Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Weather Courtyard: Reflections On Interactive Stem Learning Spaces, Ryan Day

Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement

In this article, the author discusses his experiences in service-oriented engineering developing an interactive weather station for DCES students. Day details this process and the lessons learned over the course of the project development, as well as the project’s influence on his aspirations for a career in civil and environmental engineering. To provide substantive takeaways from the project, he concludes by reviewing the benefits of interactive STEM learning spaces in the instructional environment and links them to the impacts of the weather station project on the community.

An Animal-Assisted Intervention Study In The Nursing Home: Lessons Learned, Lonneke G. J. A. Schuurmans, Inge Noback, Jos M. G. A. Schols, Marie-Jose Enders-Slegers

People and Animals: The International Journal of Research and Practice

AAI studies in the nursing home pose a specific set of challenges. In this article the practical and ethical issues encountered during a Dutch psychogeriatric nursing home AAI study are addressed with the aim of sharing our experiences for future researchers as well as AAI practitioners in general.

In our study we compared three groups of clients with dementia who participated in group sessions of either visiting dog teams, visiting FurReal Friend robot animals, or visiting students (control group) and monitored the effect on social interaction and neuropsychiatric symptoms through video analysis and questionnaires. We encountered the following four categories …

Fracture Networks On Mars: Preservation Of Surface And Subsurface Environments At Mawrth Vallis, Phoebe Kinzelman

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

Mawrth Vallis is an outflow channel on Mars that cuts through some of the planet’s most ancient terrains, which contain many different types of fractures. The ExoMars rover mission will search for biosignatures on Mars, and this site was proposed as one of the two final candidate landing sites for the rover. A biosignature is any object that shows evidence of past or present life. Fracture networks are a high priority for the mission because they might contain minerals precipitated by fluid interaction, and these minerals could trap and preserve biosignatures, critical for our understanding of ancient processes. In this …

Climatological Changes: Meteorological Parameters Affecting The Spatial Redistribution Of U.S. Tornadoes, Ashley Dicks

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

Climatological changes in the environments of key meteorological parameters that affect Significant Tornado Days (SigTorDs) have been determined for two active tornado regions defined as Box α and Box β, centered, respectively, over Oklahoma and Alabama and their respective environs. The North American Regional Reanalysis data was selected for 1980–2013, providing two successive 17-year periods corresponding to the last 34 years of previous research findings that focused on the aforementioned regions. This data record also corresponds to an increasing surface air temperature trend for the continental United States. Period I (1980–1996) and Period II (1997–2013) defined the years of changing …

Subsurface Mimo: A Beamforming Design In Internet Of Underground Things For Digital Agriculture Applications, Abdul Salam

Faculty Publications

In underground (UG) multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO), the transmit beamforming is used to focus energy in the desired direction. There are three different paths in the underground soil medium through which the waves propagates to reach at the receiver. When the UG receiver receives a desired data stream only from the desired path, then the UG MIMO channel becomes three path (lateral, direct, and reflected) interference channel. Accordingly, the capacity region of the UG MIMO three path interference channel and degrees of freedom (multiplexing gain of this MIMO channel requires careful modeling). Therefore, expressions are required for the degree of …

Peppytides, Dave Zwicky

2019 Symposium on Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Lightning talk for Symposium on Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD) at Purdue University on May 23, 2019.

Smiler: Consistent And Usable Saliency Model Implementations, Toni Kunic, Calden Wloka, John K. Tsotsos

MODVIS Workshop

The Saliency Model Implementation Library for Experimental Research (SMILER) is a new software package which provides an open, standardized, and extensible framework for maintaining and executing computational saliency models. This work drastically reduces the human effort required to apply saliency algorithms to new tasks and datasets, while also ensuring consistency and procedural correctness for results and conclusions produced by different parties. At its launch SMILER already includes twenty three saliency models (fourteen models based in MATLAB and nine supported through containerization), and the open design of SMILER encourages this number to grow with future contributions from the community. The project …

Is The Selective Tuning Model Of Visual Attention Still Relevant?, John K. Tsotsos

MODVIS Workshop

No abstract provided.

The Fluid Representations Of Networks Estimating Liquid Viscosity, Jan Jaap R. Van Assen, Shin'ya Nishida, Roland W. Fleming

MODVIS Workshop

No abstract provided.

Towards Human Retinal Cones Spatial Distribution Modeling, Matteo Paolo Lanaro, Hélène Perrier, David Coeurjolly, Victor Ostromoukhov, Alessandro Rizzi

MODVIS Workshop

No abstract provided.

Selecting Maximally-Predictive Deep Features To Explain What Drives Fixations In Free-Viewing, Matthias Kümmerer, Thomas S.A. Wallis, Matthias Bethge

MODVIS Workshop

No abstract provided.

Recovering Depth From Stereo Without Using Any Oculomotor Information, Tadamasa Sawada

MODVIS Workshop

The human visual system uses binocular disparity to perceive depth within 3D scenes. It is commonly assumed that the visual system needs oculomotor information about the relative orientation of the two eyes to perceive depth on the basis of binocular disparity. The necessary oculomotor information can be obtained from an efference copy of the oculomotor signals, or from a 2D distribution of the vertical disparity, specifically, from the vertical component of binocular disparity. It is known that oculomotor information from the efference copy and from the vertical disparity distribution can affect the perception of depth based on binocular disparity. But, …

Mental Geometry For Estimating Relative 3d Size, Akihito Maruya, Qasim Zaidi Dr.

MODVIS Workshop

No abstract provided.

The Challenge For Vision Of Fluctuating Real-World Illumination, David H. Foster

MODVIS Workshop

No abstract provided.

A Cooperative Overlay Approach At The Physical Layer Of Cognitive Radio For Digital Agriculture, Abdul Salam, Umit Karabiyik

Faculty Publications

In digital agriculture, the cognitive radio technology is being envisaged as solution to spectral shortage problems by allowing agricultural cognitive users to co-exist with noncognitive users in the same spectrum on the field. Cognitive radios increase system capacity and spectral efficiency by sensing the spectrum and adapting the transmission parameters. This design requires a robust, adaptable and flexible physical layer to support cognitive radio functionality. In this paper, a novel physical layer architecture for cognitive radio based on cognition, cooperation, and cognitive interference avoidance has been developed by using power control for digital agriculture applications. The design is based on …

Twitter And Disasters: A Social Resilience Fingerprint, Benjamin A. Rachunok, Jackson B. Bennett, Roshanak Nateghi

Purdue University Libraries Open Access Publishing Fund

Understanding the resilience of a community facing a crisis event is critical to improving its adaptive capacity. Community resilience has been conceptualized as a function of the resilience of components of a community such as ecological, infrastructure, economic, and social systems, etc. In this paper, we introduce the concept of a “resilience fingerprint” and propose a multi-dimensional method for analyzing components of community resilience by leveraging existing definitions of community resilience with data from the social network Twitter. Twitter data from 14 events are analyzed and their resulting resilience fingerprints computed. We compare the fingerprints between events and show that …

Urban Underground Infrastructure Monitoring Iot: The Path Loss Analysis, Abdul Salam, Syed Shah

Faculty Publications

The extra quantities of wastewater entering the pipes can cause backups that result in sanitary sewer overflows. Urban underground infrastructure monitoring is important for controlling the flow of extraneous water into the pipelines. By combining the wireless underground communications and sensor solutions, the urban underground IoT applications such as real time wastewater and storm water overflow monitoring can be developed. In this paper, the path loss analysis of wireless underground communications in urban underground IoT for wastewater monitoring has been presented. It has been shown that the communication range of up to 4 kilometers can be achieved from an underground …

An Underground Radio Wave Propagation Prediction Model For Digital Agriculture, Abdul Salam

Faculty Publications

Underground sensing and propagation of Signals in the Soil (SitS) medium is an electromagnetic issue. The path loss prediction with higher accuracy is an open research subject in digital agriculture monitoring applications for sensing and communications. The statistical data are predominantly derived from site-specific empirical measurements, which is considered an impediment to universal application. Nevertheless, in the existing literature, statistical approaches have been applied to the SitS channel modeling, where impulse response analysis and the Friis open space transmission formula are employed as the channel modeling tool in different soil types under varying soil moisture conditions at diverse communication distances …

Underground Environment Aware Mimo Design Using Transmit And Receive Beamforming In Internet Of Underground Things, Abdul Salam

Faculty Publications

In underground (UG) multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO), the transmit beamforming is used to focus energy in the desired direction. There are three different paths in the underground soil medium through which the waves propagates to reach at the receiver. When the UG receiver receives a desired data stream only from the desired path, then the UG MIMO channel becomes three path (lateral, direct, and reflected) interference channel. Accordingly, the capacity region of the UG MIMO three path interference channel and degrees of freedom (multiplexing gain of this MIMO channel requires careful modeling). Therefore, expressions are required derived the degrees of …

A Storytelling, Social-Belonging Intervention In An Introductory Computer Science Course, Shanon Reckinger, Chris Gregg

ASEE IL-IN Section Conference

A brief social-belonging intervention was tested in two introductory computer science (CS) courses. This intervention used storytelling to help improve a sense of belonging and establish the importance of persistence in the classroom. In previous experiments using this one-time intervention, there were significant results (Walton & Brady, 2017). Recent CS graduates were interviewed about their own struggles and failures in their computer science courses. These interviews were videotaped and edited to follow the storytelling pattern of a struggle, followed by an attribution, and concluding with redemption. Interviewees were selected to represent a diverse group of students including both dominant majority …

Student-Faculty Connection And Stem Identity In The Flipped Classroom, Adrian P. Gentle, William Wilding

ASEE IL-IN Section Conference

Students who arrive at college intending to major in a STEM discipline are often required to complete a college-level precalculus course, despite evidence that these courses are not always successful in preparing students for calculus. The implementation of evidence-based teaching strategies, such as the flipped classroom, provides an avenue for improving the effectiveness of precalculus. This quasi-experimental study explores the effect of a flipped precalculus classroom on students' degree of connection with their instructor and other students, together with their sense of motivation and enjoyment of mathematics, which we treat as an indicator of a developing STEM identity. Validated survey …

Lemon: A Framework For Rapidly Mining Structural Information From The Protein Data Bank, Jonathan Fine, Gaurav Chopra

Purdue University Libraries Open Access Publishing Fund

Motivation

The Protein Data Bank (PDB) currently holds over 140 000 biomolecular structures and continues to release new structures on a weekly basis. The PDB is an essential resource to the structural bioinformatics community to develop software that mine, use, categorize and analyze such data. New computational biology methods are evaluated using custom benchmarking sets derived as subsets of 3D experimentally determined structures and structural features from the PDB. Currently, such benchmarking features are manually curated with custom scripts in a non-standardized manner that results in slow distribution and updates with new experimental structures. Finally, there is a scarcity of …

Teaching Young Learners Computational Thinking, Tingxuan Li, Shengwei An, Xuan Wang, Hengrong Du, Guanhong Tao

Engagement & Service-Learning Summit

No abstract provided.

National Chemistry Week In The Greater Lafayette Area: Chemistry Is Out Of This World!, Daniela Mesa Sanchez, Jessica Callus, Daisy Unsihuay

Engagement & Service-Learning Summit

National Chemistry Week (NCW), an outreach program initiated by the American Chemical Society (ACS), encourages scientists to bring their love of chemistry to the community. The Plutonium Chapter (Purdue University) of Iota Sigma Pi (ISP) organizes an annual celebration of this event in which over 1600 elementary school students are exposed to hands-on experiments related to the annual theme. In 2018, the theme was “Chemistry is Out of This World,” which allowed nearly a 100 volunteers to explore several space-themed experiments with children from three different school districts all over the Greater Lafayette area. Our poster outlines the preparation of …

Engaging The Greater Lafayette Community In A Journey Through The Earth Sciences: Purdue’S Eaps Earth Science Passport Day Event, Dara Laczniak, Bradley Garczynski

Engagement & Service-Learning Summit

No abstract provided.

Collecting Virtual And Augmented Reality In The Twenty-First Century Library, Matthew Hannah, Sarah Huber, Sorin Adam Matei

Matei Interdisciplinary Research Collaboratory

In this paper, we discuss possible pedagogical applications for virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), within a humanities/social sciences curriculum, articulating a critical need for academic libraries to collect and curate 3D objects. We contend that building infrastructure is critical to keep pace with innovative pedagogies and scholarship. We offer theoretical avenues for libraries to build a repository 3D object files to be used in VR and AR tools and sketch some anticipated challenges. To build an infrastructure to support VR/AR collections, we have collaborated with College of Liberal Arts to pilot a program in which Libraries and CLA …

Exploring Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (Libs) For Post-Detonation Nuclear Forensics Debris Analysis, Justin Knoll, Chad Schools, David Fobar

Purdue Workshop on Nonproliferation: Technology and Approaches

In the unlikely but catastrophic event of a nuclear terrorist attack our government leadership will need reliable information to rapidly inform critical decisions. This research explores the use of Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) as a potential analysis tool in the National Technical Nuclear Forensics process. The current state of post detonation nuclear forensics requires ground and air samples be collected and shipped to state-of-the-art laboratories for radiochemical analysis. The samples undergo many measurements and useable data is produced as these measurements are completed. This data flows back into the process to guide additional measurements and inform the process of …

International Nuclear Cyber Security Threat Landscape, Shannon Eggers, Charles Nickerson

Purdue Workshop on Nonproliferation: Technology and Approaches

The Idaho National Laboratory (INL) Nuclear Cyber Team (NCT) is a recognized leader in international nuclear cyber program assessments as well as nuclear cyber training development and delivery. This paper discusses how the NCT is implementing their vision to protect global nuclear infrastructure from cyber threats. Also outlined is the team’s perspectives on the global nuclear cyber threat landscape and the top ten approachable cyber security measures that can be applied to immediately improve a country’s nuclear cyber security posture.

A Theoretical Model Of Underground Dipole Antennas For Communications In Internet Of Underground Things, Abdul Salam, Mehmet C. Vuran, Xin Dong, Christos Argyropoulos, Suat Irmak

Faculty Publications

The realization of Internet of Underground Things (IOUT) relies on the establishment of reliable communication links, where the antenna becomes a major design component due to the significant impacts of soil. In this paper, a theoretical model is developed to capture the impacts of change of soil moisture on the return loss, resonant frequency, and bandwidth of a buried dipole antenna. Experiments are conducted in silty clay loam, sandy, and silt loam soil, to characterize the effects of soil, in an indoor testbed and field testbeds. It is shown that at subsurface burial depths (0.1-0.4m), change in soil moisture impacts …

Inferring Gene Regulatory Networks From A Population Of Yeast Segregants, Chen Chen, Dabao Zhang, Tony R. Hazbun, Min Zhang

Purdue University Libraries Open Access Publishing Fund

Constructing gene regulatory networks is crucial to unraveling the genetic architecture of complex traits and to understanding the mechanisms of diseases. On the basis of gene expression and single nucleotide polymorphism data in the yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, we constructed gene regulatory networks using a two-stage penalized least squares method. A large system of structural equations via optimal prediction of a set of surrogate variables was established at the first stage, followed by consistent selection of regulatory effects at the second stage. Using this approach, we identified subnetworks that were enriched in gene ontology categories, revealing directional regulatory mechanisms controlling …