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Articles 121 - 150 of 3133

Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Uav-Based Sensor Integration For In-Situ Lake Water Quality Monitoring, Alec Campbell Jan 2026

Uav-Based Sensor Integration For In-Situ Lake Water Quality Monitoring, Alec Campbell

2026 Research Poster Competition

Current water quality assessment methods rely heavily on manual sampling and laboratory analysis, which are time-consuming and difficult to perform in remote or hazardous environments. In surface water monitoring, spatial and temporal resolution is often constrained by labor, access, and logistical limitations of manual sampling programs. This research aims to develop a drone-based system for real-time, in situ lake water quality monitoring. To address these challenges, the project focuses on integrating multiple water quality sensors, including oxidation-reduction potential (ORP), pH, electrical conductivity (EC), turbidity, and a multispectral spectrometer, into a compact, UAV-compatible design capable of collecting spatially referenced data. Methods: …

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Flair- Flow-Level Anomaly Intrustion Recognition, Joseph Dumond Jan 2026

Flair- Flow-Level Anomaly Intrustion Recognition, Joseph Dumond

2026 Research Poster Competition

Industrial control systems (ICS) and industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) networks support critical infrastructure such as power generation, water treatment, and manufacturing. As these systems become more connected, they are increasingly exposed to cyber threats. However, many existing intrusion detection approaches rely on detailed packet inspection or supervised machine learning techniques that require labeled attack data and extensive tuning, making them difficult to deploy in real industrial environments.ICS networks typically generate highly regular and predictable communication patterns due to periodic control logic and deterministic device behavior. Because of this structure, abnormal or malicious activity often appears as a disruption to …

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When Relevant Isn’T Readable: Evaluating Cognitive Accessibility In Search, Kaija Frierson Jan 2026

When Relevant Isn’T Readable: Evaluating Cognitive Accessibility In Search, Kaija Frierson

2026 Research Poster Competition

According to the World Health Organization, more than one billion people worldwide experience some form of disability. Many of them may affect cognitive processing and reading comprehension rather than vision or mobility, which creates barriers when accessing written information online. Web search is a critical modern literacy skill used for learning, decision-making, and everyday problem solving, yet most search systems are designed with the assumption that all users can process complex written language equally. As a result, people with dyslexia, other cognitive disabilities, low literacy levels, or who are English language learners may struggle to access relevant information even when …

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P4 Driven Data Plane Analytics For Industrial Control Network Security, Haden Fowler Jan 2026

P4 Driven Data Plane Analytics For Industrial Control Network Security, Haden Fowler

2026 Research Poster Competition

Industrial control systems manage critical infrastructure such as power grids, water treatment plants, and manufacturing facilities. These systems rely on specialized network protocols to send measurements and commands between sensors, controllers, and operator workstations. Protecting these networks from cyberattacks is essential because a successful intrusion could disrupt services that millions of people depend on daily. Most current security monitoring approaches analyze copies of network traffic after it has already passed through the system. This delay means that malicious commands may reach their targets before any alarm is raised. More importantly, when alerts do occur, operators often lack the evidence needed …

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Solidfit: A Decentralized Mobile Health-Tracking App Using Personal Online Data Stores (Pods), Evan Meyers Jan 2026

Solidfit: A Decentralized Mobile Health-Tracking App Using Personal Online Data Stores (Pods), Evan Meyers

2026 Research Poster Competition

Personal fitness data is increasingly collected through mobile applications, yet most current systems store this information in centralized platforms that limit user control, long-term ownership, and data portability. This project addresses the question of whether a decentralized data model can be used to support everyday fitness tracking while preserving user autonomy and privacy. As individuals become more aware of how their health data is collected and shared, there is a growing need for systems that allow users to retain ownership of their personal information without sacrificing usability or functionality.This research presents SolidFit, an Android-based fitness tracking application designed around the …

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Crispr-Cas9 Unleashed: Gene-Slicing Adventures In The Cancer Battlefield, Shivakuma Sonnaila, Shilpi Agrawal Jan 2026

Crispr-Cas9 Unleashed: Gene-Slicing Adventures In The Cancer Battlefield, Shivakuma Sonnaila, Shilpi Agrawal

Chemistry & Biochemistry Faculty Publications and Presentations

Cancer, a global health menace, continues to pose significant challenges in terms of incidence and mortality, necessitating innovative therapeutic strategies. Despite existing treatments, the limitations persist, prompting a quest for novel approaches. The emergence of immunotherapy marked a transformative era in solid tumor treatments, yet its efficacy is constrained by adverse effects. Concurrently, the integration of advanced technologies into cancer treatment explores the vast potential residing at the molecular level through gene analysis and manipulation. This review articulates the role of state-of-the-art genome editing technology, notably clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR-Cas9), in overcoming the constraints of immunotherapy for …

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Synthesis And Characterization Of Copper Nanoparticles: A Laboratory Experiment For Undergraduate Physical Chemistry, Jonathan Batey, Deborah Okyere, Sarah York, Feng Wang, Jingy Chen Dec 2025

Synthesis And Characterization Of Copper Nanoparticles: A Laboratory Experiment For Undergraduate Physical Chemistry, Jonathan Batey, Deborah Okyere, Sarah York, Feng Wang, Jingy Chen

Chemistry & Biochemistry Faculty Publications and Presentations

Nonprecious metal nanoparticles have been the subject of intensive research, due to their potential applications in promoting sustainability. This integrated laboratory experiment is designed to provide undergraduate students with hands-on experience in synthesizing and characterizing nonprecious metal nanoparticles, specifically copper nanoparticles. The experiment consists of three sections, each tailored to teach a unique aspect of nanochemistry. Section 1 focuses on the air-free synthesis of copper nanoparticles using a solution-based method with an emphasis on understanding their plasmonic properties and how oxidation impacts them. Section 2 explores the quantitative analysis of copper, where students apply crystal field theory to understand the …

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Sustainable Polyaddition Path To Polyesters Via Catalytic Homocoupling Of Renewable Dicrotonate Monomers, Shabbir Asif, Mahsa Saeidi, Braden D. Pickle, Nicholas J. Tabbah, Michael L. Mcgraw Dec 2025

Sustainable Polyaddition Path To Polyesters Via Catalytic Homocoupling Of Renewable Dicrotonate Monomers, Shabbir Asif, Mahsa Saeidi, Braden D. Pickle, Nicholas J. Tabbah, Michael L. Mcgraw

Chemistry & Biochemistry Faculty Publications and Presentations

The development of biorenewable polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) chemistry has generated interest in crotonate-based monomers as versatile building blocks. Crotonates can be obtained through the pyrolysis of PHAs, offering both a sustainable end-of-life pathway for PHAs and a renewable route to crotonate monomers. This study presents a new polyaddition-type step-growth polymerization of dicrotonates in which alkene-functionalized polyesters are synthesized using potassium tert-butoxide as a simple base catalyst. The reaction proceeds rapidly at room temperature, achieving >99% conversion within seconds and requiring no byproduct removal. The properties of the resulting polyesters can be tuned via the choice of bridging diol, and the materials …

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The Price Of Priorities: How Human Choices Fuel Climate And Ecological Decline, Keisha Hickman Dec 2025

The Price Of Priorities: How Human Choices Fuel Climate And Ecological Decline, Keisha Hickman

Biological Sciences Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis examines the ways in which human priorities and behaviors contribute to the escalating climate crisis and ecological systems. We will first analyze the role of social media in shaping public discourse on climate change and critically evaluate the priorities of institutions that have the means to assist in wildlife conservation. Both speak to the current behaviors of humankind prioritizing their own entertainment over meaningful efforts to mitigate climate change and preserve biodiversity. We will then shift to exploring the profound impact of human population growth and its associated activities on other species and ecosystems. Finally, the thesis will …

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Essays On The Economics Of Farmland Valuation And Investment In U.S. Agriculture, Colson Tester Dec 2025

Essays On The Economics Of Farmland Valuation And Investment In U.S. Agriculture, Colson Tester

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation presents three empirical essays that collectively advance the understanding of farmland valuation in key U.S. agricultural regions, emphasizing the critical advantages of comprehensive, transaction-based data over traditional survey methods. Farmland represents a significant portion of agricultural wealth, and its accurate valuation is crucial for farmers, investors, and policymakers, influencing everything from credit access to investment strategies. Historically, research has often relied on subjective survey data, which can suffer from biases, inaccuracies, and insufficient granularity. This dissertation addresses these limitations by leveraging extensive datasets of arm’s-length farmland transactions, offering a more precise and market-driven perspective on land values. The …

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Investigating The Efficiency Of Ingan P-N-P-N Homojunction Solar Cells, Moath Alhejji, Mohammad Alavijeh, Jacob Kupernik, Mirsaeid Sarollahi, Abbas Jammali, Seyed Taghavi, Reem Alhelais, Md Hel Uddin Maruf, Morgan Ware Dec 2025

Investigating The Efficiency Of Ingan P-N-P-N Homojunction Solar Cells, Moath Alhejji, Mohammad Alavijeh, Jacob Kupernik, Mirsaeid Sarollahi, Abbas Jammali, Seyed Taghavi, Reem Alhelais, Md Hel Uddin Maruf, Morgan Ware

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

This research investigates the development of a novel p-n-p-n homostructure solar cell, through semiconductor simulations using the Nextnano software. InGaN was used as a model system in order to achieve a bandgap with optimized efficiency for a p-n homojunction solar cell. By increasing the uniform doping concentration from 1.5*10(16) cm(-3) to 1.5*10(17) cm(-3), the open circuit voltage (V-oc) increased while the short-circuit current density (J(sc)) decreased, as expected in simple p-n junctions. The p-n-p-n structure achieved a peak efficiency of 32.91% at a doping level of 6.5*10(16) cm(-3), a similar to 7% improvement over a conventional p-n junction's 25.31% efficiency …

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Cattlefever: An Automated Cattle Fever Estimation System, Trong Thang Pham, Ethan Coffman, Beth Kegley, Jeremy G. Powell, Jiangchao Zhao, Ngan Le Dec 2025

Cattlefever: An Automated Cattle Fever Estimation System, Trong Thang Pham, Ethan Coffman, Beth Kegley, Jeremy G. Powell, Jiangchao Zhao, Ngan Le

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Farmers face the critical challenge of monitoring cattle well-being for both ethical and economic success, relying on signals like body temperature and facial expressions to assess their animals' health. However, these indicators have traditionally relied on human observation with manual measurement, which is time-consuming and subjective. Despite this clear need, no automated system currently exists for monitoring cattle body temperature, and available datasets remain limited in scope. To address these challenges, we make two key contributions: (i) We introduce CattleFace-RGBT, a novel RGB-Thermal (RGB-T) Cattle Facial Landmark dataset consisting of 2,300 paired RGB and thermal images (4,600 images in total), …

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Array Of Mini-Graphene-Silicon Solar Cells Intermittently Recharges Storage Capacitors Powering A Temperature Sensor, Ashaduzzaman, Syed M. Rahman, Md R. Kabir, James M. Mangum, Hung Do, Gordon Carichner, David Blaauw, Paul M. Thibado Dec 2025

Array Of Mini-Graphene-Silicon Solar Cells Intermittently Recharges Storage Capacitors Powering A Temperature Sensor, Ashaduzzaman, Syed M. Rahman, Md R. Kabir, James M. Mangum, Hung Do, Gordon Carichner, David Blaauw, Paul M. Thibado

Physics Faculty Publications and Presentations

Developing autonomous sensor systems that draw power from the ambient environment is a critical step for creating the Internet of Things. In this study, the authors built dozens of graphene-based solar cells, wire bonded them into standard packages, and characterized the current-voltage characteristics of each under illumination. Next, solar cells were connected in series to increase the output voltage. Three different sets of solar cells were used to charge three storage capacitors to the voltage levels required by our temperature sensor. The storage capacitors require only a few minutes to charge, yet power the sensor system for more than 24 …

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Understanding Bias And Fairness In Large Language Models: An Empirical Study, Joshua Johnson Dec 2025

Understanding Bias And Fairness In Large Language Models: An Empirical Study, Joshua Johnson

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis investigates demographic bias in large language models (LLMs) through the use of evaluating outcome disparities when utilized in decision making tasks as well as underlying associations that could contribute to furthering these disparities. Using profiles from the Adult dataset, we analyze how Gemini 2.0 Flash performs in an income prediction task using zero-shot and few-shot prompting methods. Our findings show that models exhibit measurable differences in demographic parity and false positive rates, with the use of few-shot prompting reducing these disparities. Alongside this line of testing, we tested associational bias in Qwen 2.5 using probability based association tests …

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Understanding Outer Solar System Ice Composition Through Impact Processes: Simulations And Hydrates, Jill Rebecca Mcdonald Dec 2025

Understanding Outer Solar System Ice Composition Through Impact Processes: Simulations And Hydrates, Jill Rebecca Mcdonald

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This work concerns solar system ices, particularly water ice and clathrate hydrates. Water ice is abundant as a mineral in the outer parts of the solar system, providing source material for the formation of clathrates. We explored constituents through a combination of numerical modeling and laboratory experiments. Understanding the differences and similarities between these materials can shed light on planetary habitability, composition, and evolution. Chapter one contains relevant background information. This chapter introduces the ices that will be studied and gives insight into the locations of interest within our solar system. It also explains the mechanics of impact cratering processes …

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Privacy Protection In Cloud-Based Biometric Systems, Yatish Reddy Dubasi Dec 2025

Privacy Protection In Cloud-Based Biometric Systems, Yatish Reddy Dubasi

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The widespread adoption of server-based biometric authentication systems, often hosted in the cloud, has introduced significant privacy risks. While these systems offer convenience, they require storing sensitive biometric templates on remote servers, creating a high-value target for adversaries. Unlike passwords, compromised biometric data is immutable and cannot be reissued, leading to an irreversible loss of privacy. This threat is exacerbated by template inversion attacks, which can reconstruct a user's original biometric trait (e.g., a face image) from its stored feature vector. This dissertation addresses these critical privacy challenges by designing, implementing, and evaluating a suite of novel frameworks for privacy-preserving …

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Studies Of Trispyrazolylborate Molybdenum-Oxo Compounds And Related Reactions, Miranda Sanders Dec 2025

Studies Of Trispyrazolylborate Molybdenum-Oxo Compounds And Related Reactions, Miranda Sanders

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation details the design, development, and synthesis of a molybdenum-dioxo complex bearing a trispyrazolylborate ligand. The system was tested for its efficiency as a catalyst for deoxydehydration with a small substrate scope. Deoxydehydration reactions with 1-phenyl-1,2-ethanediol, diethytartrate, and 1,2-octanediol show low yields with catalytic turnover only found for diethyltartrate. Electrochemical studies show well behaved PCET behavior with two distinct electron transfer events in the presence of a proton donor. Studies of two molybdenum-dioxo complexes bearing dianionic pincer ligands were conducted to expand further on systems that have been extensively studied in our lab. Deoxydehydration of glycerol by a molybdenum-dioxo …

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Synthetic Dataset For Understanding Negation In Text-Guided Image Editing, Nhat-Tan Bui Dec 2025

Synthetic Dataset For Understanding Negation In Text-Guided Image Editing, Nhat-Tan Bui

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Negation is a fundamental linguistic concept used by humans to convey information that they do not desire. Despite this, minimal research has focused on negation within text-guided image editing. This lack of research means that vision-language models (VLMs) for image editing may struggle to understand negation, implying that they struggle to provide accurate results. One barrier to achieving human-level intelligence is the lack of a standard collection by which research into negation can be evaluated. This thesis presents the first large-scale dataset, Negative Instruction (NeIn), for studying negation within instruction-based image editing. Our dataset comprises 366,957 quintuplets, i.e., source image, …

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Free Radical Reactions Of Electron Rich Alkenes, David A. May Jr Dec 2025

Free Radical Reactions Of Electron Rich Alkenes, David A. May Jr

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Radical reactions have known for over a century but have only been thought of as useful synthetic strategies for the last 70 years. During this period, much work has been done to develop theoretical explanations for their reactivity and modes of termination, resulting in them becoming a fundamental type of organic reaction in academia and industry. Previous studies by the McIntosh group have shown that a radical [1,3]-Rearrangement occurs when N-substituted pyridines are heated. Here, the scope of this new reaction is expanded to include polycyclic pyridines including neocuproine (2,9-dimethylphenanthroline) and 2-methylquinoline while also expanding the range of reactions available …

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Increasing Soil Health In Zero-Grade, Flood-Irrigated Rice In Eastern Arkansas, Hannah Elizabeth Vickmark Dec 2025

Increasing Soil Health In Zero-Grade, Flood-Irrigated Rice In Eastern Arkansas, Hannah Elizabeth Vickmark

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In an effort to build and maintain soil health and sequester soil C, many producers and researchers are turning towards regenerative management practices in agricultural systems, such as reduced tillage or no-tillage (NT), the implementation of winter cover crops (CC), and the use of organic or green manures, such as biochar. However, little research is being conducted on the long-term soil health and agronomic benefits of these practices in a flood-irrigated rice (Oryza sativa L.) production system. Three replications of seven treatment combinations were applied to 6.1 x 30.5 m rice plots. Baseline soil health properties were quantified at six …

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Emotion Analysis And Neural Language Models For Classification, Andrew Mackey Dec 2025

Emotion Analysis And Neural Language Models For Classification, Andrew Mackey

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Emotion analysis is a branch of artificial intelligence and natural language processing focused on recognizing emotions hidden throughout various forms of digital data, including text, images, and multi-modal representations. In this dissertation, we present four published and planned works that investigate different methodologies for natural language analysis tasks using deep learning techniques. The first published work we present considers the task of identifying fake news using various text and emotion representations. We demonstrate that emotion representations combined with word embedding techniques can improve the accuracy of fake news classification. Our second published work further investigates the fake news classification task …

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Characterizing Stellar Flares On Low-Mass Stars Tic 144217628 And Proxima Centauri Using Transiting Exoplanet Space Satellite (Tess) Optical Data, Charles Edward Holloway Dec 2025

Characterizing Stellar Flares On Low-Mass Stars Tic 144217628 And Proxima Centauri Using Transiting Exoplanet Space Satellite (Tess) Optical Data, Charles Edward Holloway

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Low-mass stars account for more than 70% of stars within our galaxy. Their ob?servational interest can be attributed to their smaller radius and luminosity, making them ideal for detecting terrestrial planets inside their habitable zones. These magnetically active stars produce frequent stellar flaring events that can impact the atmospheric composition of nearby planets and interfere with the prebiotic processes for carbon-based life. Using TESS optical data, I have detected, measured astrophysical properties, and modeled the behavior of 44 flares from two low-mass stars: TIC 144217628 and Proxima Centuari. Given similar observational periods, Proxima Cen has shown to produce larger amplitudes …

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Discriminative And Generative Video Modeling, Anh Pha Nguyen Dec 2025

Discriminative And Generative Video Modeling, Anh Pha Nguyen

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Video modeling stands at the core of modern computer vision, enabling progress in domains such as surveillance, autonomous driving, and instructional assistance. Yet the complexity of spatiotemporal dynamics, multimodal integration, and the need for scalable and generalizable models present significant challenges. This dissertation addresses these issues from three complementary perspectives: discriminative modeling, multimodal (vision + language) alignment, and generative approaches, contributing new methods, datasets, and paradigms for advancing video understanding. In the discriminative setting, we propose a domain-adaptive framework for crowd counting that employs entropy minimization and adversarial learning to improve cross-domain generalization, and introduce a single-stage global association method …

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Programmable Network Approaches To Resilience And Security In Phasor Measurement Unit Networks, Zhiyao He Dec 2025

Programmable Network Approaches To Resilience And Security In Phasor Measurement Unit Networks, Zhiyao He

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The security and resilience of smart grids are critical for ensuring reliable and stable power delivery. As modern power systems evolve to incorporate more advanced sensing and control capabilities, Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) have become an important source of high-frequency, time-synchronized measurements that support wide-area monitoring, control, and protection. However, the growing complexity of smart grids and their reliance on real-time communication expose them to a range of cyber threats, including data loss, tampering, and coordinated attacks. This dissertation explores the use of programmable network technologies, particularly P4-based programmable switches, to provide in-network solutions that enhance the reliability and security …

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Artificial Intelligence For Reliability: Predictive Health Maintenance And Geolocation In Gps-Denied Environments, Rafael Toche Pizano Dec 2025

Artificial Intelligence For Reliability: Predictive Health Maintenance And Geolocation In Gps-Denied Environments, Rafael Toche Pizano

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, we explore the potential of machine learning and deep learning techniques to enhance the performance and robustness of applications across two major domains. By addressing the challenges within these fields, we demonstrate that we can leverage learning algorithms to obtain substantial improvements in accuracy and robustness. First, we tackle a problem in the field of predictive health maintenance. We propose a novel auto encoder and neural network based methodology to predict failure times in complex aviation systems to learn to distinguish between normal and abnormal operational behavior, and use this information to inform the neural network to …

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Agricultural Practices’ Impact On Soil Health Indicators In Mid-South U.S. Crop Production Systems, Katherine Suzanne French Dec 2025

Agricultural Practices’ Impact On Soil Health Indicators In Mid-South U.S. Crop Production Systems, Katherine Suzanne French

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Soil health and regenerative agriculture are concepts gaining popularity across global agriculture systems. The effect of sustainable farming practices such as nutrient management, cover crops, adoption of no-tillage, and residue retention on crop yield, as well as environmental resilience, is increasingly being studied. This research aimed to evaluate the impacts of (i) cover cropping and nutrient management, and of (ii) soil sampling depth and timing on indicators of soil health in various mid-southern irrigated row crop systems. Soil health indicators like soil organic matter (SOM), carbon dioxide respiration (CDR), beta-glucosidase enzyme activity (BG), permanganate oxidizable carbon (POXC), and the soil …

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Predicting Stock Price Movement With Llm-Enhanced Tweet Emotion Analysis, An Vuong Dec 2025

Predicting Stock Price Movement With Llm-Enhanced Tweet Emotion Analysis, An Vuong

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Accurately predicting short-term stock price movement remains a challenging task due to the market’s inherent volatility and sensitivity to investor sentiment. In this thesis, we present a published paper that discusses a deep learning framework integrating emo- tion features extracted from tweet data with historical stock price information to forecast significant price changes on the following day. We utilize Meta’s LLaMA 3.1-8B-Instruct model to preprocess tweet data, thereby enhancing the quality of emotion features derived from three emotion analysis approaches: a transformer-based DistilRoBERTa classifier from the Hugging Face library and two lexicon-based methods using National Research Council Canada (NRC) resources. …

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Automation And Upgrading Of Custom Cold Wall Uhv-Cvd Reactor For Group Iv Material Development, Alexander Golden Dec 2025

Automation And Upgrading Of Custom Cold Wall Uhv-Cvd Reactor For Group Iv Material Development, Alexander Golden

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Group IV alloys have shown promising results for infrared optoelectronic applications where III-V materials are currently dominant. The III-V material system has vacancies that Group IV materials can fill, most importantly complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) process compatibility making quality devices much cheaper and widely available compared to the current state of the art. Silicon, being an indirect band gap Group IV material, has poor performance in optoelectronic applications but is the dominant material for most of the electronic industry. However, when silicon is alloyed or substituted with other group IV materials, these optoelectronic properties can be enhanced and, in …

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Evidence Of Backwater Morphodynamics In Stratigraphy On Earth And Mars: Implications For Ancient Mars, Cory Mitchell Hughes Dec 2025

Evidence Of Backwater Morphodynamics In Stratigraphy On Earth And Mars: Implications For Ancient Mars, Cory Mitchell Hughes

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Geologic evidence indicates that liquid water once flowed in abundance across the martian surface. For this reason, in the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life, Mars represents a prime target for scientific inquiry. River systems encode climatic and environmental signals in their deposits on Earth and Mars, often in fan-shaped landforms (e.g., alluvial fans, river deltas, etc.). Distal fan-shaped deposits (i.e., river deltas), in particular, act as a relatively high-fidelity record of dynamic geologic processes. As such, NASA frequently sends rovers to locations on Mars’ surface with hypothesized river deltas (e.g., Perseverance and Jezero crater). Problematically, there are many different …

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Solar Powered Conservation: The Effects Of Solar Photovoltaic Facilities On Avian Community Composition, Michael Christopher Ferrara Dec 2025

Solar Powered Conservation: The Effects Of Solar Photovoltaic Facilities On Avian Community Composition, Michael Christopher Ferrara

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The expansion of solar photovoltaic energy infrastructure is transforming landscapes worldwide. Increasingly, facilities are planted with native vegetation, yet how vegetation characteristics and landscape variables shape wildlife communities in solar facilities remains poorly understood. Because avian populations have been in decline and are sensitive to habitat changes, understanding how solar facilities influence avian communities is important. In Chapter 1, we used autonomous recording units, local vegetation measurements, and land use and land cover data to quantify how avian community occupancy is influenced by solar cover in solar facilities and comparable reference sites. We used a Bayesian multi-species occupancy model to …

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