Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

A Deep Reinforcement Learning-Based Dynamic Computational Offloading Method For Cloud Robotics, Manoj Penmetcha, Byung-Cheol Min

Purdue University Libraries Open Access Publishing Fund

Robots come with a variety of computing capabilities, and running computationally-intense applications on robots is sometimes challenging on account of limited onboard computing, storage, and power capabilities. Meanwhile, cloud computing provides on-demand computing capabilities, and thus combining robots with cloud computing can overcome the resource constraints robots face. The key to effectively offloading tasks is an application solution that does not underutilize the robot's own computational capabilities and makes decisions based on crucial cost parameters such as latency and CPU availability. In this paper, we formulate the application offloading problem as a Markovian decision process and propose a deep reinforcement …

Reginald Sutcliffe And The Invention Of Modern Weather Systems Science, Jonathan E. Martin

Purdue University Press Book Previews

Despite being perhaps the foremost British meteorologist of the twentieth century, Reginald Sutcliffe has been understudied and underappreciated. His impact continues to this day every time you check the weather forecast. Reginald Sutcliffe and the Invention of Modern Weather Systems Science not only details Sutcliffe’s life and ideas, but it also illuminates the impact of social movements and the larger forces that propelled him on his consequential trajectory. Less than a century ago, a forecast of the weather tomorrow was considered a practical impossibility. This book makes the case that three important advances guided the development of modern dynamic meteorology, …

Characterization Of Microbial Populations In Landfill Leachate, Umut M. Bicim, Hanna Fulford, Lori A. Hoagland, Alejandro R. Sanchez, Amisha D. Shah, Inez Hua

Discovery Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Research Internship

In the United States, municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills remain a potential mining source of recoverable materials, including but not limited to critical, precious, and rare earth metals found in electronic waste. This is possible due to collectible leachate that filters through MSW landfills, carrying metals, nutrients of value, and microbes—some of which may hold key metal bioleaching properties—within. The purpose of this study is to begin analyzing leachate from MSW landfills in the American Midwest to understand the composition of microbial communities within these landfills. Landfill leachate samples sourced in northern Indiana, representing the landfill process during unique times …

A Survey On Subsurface Signal Propagation, Usman Raza, Abdul Salam

Faculty Publications

Wireless Underground Communication (WUC) is an emerging field that is being developed continuously. It provides secure mechanism of deploying nodes underground which shields them from any outside temperament or harsh weather conditions. This paper works towards introducing WUC and give a detail overview of WUC. It discusses system architecture of WUC along with the anatomy of the underground sensor motes deployed in WUC systems. It also compares Over-the-Air and Underground and highlights the major differences between the both type of channels. Since, UG communication is an evolving field, this paper also presents the evolution of the field along with the …

Global Air Quality Trekkers: Nandi Clean Kitchen Study, Samantha Dykhuis, Stephanie Schiavo, Avalin Senefeld

Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement

Indoor air pollution is a widespread environmental health challenge sub-Saharan Africa and is the leading cause of premature death in many sub-Saharan African countries. This pollution is primarily caused by the burning of biomass fuels inside an enclosed kitchen in order to provide heat for cooking. Global Air Quality Trekkers is an undergraduate engineering team within the EPICS department at Purdue that began in fall 2016. Our objective is to create a kitchen design that utilizes natural ventilation to mitigate the amount of air pollutants present in these kitchens, specifically in the Nandi community of Western Kenya. This year, our …

Antimicrobial Photodynamic Activity Of Gallium‐Substituted Haemoglobin On Silver Nanoparticles, Ana V. Morales‐De‐Echegaray, Lu Lin, Badhu Sivasubramaniam, Aiga Yermembetova, Qi Wang, Nader S. Abutaleb, Mohamed N. Seleem, Alexander Wei

Department of Chemistry Faculty Publications

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a major scourge in skin and soft-tissue infections, expresses surface-bound haemoprotein receptors that can be exploited for the targeted delivery of photosensitizers. We have developed a nanosized agent for targeted antimicrobial photodynamic therapy (aPDT), comprised of GaPpIX (a hemin analog with potent photosensitizer activity) encapsulated in haemoglobin (GaHb), mounted on 10 nm Ag nanoparticles (AgNPs). The average GaHb-AgNP contains 28 GaPpIX units stabilized by Hb αβ-dimer units. Eradication (>6-log reduction) of S. aureus and MRSA can be achieved by a 10-second exposure to 405 nm irradiation from a light-emitting diode (LED) array (140 mW cm−2), …

Data Is Personal: We Should Treat It As Such, Kaleb Dunn

Student Papers in Public Policy

The rise of the internet as a fact of daily life is the defining element of the modern age. Widespread use of the internet has fundamentally altered entire industries, and much of American life has migrated online. Dating is augmented by online dating; shopping by online shopping; television by internet streaming.

The digitization of American life has brought with it considerable benefits, including great convenience and innumerable efficiencies, but it has not come without a cost. Although there are many business models used by internet companies, many of the now-largest companies in the world have converged on one entity upon …

Implement Multi-Factor Authentication On All Federal Systems Now, Megan Walsh

Student Papers in Public Policy

The White House Office of Management and Budget recorded 31,107 information security incidents in fiscal year 2018. The most common attacks to gain access to a user’s login credentials were e-mail/phishing, web-based attack, and brute force entering of username/password combinations. Given this high number of incidents, strong reliance on computers for everyday business, and common attacks that target passwords, information security should be a priority for information technology administrators working in federal agencies.

Removing Racially Biased Algorithms In Policing, Andie Lee

Student Papers in Public Policy

Local police departments use algorithm-based programs to do police work and predict crime. Technology has created the police tactic of predictive crime prevention. Police work, however, requires social skills, assessment of the environment, and most importantly human interaction. Automated policing lacks these characteristics. Moreover, the algorithms used to make crime predictions and risk assessments have disproportionately affected minorities.

The Case For Online Ranked-Choice Voting, Rayyan Khan

Student Papers in Public Policy

Maine was the first to embrace ranked-choice voting on a statewide level in 2018, using it for all state and general elections. Maine voters will be the first to use ranked-choice voting in a presidential election in 2020. This system differs from traditional voting in that voters rank candidates rather than choose just one. Supporters of ranked-choice voting tout it as a better model for accurately representing the values of the voting population; however, a study conducted in San Francisco details a potential shortfall referred to as “ballot fatigue” that the theoretically-ideal system may face as it struggles to deal …

A Statistical Impulse Response Model Based On Empirical Characterization Of Wireless Underground Channel, Abdul Salam, Mehmet C. Vuran, Suat Irmak

Faculty Publications

Wireless underground sensor networks (WUSNs) are becoming ubiquitous in many areas. The design of robust systems requires extensive understanding of the underground (UG) channel characteristics. In this paper, an UG channel impulse response is modeled and validated via extensive experiments in indoor and field testbed settings. The three distinct types of soils are selected with sand and clay contents ranging from $13\%$ to $86\%$ and $3\%$ to $32\%$, respectively. The impacts of changes in soil texture and soil moisture are investigated with more than $1,200$ measurements in a novel UG testbed that allows flexibility in soil moisture control. Moreover, the …

Prerequisite Course Recommendation Based On Course Description And Students’ Grades, Haozhe Zhou

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

No abstract provided.

Using Cold War-Era Satellite Imagery To Inform Historic Land Cover Classification, Nicholas Hamp-Adams

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

No abstract provided.

Influence Of Atmospheric Circulation On Severe Flooding In The Atacama Desert, Jonathan Degraw

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

No abstract provided.

Estimating Vehicular Traffic Intensity With Deep Learning And Semantic Segmentation, Logan Bradley-Trietsch

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

No abstract provided.

A Differential Geometry-Based Machine Learning Algorithm For The Brain Age Problem, Justin Asher, Khoa Tan Dang, Maxwell Masters

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

No abstract provided.

Predicting Postoperative Delirium Risk For Intracranial Surgery: A Statistical Machine Learning Approach, Juliet Aygun, Alaina Bartfeld, Sahana Rayan

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

No abstract provided.

High Wind Alerts: A System Created With Observations From The X-Band Teaching And Research Radar, Lauren Warner

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

Following the August 13, 2011, Indiana State Fair stage collapse tragedy, caused by a wind gust from an approaching thunderstorm, Purdue University enforced a wind speed restriction of 30 mph (13 m s-1) for tents at outdoor events. During these events, volunteers stand outside with handheld anemometers, measuring and reporting when the wind speeds exceed this limit. In this study, we report testing of a new system to automate high-wind alerts based on observations from a Doppler radar, the X-band Teaching and Research Radar (XTRRA), near Purdue’s campus. XTRRA scans over campus at low elevations approximately every 5 minutes. Using …

Binary Neutron Star Mergers: Testing Ejecta Models For High Mass-Ratios, Allen Murray

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

Neutron stars are extremely dense stellar corpses which sometimes exist in orbiting pairs known as binary neutron star (BNS) systems. The mass ratio (q) of a BNS system is defined as the mass of the heavier neutron star divided by the mass of the lighter neutron star. Over time the neutron stars will inspiral toward one another and produce a merger event. Although rare, these events can be rich sources of observational data due to their many electromagnetic emissions as well as the gravitational waves they produce. The ability to extract physical information from such observations relies heavily on numerical …

Comparison Of Machine Learning Models: Gesture Recognition Using A Multimodal Wrist Orthosis For Tetraplegics, Charlie Martin

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

Many tetraplegics must wear wrist braces to support paralyzed wrists and hands. However, current wrist orthoses have limited functionality to assist a person’s ability to perform typical activities of daily living other than a small pocket to hold utensils. To enhance the functionality of wrist orthoses, gesture recognition technology can be applied to control mechatronic tools attached to a novel fabricated wrist brace. Gesture recognition is a growing technology for providing touchless human-computer interaction that can be particularly useful for tetraplegics with limited upper-extremity mobility. In this study, three gesture recognition models were compared—two dynamic time-warping models and a hidden …

A First Look At Forensic Analysis Of Sailfishos, Krassimir Tzvetanov, Umit Karabiyik

Faculty Publications

SailfishOS is a Linux kernel-based embedded device operation system, mostly deployed on cell phones. Currently, there is no sufficient research in this space, and at the same time, this operating system is gaining popularity, so it is likely for investigators to encounter it in the field. This paper focuses on mapping the digital artifacts pertinent to an investigation, which can be found on the filesystem of a phone running SailfishOS 3.2. Currently, there is no other known publicly available research and no commercially available solutions for the acquisition and analysis of this platform. This is a major gap, as the …

Electromagnetic Characteristics Of The Soil, Abdul Salam, Usman Raza

Faculty Publications

The electromagnetic characteristics of the soil are discussed in this chapter. The characteristics of porous bedrock, soil medium, and impacts of rain attenuations are also presented. The models of dielectric soil properties are studied with a rigorous focus on the constitutive parameters of subsurface soil medium. Moreover, the permittivity and wavenumber in soil are explained. In addition, the frequency-dependent dielectric properties such as dispersion in soil, absorption characteristic, and penetration depth versus frequency are reviewed. Furthermore, the effective permittivity of soil–water mixture for through-the soil-propagation mechanism is analyzed thoroughly.

Wireless Underground Channel Modeling, Abdul Salam, Usman Raza

Faculty Publications

A comprehensive treatment of wireless underground channel modeling is presented in this chapter. The impacts of the soil on bandwidth and path loss are analyzed. A mechanism for the UG channel sounding and multipath characteristics analysis is discussed. Moreover, novel time-domain impulse response model for WUC is reviewed with the explanation of model parameters and statistics. Furthermore, different types of the through-the-soil wireless communications are surveyed. Finally, the chapter concludes with discussion of the UG wireless statistical model and path loss model for through-the-soil wireless communications in decision agriculture. The model presented in this chapter is also validated with empirical …

Signals In The Soil: An Introduction To Wireless Underground Communications, Abdul Salam, Usman Raza

Faculty Publications

In this chapter, wireless underground (UG) communications are introduced. A detailed overview of WUC is given. A comprehensive review of research challenges in WUC is presented. The evolution of underground wireless is also discussed. Moreover, different component of UG communications is wireless. The WUC system architecture is explained with a detailed discussion of the anatomy of an underground mote. The examples of UG wireless communication systems are explored. Furthermore, the differences of UG wireless and over-the-air wireless are debated. Different types of wireless underground channel (e.g., In-Soil, Soil-to-Air, and Air-to-Soil) are reported as well.

Signals In The Soil: Underground Antennas, Abdul Salam, Usman Raza

Faculty Publications

Antenna is a major design component of Internet of Underground Things (IOUT) communication system. The use of antenna, in IOUT, differs from traditional communication in that it is buried in the soil. Therefore, one of the main challenges, in IOUT applications, is to establish a reliable communication. To that end, there is a need of designing an underground-specific antenna. Three major factors that can impact the performance of a buried antenna are: (1) effect of high soil permittivity changes the wavelength of EM waves, (2) variations in soil moisture with time affecting the permittivity of the soil, and (3) difference …

Underground Phased Arrays And Beamforming Applications, Abdul Salam, Usman Raza

Faculty Publications

This chapter presents a framework for adaptive beamforming in underground communication. The wireless propagation is thoroughly analyzed to develop a model using the soil moisture as an input parameter to provide feedback mechanism while enhancing the system performance. The working of array element in the soil is analyzed. Moreover, the effect of soil texture and soil moisture on the resonant frequency and return loss is studied in detail. The wave refraction from the soil–air interface highly degrades the performance of the system. Furthermore, to beam steering is done to achieve high gain for lateral component improving the UG communication. The …

Current Advances In Internet Of Underground Things, Abdul Salam, Usman Raza

Faculty Publications

The latest developments in Internet of Underground Things are covered in this chapter. First, the IOUT Architecture is discussed followed by the explanation of the challenges being faced in this paradigm. Moreover, a comprehensive coverage of the different IOUT components is presented that includes communications, sensing, and system integration with the cloud. An in-depth coverage of the applications of the IOUT in various disciplines is also surveyed. These applications include areas such as decision agriculture, pipeline monitoring, border control, and oil wells.

Soil Moisture And Permittivity Estimation, Abdul Salam, Usman Raza

Faculty Publications

The soil moisture and permittivity estimation is vital for the success of the variable rate approaches in the field of the decision agriculture. In this chapter, the development of a novel permittivity estimation and soil moisture sensing approach is presented. The empirical setup and experimental methodology for the power delay measurements used in model are introduced. Moreover, the performance analysis is explained that includes the model validation and error analysis. The transfer functions are reported as well for soil moisture and permittivity estimation. Furthermore, the potential applications of the developed approach in different disciplines are also examined.

Signals In The Soil: Subsurface Sensing, Abdul Salam, Usman Raza

Faculty Publications

In this chapter, novel subsurface soil sensing approaches are presented for monitoring and real-time decision support system applications. The methods, materials, and operational feasibility aspects of soil sensors are explored. The soil sensing techniques covered in this chapter include aerial sensing, in-situ, proximal sensing, and remote sensing. The underlying mechanism used for sensing is also examined as well. The sensor selection and calibration techniques are described in detail. The chapter concludes with discussion of soil sensing challenges.

Decision Agriculture, Abdul Salam, Usman Raza

Faculty Publications

In this chapter, the latest developments in the field of decision agriculture are discussed. The practice of management zones in digital agriculture is described for efficient and smart faming. Accordingly, the methodology for delineating management zones is presented. Modeling of decision support systems is explained along with discussion of the issues and challenges in this area. Moreover, the precision agriculture technology is also considered. Moreover, the chapter surveys the state of the decision agriculture technologies in the countries such as Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Israel, Malaysia, Pakistan, United Kingdom, Ukraine, and Sweden. Finally, different field factors such as GPS accuracy and …