of social networks. Participation in online social networks have been growing significantly and is expected to continue to grow in the upcoming years. As user participation in online social media is on the rise, so is the concern pertaining to user privacy and information security; users want to interact on social media without jeopardizing their privacy and personal information. Extensive research has been conducted in the area of developing privacy-preserving protocols to allow users to interact in a secure and privacy-preserving environment. One of the elements that social media have …

Recommender App Development For Essential Health Products : Covid And Beyond, Jessica Lourenco

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all of our lives in many ways and as a result people have become more health conscious. Now more than ever it is critical to take cautious steps to prevent being infected and spreading the virus. It is important to be supplied with the right products that maintain us all safe and healthy. Although many stores have health related products, sometimes it is a hassle to find them and even to pick out the best ones. With that, the Health Essentials app was developed to facilitate the findings of health products. The app is solely …

Facial Recognition And Face Mask Detection Using Machine Learning Techniques, Mira M. Boulos

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Facial recognition, as a biometric system, is a crucial tool for the identification procedures. When using facial recognition, an individual's identity is identified using their unique facial features. Biometric authentication system helps in identifying individuals using their physiological and behavioral features. Physiological biometrics utilize human features such as faces, irises, and fingerprints. In contrast, behavioral biometric rely on features that humans do, such as voice and handwritings. Facial recognition has been widely used for security and other law enforcement purposes. However, since COVID-19 pandemic, many people around the world had to wear face masks. This thesis introduces a neural network …

Extinction Of Species Due To Deterministic And Stochastic Interactions In Food Webs, Claire M. Burke

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Previous research on the extinctions that occur in niche model food webs with deterministic and stochastic dynamics has shown that the structure of the food web can play an important role in extinction cascades. In this thesis, other types of synthetic food web models are considered, namely the cascade and generalized cascade models, and the extinction cascades of these food webs are compared with previous findings on the extinction cascades from the niche model. It was found that there are many similarities in the results for all three models, which prompted a closer analysis using food webs with deterministic dynamics. …

A Web Application To Disseminate Repatriation And Travel Information About African Countries, Daniel Otuo-Acheampong

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Africa is a continent with incredibly diversified cultures, landscapes, and people. Due its vastness, it can be difficult to assess accurate travel related information about African countries. The purpose of this project is to build a website that will serve as an African destination information insider. African countries are drawing people from all around the world, and this is evident in the formulation of initiatives to attract people to the continent during the past decade. Prime examples of these initiatives include Ghana’s Year of Return initiative and Nigeria’s door of return. This project, that entails the design and development of …

Secondary Teachers’ Noticing Of Students’ Mathematical Thinking As They Participate In A Professional Development Program Centered On Task-Based Student Interviews, Gurkan Kose

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Teacher’s noticing of students’ mathematical thinking has been an important focus of research in the past two decades (e.g., Jacobs et al., 2010; Sherin et al., 2011). Noticing matters, but it is not an end in itself (Schoenfeld, 2011). It is operationalized within the context of teachers’ dispositions and knowledge which shape decisions teachers make while responding to student thinking and planning the next instructional steps. In order for teachers to adapt productive beliefs about how children learn and shift to student-centered instruction, they need to acknowledge the importance of understanding students' existing conceptions of mathematical ideas (Carpenter & Lehrer, …

Impact Of Covid-19 On Residential Waste Streams Of Montclair Township, Jeanne Huguette Perrine

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

The COVID-19 pandemic has been found to have numerous impacts on day-to-day life, everywhere around the globe. One important sector which is particularly being affected is the waste management sector. Reports from the Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA) showed possible variations in the source and volume of solid waste generated due to the enforcement of lockdown by the authorities to contain the coronavirus outbreak (Kulkarni & Anantharama, 2020). Food waste specifically is one of the most discussed topics in the world nowadays. About one-third of the food produced for humans ends up in the trash (Nusaka, 2020). It …

Fostering Mathematical Creativity Among Middle School Mathematics Teachers, Ceire H. Monahan

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

The purpose of this research was to understand in-service teachers’ experiences with and ideas about mathematical creativity after participating in a targeted professional development program. The professional development program encouraged participants to think creatively and foster students’ creativity. In this study I present the results from the main unit of analysis, 12 participants in a professional development program, along with a deep analysis of three exemplar teachers from each of the identified groups, adherence to traditional teaching practices (traditional), appreciation for teaching for creativity (creative but hesitant), and teaching for creativity (creative). The findings of this study highlight the combination …

Bipartite, Size, And Online Ramsey Numbers Of Some Cycles And Paths, Eliyahu Schudrich

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

The basic premise of Ramsey Theory states that in a sufficiently large system, complete disorder is impossible. One instance from the world of graph theory says that given two fixed graphs F and H, there exists a finitely large graph G such that any red/blue edge coloring of the edges of G will produce a red copy of F or a blue copy of H. Much research has been conducted in recent decades on quantifying exactly how large G must be if we consider different classes of graphs for F and H. In this thesis, we explore several Ramsey- type …

Transitioning Secondary Mathematics Pedagogy Towards Reform-Oriented Practice Through Coteaching, Jessica Tybursky Nuzzi

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Reform standards in mathematics education have called for classrooms that are student-centered and that incorporate problem solving and reasoning for meaningful learning. After decades of reform efforts involving multiple stakeholders, research indicates that most classrooms remain teacher-centered and procedurally focused, due to the complexity of concerns and competing intentions that teachers face in their work. Coteaching, a commitment between two teachers to coplan, coenact, and coreflect on lessons, can serve as an ongoing, sustained, focused, integrated, reflective professional development structure that supports teachers towards growth. The theoretical constructs used to describe possible growth towards reform orientations in teaching secondary mathematics …

Assisting Humans In Human-Robot Co-Carry Tasks Using Robot-Trusting-Human Model, Corey Hannum

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Robots are increasingly being employed for diverse applications where they must work and coexist with humans. The trust in human-robot collaboration (HRC) is a critical aspect of any shared task performance for both the human and the robot. The study of human-trusting-robot has been investigated by numerous researchers. However, robot-trusting-human, which is also a significant issue in HRC, is seldom explored in the field of robotics. In this paper we propose a novel trust-assist framework for human-robot co-carry tasks. This framework allows the robot to determine a trust level on the human co-carry partner. The calculations of this trust level …

Human-Robot Collaboration Using Commonsense Knowledge In Smart Manufacturing Contexts, Christopher Joseph Conti

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Human-robot collaboration (HRC), where humans and robots work together on specific tasks, is a growing part of smart manufacturing that entails artificial intelligence (AI) techniques in manufacturing processes. Robots need to be able to dynamically understand their working environments and human partners both accurately and quickly, as inaccurate or slow predictions can be dangerous to humans and collaborative tasks. To handle challenging environments, robots need to utilize commonsense knowledge (CSK), which is everyday knowledge about fundamental concepts, such as how basic objects interact with each other, what their properties are, and how they are associated. Human beings utilize CSK regularly, …

Deep Learning For Electricity Forecasting Using Time Series Data, Hanan Abdullah Alshehri

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

The complexity and nonlinearities of the modern power grid render traditional physical modeling and mathematical computation unrealistic. AI and predictive machine learning techniques allow for accurate and efficient system modeling and analysis. Electricity consumption forecasting is highly valuable in energy management and sustainability research. Furthermore, accurate energy forecasting can be used to optimize energy allocation. This thesis introduces Deep Learning models including the Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), the Recurrent neural network (RNN), and Long Short-Term memory (LSTM). The Hourly Usage of Energy (HUE) dataset for buildings in British Columbia is used as an example for our investigation, as the dataset …

Small Business Owner App To Showcase Covid Prevention Policies And Reopening Guidelines, Christopher Duran

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Almost a year after the emergence of the Coronavirus, the pandemic still negatively affects the world’s economy and quality of life. In the U.S., Covid-19 has shut down nearly 100,000 businesses.

The goal of this project is to develop an app that can assist business owners to accurately display their coronavirus prevention methods so that people can feel safe while using their services. This project will focus on how the business owner (Vendor) will be able to interact, utilize, and display important information for the customer (Patron) to use.

The vendor will be able to create an individual profile for …

Identification Of Ice-Rafted Debris In The Weddell Sea To Characterize Glaciation At The Eocene-Oligocene Transition, Josie Horowitz

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

At the Eocene-Oligocene transition (EOT), approximately 34 million years ago (Ma), the Earth’s climate changed from a warm greenhouse to a cooler climate which resulted in ice-sheet growth and stable continental-scale ice sheets in Antarctica. Hole 696B of the Ocean Drilling Program Leg 113 drilled in 650 m of water depth on the South Orkney Microcontinent spans the entire EOT. Cores 53R and 54R are dated at lower Oligocene (~33.1 to ~33.5 Ma) and total ~14 meters in thickness from ~549 to ~564 mbsf. Ice-rafted debris (IRD) in sediment cores gives insight into the extent of glaciation in West Antarctica, …