Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Object Recognition With Deep Neural Networks In Low-End Systems, Lillian Davis

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Object recognition is an important area in computer vision. Object recognition has been advanced significantly by deep learning that unifies feature extraction and classification. In general, deep neural networks, such as Convolution Neural Networks (CNNs), are trained in high-performance systems. Aiming to extend the reach of deep learning to personal computing, I propose a study of deep learning-based object recognition in low-end systems, such as laptops. This research includes how differing layer configurations and hyperparameter values used in CNNs can either create or resolve the issue of overfitting and affect final accuracy levels of object recognition systems. The main contribution …

Completing And Improving The Collection Of Data For Carbon Reporting, Madeline Petty

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Global carbon emissions from individual, organizational, and institutional activities influence the environment. Organizations and institutions use sustainability reporting methods to regularly track and report metrics relating to emissions from collective activity, yet data needed for such reporting can be difficult and time-consuming to collect. Multiple institutions, particularly universities, often use digital, standardized carbon footprint reporting tools to help overcome these challenges. Still, using digital reporting tools does not alleviate all challenges faced in regular carbon reporting due to the lack of data collection structure among university departments. This scholarly activity attempted to calculate the carbon footprint of Western Kentucky University …

Teloportwrapper: A New Tool For Understanding The Dynamic World Of Fungal Telomere Ends, Trey Stansfield

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Telomeres are repetitive DNA sequence motifs found at eukaryote chromosome ends. Telomeres help protect chromosome ends from DNA damage and promote chromosome stability. Chromosomes play important roles in aging, mutation, and cancer. Eukaryotic pathogens also use telomeres to mutate and manage virulence genes. In response to chromosome end breakage newly formed telomeres, called de novo telomeres, are formed to recreate the lost telomere and sub-telomeric regions.

Magnaporthe oryzae is a fungal pathogen which causes wheat blast, a deadly plant disease in wheat. Magnaporthe oryzae is also known for its highly variable sub-regions which show high amounts of induced variability due …

Simulating The Machine Translation Of Low-Resource Languages By Designing A Translator Between English And An Artificially Constructed Language, Michaela Snyder

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Natural language processing (NLP), or the use of computers to analyze natural language, is a field that relies heavily on syntax. It would seem intuitive that computers would thrive in this area due to their strict syntax requirements, but the syntax of natural languages leaves them unable to properly parse and generate sentences that seem normal to the average speaker. A subfield of NLP, machine translation, works mainly to computerize translation between different languages. Unfortunately, such translation is not without its weaknesses; language documentation is not created equal, and many low-resource languages—languages with relatively few kinds of documentation, most often …

Comparison Of Groundwater Chemistry And Associated Biodiversity Of Sulfidic Karst Habitats In Southcentral Kentucky, Kendall Wheeler

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

In most ecosystems, primary production is conducted by plants or photosynthetic microbes; however, extremophilic sulfur-oxidizing bacteria can use hydrogen sulfide gas (H2S) as an electron donor to produce metabolic energy in a type of metabolism called chemoautotrophy. These ecosystems are a prominent feature of some karst landscapes, and two have been observed in the Mammoth Cave system, Sulphur River in Parker Cave and Marianne’s Pass in Mammoth Cave National Park respectively.

Sulfidic water is ubiquitous in southcentral Kentucky and is strongly associated with hydrocarbon deposits. This oil boom of the 1880s in this region predates most environmental regulation and records …

Building Coleus Academy, Janessa Unseld

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Coleus Academy, a nonprofit e-learning platform, has been created to address the deficits left by the de-emphasis and, at times, outright omission of practical skill-centric education in American curriculums. There exists a gap between the degree of knowledge necessary to engage with adult life and the extent of that knowledge that is actually possessed by emerging adults. Prominent legislations are among the numerous efforts to address this issue. However, there is a deeply fractured market where resources are proving too expensive, too sparse, or hyper-specific to the point of limited usability. Compounded with disparities in when, where, and to whom …

Rosalie Edge And The Modern Environmental Movement, Elizabeth Claire Coleman

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

This thesis examines and follows the actions of an understudied activist in the environmentalist movement: Rosalie Edge. This thesis relies and encourages a combination of conservation, environmentalism, and historical women’s history in America. Rosalie Edge’s work as an environmentalist created a new and effective way for environmentalists to advocate for the environment around them. She created a pamphlet medium that invited scientists and other conservationists to publish writings and opinions that went against what the Audubon Society, the Biological Survey, and legislators were doing and publishing. The research for this project combines analysis from other professionals in the field with …

Inflammatory Response To Sleep Fragmentation In Skeletal, Cardiac, And Smooth Muscle Tissues In Female Mice, Patton Allen

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Sleep is a critical process that the body undergoes. When sleep is interrupted, so that an individual is awakened for some period before going back into sleep, the sleep can be described as fragmented. Studies in the past have shown that sleep fragmentation (SF) promotes an inflammatory environment, especially in the brain and peripheral tissue. However, studies have not been conducted to observe inflammatory responses in muscle. To examine this, C57BL/6J female mice were subjected to either a control group (no SF) or a SF group which involved using an automated SF chamber to disrupt sleep every 2 min over …

Kentuckians' Perception Of The Environment And Use Of Outdoor Public Spaces, Grace Herrmann

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Understanding how people perceive the environment and built public outdoor spaces is valuable in determining the direction of future development in the state. Further, understanding the emotions relating to the environment, both the natural and built public environments is instrumental in guiding future planning. This project aimed to understand Kentuckians’ perception of the environment and their use of public outdoor spaces such as parks, farmer markets, bike lanes, and walking paths through the use of a digital survey. Respondents to this survey are Kentuckians over the age of 18. The digital survey was split into four sections. The first section …

Development Of Scent Detection And Categorization Algorithm Using Gas Chromatography And Machine Learning, Alex Driehaus

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

There are many looking to connect human senses to quantifiable data. Scents are categorized by their descriptions into scent families. These include citrus, floral, and woody. Similar descriptors designate similar families, while different descriptors correlate with different families. Dravnieks compiled an Atlas of chemical descriptors [1]. Such descriptors are cinnamon, fruity, and cadaverous. By analyzing the applicability of these descriptors, the chemicals will be sorted into their scent families.

Gas chromatography generates sample-specific signals of voltage over time. Chromatograms of known scents will serve as a basis for a convolutional neural network. This algorithm will be trained on these signals …

Simplification Of Robotics Through Autonomous Navigation, Grant Turner

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

With self-driving vehicles, college campus food delivery, or even automated home vacuuming systems, robotics is undoubtedly becoming more prevalent in everyday society and it can be expected to continue with time. While many people are owners, users, or even just spectators of theses robotic products or services, there seems to be a negative perception of robotics that poses an intimidation factor regarding the attempt to understand the ideas driving technology. This perception tends to view robotics as machines that require rich education to understand the complexity and interworkings of, thus attempts understand the field are neglected.

To combat this line …

Studying The Relationship Between Financial Risk Aversion And Income With The Jeopardy! Daily Double, Miles Johnson

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

It has long been up for debate as to whether there is a link between financial risk aversion and income. This study’s purpose is to, using data from the game show Jeopardy!, investigate this question through analytical research. This study made use of multiple regression analyses in order to examine the relationship between income and risk aversion in Jeopardy! contestants who appeared on the show between January 2019 and October 2020. Specifically, this study looked to isolate the potential impact a contestant’s estimated annual income had on their willingness to bet on the Jeopardy! Daily Double question. It was …

Synthesis And Catalytic Properties Of Metal-Organic Frameworks Mimicking Carbonic Anhydrase, Longji Li

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

The natural enzyme carbonic anhydrase has gained attention in recent years for its ability to catalyze the interconversion of aqueous carbon dioxide (CO₂) and bicarbonate. However, it lacks the efficiency to qualify practical usage on a large scale due to its inherent deficiency and fragile nature. On the other hand, its active center can be used as an ideal model for the design of novel catalytic materials targeting carbon dioxide capture and sequestration. This study focused on the synthesis of a zinc-based metal-organic framework (Zn-MOF-1) mimicking the carbonic anhydrase using the solvothermal method. Important properties such as catalytic …

A Review And Comparison Of U.S. State Wildlife Action Plans For Stonefly (Insecta, Plecoptera) Species Of Greatest Conservation Need, Kathryn Greene

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

State Wildlife Action Plans (SWAPs) were created in order to identify Species of Greatest Conservation Need (SGCN) and develop plans to prevent their populations from further decline and the possibility of being listed as threatened or endangered. Which SGCNs are included are decided based on characteristics that determine their vulnerability. As of early 2021, approximately 720stoneflies (Insecta, Plecoptera) species are found in the U.S., but only 143 are listed as SGCN. Only 29 states have stoneflies included on their SGCN lists, but 37 states use EPT (Ephemeroptera + Plecoptera + Trichoptera) metrics when assessing water quality issues in running water …

Diving Into Reliable Numerical Observability And Stabilization Of The One-Dimensional Wave Equation, Emma Moore

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

In this project, a one-dimensional wave equation, which is a partial differential equation (PDE) describing vibrations on a string, is considered. It is known that the PDE model is exactly observable and exponentially stabilizable. The main goal of this project is to construct a numerical approximation technique, so-called the direct filtering technique, to prove that the Finite Difference and Finite Element space-discretized 1-D wave equations (i) with homogeneous Dirichlet boundary conditions are uniformly observable, (ii) with controlled boundary conditions are uniformly exponentially stable, as the approximation parameters tend to zero. It is crucial to develop reliable numerical approximation techniques for …

Atmosphere/Landscape Co2 Interactions In Mammoth Cave National Park: Hydrochemistry Of Cascade River, Great Onyx Cave, Jessica Williams

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

High-resolution analysis of water/CO₂/carbonate rock geochemistry was conducted at the Great Onyx Groundwater Basin in Mammoth Cave National Park. The purpose of this work has been to undertake hydrochemical characterization of the karst groundwater in Cascade River, the largest cave stream in the upper level of Great Onyx Cave, which is below a relatively pristine karst landscape.

Hydrochemical monitoring of Cascade River at Biz Falls using field, laboratory, and high-resolution electronic data-sonde measurements has provided a detailed picture of the stream’s behavior with respect to the transport and influence of carbon dioxide in the surface and groundwater system …

Antibiotic Resistant Gene Concentrations In Bacteria In Groundwater From Agricultural Waste, Koji Barnaby

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

The overuse of antibiotics has led to an increase in antibiotic resistant bacteria since some antibiotics are sent into the wastewater system by waste produced by both humans and agriculture, making exposure to these bacteria more likely. The evolution of these bacteria in groundwater is of particular concern, as groundwater is used as a source of drinking water, and infections by these bacteria would be more difficult to treat. There are no policies in place to monitor or regulate antibiotic resistance bacteria in groundwater, leaving the threat to public health unknown. The study area of Crumps Cave in Smiths Grove, …

Drought In The Breadbasket Of America And The Influence Of Oceanic Teleconnections, Grace Campbell

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

From 1980 to 2020, drought events accounted for 11.4% of the billion-dollar disasters in the United States (U.S.) yet caused the second highest total amount in damages at $236.6 billion. With the average cost of a drought being upwards of $9.5 billion, these natural disasters can create serious problems in agriculture. Drought is defined as a period of below average precipitation that causes damage to agriculture and water supply. Previous research has linked drought events in the U.S. Great Plains to oceanic teleconnections in the Pacific and Atlantic basins, indicating the influence of the El Niño – Southern Oscillation (ENSO), …

Regression Analysis: Graduation Rate In Kentucky Public High Schools, Rebecca Price

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Kentucky’s Public High School graduation rates vary widely across the rural and urban regions in the state. In addition to their graduation rates, each of these schools have their own unique demographics, funding, teacher-student ratio, etc. that define said school’s identity. This research aims to analyze the aforementioned variables, as well as other variables listed on each school state report card, in order to create a model to predict any school’s graduation rate.

In order to create this model, data was taken on all public high schools in Kentucky from the Kentucky Department of Education’s School Report Card. Data were …

An Analysis Of A Hybrid Steel Bridge, Andrew Iglehart

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

The American Institute of Steel Construction hosts a competition for graduating college seniors each year. The competition is designing and fabricating a scaled steel bridge within certain parameters. Each year the parameters change to allow different seniors to face similar challenges without copying the previous year’s work. Before the outbreak of COVID-19, a bridge was fabricated as per the rules in the 2020, and the same bridge was used for the 2021 competition. With a bridge already fabricated and being used for the competition, a question arose about analyzing the bridge.

This thesis encompasses the entire analysis of the steel …

Acoustic Communication In The Atlantic Mudskipper, Periopthalmus Barbarus, Seth Hoffman

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Mudskippers are intertidal fishes that can survive both in and out of the water. They are territorial and exhibit behaviors to attract mates and defend against competitors. Recently, it has been shown that vibrations are produced and transmitted through the mud during such displays in one species, Periophthalmodon septemradiatus. To see if similar vibrations are produced in other species of mudskippers, I recorded the behavioral interactions of pairs of the mudskipper Periophthalmus barbarus via digital video and acoustic signals via accelerometer. Comparative analysis of fish mass, sex, contest length, and contest outcome coupled with acoustic characteristics within dyadic pairings …

Synthetic Pathways For Potential Platinum 1,10-Phenanthroline Compounds, Jacob Young

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

There are extremely important uses for platinum when it comes to the treatment of cancers and dementias. One potential therapeutic combines platinum with a structure known as phenanthroline. This platinum phenanthroline structure is normally extremely water-insoluble, rendering it difficult to study and use in biological systems. The Williams’ Biochemistry Laboratory endeavored to find a simpler synthetic pathway for a water-soluble phenanthroline product. While unsuccessful in identifying a product as of yet, many synthetic pathways have been ruled out, and more hypothetical pathways are being formulated for testing.

Among the strategies analyzed are varying solvent, reagents, apparatus, methodology, and temperature in …

Pathways To Self-Governance And Success: An Exploratory Study Of Community Gardens In Louisville, Kentucky, Amanda Beavin

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Those involved in community gardens face multiple challenges to survival, including land tenure, lack of funding, lack of sustained interest, and poor infrastructure, but many successful, long-lasting gardens have found management style to be a key aspect of their success. This project investigated three community gardens in Louisville, Kentucky, in order to determine how self-governance, or internal management by gardeners, overlaps with other success indicators and what development processes lead to successful self-governance. Using qualitative, semi-structured interviews and participant observation, the researcher gathered and analyzed data relative to each garden site’s land tenure, community engagement, environmental design, resource mobilization, and …

Informing Sustainable Urban Forestry Policy With Carbon Sequestration Analysis, Ellen Danford

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Urban forestry is an environmental solution for an increasingly city-centered world. The ecosystem services that trees provide in natural settings, including carbon sequestration, oxygen production and aesthetic beauty, also apply in urban settings. Every tree in the Western Kentucky University (WKU) urban forest provides these services and each tree was measured to determine how much carbon they sequestered a year on average between 2015 and 2020. With an interactive map of the forest and its carbon sequestration, the condition of the forest and change over the five year period was analyzed. Comparing the welfare of the forest with the plans …

Answers In The East: An Examination Of China's Renewable Energy And Its Application To Central Appalachia, Lillian Hamm

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

While much of China’s electrification has depended on coal, recent decades illustrate the country is heavily investing in and implementing renewable energy as a power source. Even China’s coal-rich provinces, like the northeastern province of Shanxi, have been making the transition to renewable energy. The central Appalachian states comprised of eastern Kentucky, West Virginia, western Virginia, and northeastern Tennessee share many characteristics with China’s Shanxi province including economic resources, climate, and geography. Yet, central Appalachia has not been able to easily transition to renewable energy. However, there are various cultural, political, and technological differences between the two regions to explain …

Enhancing Wku Sustainable Food Systems Through Education And Local Agriculture Development, Chloe Cooper

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

In an effort to increase the amount of locally sourced food utilized by dining services at WKU, the Office of Sustainability, WKU Restaurant Group, and the WKU Agriculture & Research Education Center have partnered to establish garden spaces on campus properties. This project developed a detailed plan for implementation of this effort. In addition, this project established a plan to educate students and the local community alike on the benefits of sustainable farming and locally-sourced food, while also creating profiles on local farmers from whom the university could buy crops in order to further supplement items for dining services. Using …

A Description Of A Humans Knowledge Using Artificial Intelligence, Dj Price

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

There currently does not exist a way to easily view the relationships between a collection of written items (e.g. sports articles, diary entries, research papers). In recent years, novel machine learning methods have been developed which are very good at extracting semantic relationships from large numbers of documents. One of them is the (unsupervised) machine learning model Doc2Vec which constructs vectors for documents. The research project detailed in this paper uses this and other already existing algorithms to analyze the relationship between pieces of text. We set forth a broader ambition for this project before discussing the use and need …

Bridging The Food Gap: Founding And Sustaining A Food Recovery Network Chapter At Wku, Elaine Losekamp

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Food waste is a pervasive global issue with many environmental and social repercussions. While about one-third of all food produced for human consumption goes to waste, many people in the United States and the world are affected by food insecurity. Food recovery, the process of rescuing edible food that would otherwise go to waste and delivering to hungry people, is an effective solution for both food waste and food insecurity. The author of this capstone created a food recovery program at Western Kentucky University (WKU) in January 2019 and has grown the program’s scope and impact since that time. This …

The Economic Determinants Of American Professional Sports Franchise Valuations, Ryan Flora

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

This thesis seeks to analyze the impact of regional identities on American professional sports team valuations. Regional identities are classified as any name of a team that is not tied directly to the city that they reside in. For example, the Carolina Panthers have a regional identity because they are not based out of “Carolina”, they are based out of Charlotte, North Carolina. Another example would be the Arizona Cardinals, whose name encompasses the whole state of Arizona rather than Phoenix, the city they are based out of. The leagues that will be involved in this study are the National …

The Effect Of Size Upon Haptic Shape Discrimination, Jessica Dukes

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Object shape perception is fundamentally important for daily life. It has been suggested (e.g., Gibson, 1962) that the visual and haptic modalities are equivalent with regards to the ability to perceive shape. Norman et al. (2012) showed that visual and haptic shape discrimination accuracies are indeed comparable. Craddock and Lawson (2009) found that haptic shape discrimination performance was adversely affected by a size change. However, this result was obtained for man-made objects (i.e., bathtubs and benches). The purpose of the current investigation was to determine whether size changes also reduce haptic shape discrimination accuracy for naturally-shaped objects. On any given …