Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

A Microgenetic Learning Analysis Of Contextuality In Reasoning About Exponential Modeling, Elahe Allahyari

Dissertations

This work explores the complex cognitive processes students engage in when addressing contextual tasks requiring linear and exponential models. Grounded within Piagetian constructivism and the Knowledge in Pieces (KiP) epistemological perspective (diSessa, 1993, 2018), this empirical study in a clinical setting develops a Microgenetic Learning Analysis (MLA) of the reasoning of 14 students from an Algebra II course. It reveals the critical role of cognitive disequilibrium as an essential cognitive state for conceptual development and the process of reorganizing knowledge systems. The study uncovers the fluctuations in students’ reasoning patterns and the significant impact on students’ reasoning patterns of task-specific …

Present Case Studies Highlighting Practical Implications Of Architectural Design Choices, Emily Barnes, James Hutson

Faculty Scholarship

The interpretability of deep neural networks (DNNs) has become a crucial focus within artificial intelligence and machine learning, particularly as these models are increasingly used in high-stakes applications such as healthcare, finance, and autonomous driving. This article explores the impact of architectural design choices on the interpretability of DNNs, emphasizing the importance of transparency, trust, and accountability in AI systems. By presenting case studies and experimental results, the article highlights how different architectural elements—such as layer types, network depth, connectivity patterns, and attention mechanisms—affect model interpretability and performance. The discussion is structured into three main sections: real-world applications, architectural trade-offs, …

Focused Led Sintering, Dylan Defazio, Nilav Maulik, Branden Majors, Michael Fontillas

Mechanical Engineering

This report provides a detailed overview of the final design of our light-emitting diode (LED) focusing system. Our system incorporates a converging lens and a specially designed "glass funnel," which acts as a thick fiber optic that narrows the light to a fine point through internal reflection. The glass components of our system are precisely housed in a part made using advanced computer-numeric controlled (CNC) Mill and CNC Lathe manufacturing processes. This ensures high precision and durability of the overall system. Our LED focusing system is designed with a 60-watt stage light. The decision to use a glass funnel as …

Causal Inference Using Bayesian Network For Search And Rescue, Amanda Belden

Master's Theses

People who are considered missing have much higher probabilities of being found dead compared to those who are not considered missing in terms of Search and Rescue (SAR) missions. Dementia patients are incredibly likely to be declared missing, and in fact after removing those with dementia the probability of the mission being regarded as missing person case is only about 10%. Additionally, those who go missing are much more likely to be on private land than on protected areas such as forests and parks. These and similar associations can be represented and investigated using a Bayesian network that has been …

On An Equivalence Of Divisors On M̄0,N From Gromov-Witten Theory And Conformal Blocks, Linda Chen

Mathematics & Statistics Faculty Works

We consider a conjecture that identifies two types of base point free divisors on M̄_0,n. The first arises from Gromov-Witten theory of a Grassmannian. The second comes from first Chern classes of vector bundles associated with simple Lie algebras in type A. Here we reduce this conjecture on M̄_0,n to the same statement for n = 4. A reinterpretation leads to a proof of the conjecture on M̄_0,n for a large class, and we give sufficient conditions for the non-vanishing of these divisors.

A Generic Blood Banking And Transfusion Process-Oriented Architecture For Virtual Organizations, Anwar Rjoop, Shaima Elhaj, Dina Tbaishat, Yousra Odeh, Asem Mansour, Mohammed Odeh

All Works

Background Blood banks are an important part of healthcare systems. They embrace critical processes that start with donor recruitment and blood collection, followed by blood processing to produce different types of blood components used in transfusions, blood storage, blood distribution, and transfusion. Blood components must be generated at high quality, preserved safely, and transfused in a timely manner. This can be achieved by operating interrelated processes within a complex network. There is no comprehensive blueprint of Blood Banking and Transfusion (BB&T) processes and their relationships; therefore, this study aims to develop and evaluate a BB&T process architecture using the Riva …

An Experimental Study Of Supervised Machine Learning Techniques For Minor Class Prediction Utilizing Kernel Density Estimation: Factors Impacting Model Performance, Abdullah Mana Alfarwan

Dissertations

This dissertation examined classification outcome differences among four popular individual supervised machine learning (ISML) models (logistic regression, decision tree, support vector machine, and multilayer perceptron) when predicting minor class membership within imbalanced datasets. The study context and the theoretical population sampled focus on one aspect of the larger problem of student retention and dropout prediction in higher education (HE): identification.

This study differs from current literature by implementing an experimental design approach with simulated student data that closely mirrors HE situational and student data. Specifically, this study tested the predictive ability of the four ISML classification models (CLS) under experimentally …

Alternative Adjacency Matrices And Spatial Analysis, Jaeseong Hwang

Dissertations

Spatial analysis is essential for comprehending the spatial distribution of diseases and various phenomena across geographic regions. This study investigates the utilization of alternative adjacency matrices in spatial analysis, with a specific focus on implementing Poisson regression models. This study intricately explores the methodology behind constructing alternative weight matrices, specifying weight matrices, and comparing the performance of Poisson models using five different weight matrices.

The popular Poisson model model is described, and five different definitions of weight matrices are defined, which are the following: binary weight matrix, inverse distance weight matrix using Euclidean distance, Graph distance matrix, Path matrix, and …

Strategic Integration Of Ai In Higher Education And Industry: The Ai8-Point Model, Emily Barnes, James Hutson

Faculty Scholarship

The AI8-Point Model, derived from extensive experience in technology, AI, and higher education administration, addresses the critical need for cost-effective, high-impact strategies tailored to higher education. Despite the transformative potential of AI in enhancing student engagement, optimizing processes, and improving educational outcomes, institutions often struggle with practical implementation. The AI8-Point Model fills this gap by offering strategies that balance cost and impact. Visualized as a circle divided into four quadrants, the model encompasses phases of student engagement and institutional interaction: pre-enrollment beyond institutional control, pre-enrollment within institutional control, post-enrollment within institutional control, and post-enrollment beyond institutional control. Each quadrant contains …

Snpaimer: R Package For Evaluating Ancestry Informative Marker Contributions In Non-Model Population Diagnostics, Kim L. Vertacnik, Oksana V. Vernygora, Julian R. Dupuis

Entomology Faculty Publications

Motivation: Single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers are increasingly popular for population genomics and inferring ancestry for individuals of unknown origin. Because large SNP datasets are impractical for rapid and routine analysis, diagnostics rely on panels of highly informative markers. Strategies exist for selecting these markers, however, resources for efficiently evaluating their performance are limited for non-model systems.

Results: snpAIMeR is a user-friendly R package that evaluates the efficacy of genomic markers for the cluster assignment of unknown individuals. It is intended to help minimize panel size and genotyping effort by determining the informativeness of candidate diagnostic markers. Provided genotype data …

Field Implementation And Surveillance Of Gas Injection Enhanced Oil Recovery In The Bakken, Jin Zhao, Lu Jin, Nicholas A. Azzolina, Xincheng Wan, Steven A. Smith, Nicholas W. Bosshart, James A. Sorensen

EERC Publications, Papers, & Presentations

A series of activities were performed in this study to explore real-time visualization, forecasting, and control methods for improved reservoir surveillance during EOR processes.

Maximizing Network Throughput In Heterogeneous Uav Networks, Shuyue Li, Jing Li, Chaocan Xiang, Wenzheng Xu, Jian Peng, Ziming Wang, Weifa Liang, Xinwei Yao, Xiaohua Jia, Sajal K. Das

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this paper we study the deployment of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) network that consists of multiple UAVs to provide emergent communication service for people who are trapped in a disaster area, where each UAV is equipped with a base station that has limited computing capacity and power supply, and thus can only serve a limited number of people. Unlike most existing studies that focused on homogeneous UAVs, we consider the deployment of heterogeneous UAVs where different UAVs have different computing capacities. We study a problem of deploying K heterogeneous UAVs in the air to form a temporarily connected …

(R2070) Poisson-Exponentiated Weibull Distribution: Properties, Applications And Extension, Alphonsa George, Dais George

Applications and Applied Mathematics: An International Journal (AAM)

In this article, we introduce a new member of the Poisson-X family namely, the Poisson-exponentiated Weibull distribution. The statistical as well as the distributional properties of the new distribution are studied, and the performance of the maximum likelihood method of estimation is verified by a simulation study. The flexibility of the distribution is illustrated by a real data set. We develop and study a reliability test plan for the acceptance or rejection of a lot of products submitted for inspection when their lifetimes follow the new distribution. A real data example is also given to illustrate the feasibility of the …

(R2067) Solutions Of Hyperbolic System Of Time Fractional Partial Differential Equations For Heat Propagation, Sagar Sankeshwari, Vinayak Kulkarni

Applications and Applied Mathematics: An International Journal (AAM)

Hyperbolic linear theory of heat propagation has been established in the framework of a Caputo time fractional order derivative. The solution of a system of integer and fractional order initial value problems is achieved by employing the Adomian decomposition approach. The obtained solution is in convergent infinite series form, demonstrating the method’s strengths in solving fractional differential equations. Moreover, the double Laplace transform method is employed to acquire the solution of a system of integer and fractional order boundary conditions in the Laplace domain. An inversion of double Laplace transforms has been achieved numerically by employing the Xiao algorithm in …

Matching The Scales Of Planning And Environmental Risk: An Evaluation Of Community Wildfire Protection Plans In The Western Us, Matthew Hamilton, Cody Evers, Max Nielsen-Pincus, Alan A. Ager

Environmental Science and Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Theory predicts that effective environmental governance requires that the scales of management account for the scales of environmental processes. A good example is community wildfire protection planning. Plan boundaries that are too narrowly defined may miss sources of wildfire risk originating at larger geographic scales whereas boundaries that are too broadly defined dilute resources. Although the concept of scale (mis)matches is widely discussed in literature on risk mitigation as well as environmental governance more generally, rarely has the concept been rigorously quantified. We introduce methods to address this limitation, and we apply our approach to assess scale matching among Community …

An Index Of Biotic Integrity For Macroinvertebrate Stream Bioassessment Conducted By Community Scientists, Patrick M. Edwards, Daniel Bedell, Shannon Hubler, Chad A. Larson, Kate H. Macneale, Elisa Mickelson, Chris Prescott, Elinore Webb, Jo Wilhelm

Environmental Science and Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Community science bioassessment has great potential to inform comprehensive stream management plans, but regional analytical tools are needed to evaluate macroinvertebrate data collected through community science programs. To this end, we modified a pre-existing professional index of biotic integrity (IBI) to create a community science IBI (CS-IBI), designed for stream macroinvertebrate data collected by community scientists with minimal training. We used data collected by both professional and community scientists to develop, calibrate, and validate the CS-IBI at 76 streamsites in the Puget Lowland andWillamette Valley ecoregions of the PacificNorthwest in theUnited States. Community science data were taxonomically coarser andmore variable …

Interpretable Learning In Multivariate Big Data Analysis For Network Monitoring, José Camacho, Katarzyna Wasielewska, Rasmus Bro, David Kotz

Dartmouth Scholarship

There is an increasing interest in the development of new data-driven models useful to assess the performance of communication networks. For many applications, like network monitoring and troubleshooting, a data model is of little use if it cannot be interpreted by a human operator. In this paper, we present an extension of the Multivariate Big Data Analysis (MBDA) methodology, a recently proposed interpretable data analysis tool. In this extension, we propose a solution to the automatic derivation of features, a cornerstone step for the application of MBDA when the amount of data is massive. The resulting network monitoring approach allows …

Virtual Field Environments Capstone Software Review, Ashton Sawyer

University Honors Theses

This is a review of the Virtual Field Environments computer science capstone project, sponsored by geology professor Rick Hugo. The tool aims to create and render VFEs, interactable 360° environments hosted on the web that are used as virtual field trips for K-12 students. This essay discusses the development process, including understanding requirements, tool and technology selection, problem-solving, and decision-making strategies. It also highlights the differences between the capstone and the other core computer science courses, and how those differences help to prepare students for the workforce. The project was completed over the course of twenty weeks by a team …

Lang2views Capstone: The Importance Of A Conscientious Team Lead, Joseph Wornath

University Honors Theses

This review essay reflects the Lang2views capstone project from the perspective of a team lead. The Lang2views capstone project was a web-based user interface designed to simplify how the Lang2views corporation localizes videos into other languages for their clients. Our capstone group was split into three subgroups: front-end, back-end, and DevOps. The strategy for completing the project went through a major change midway through development wherein we changed our software development methodology from a more rigid Waterfall-type approach to a more flexible Agile methodology. Because of this, many of the initially planned features had to be reevaluated as out of …

Remediating History: A Review Of Restoration For Creeks Polluted From Historical Mining Sites, With The Red Boy Mine As A Primary Case Study, Kara Atiyeh

University Honors Theses

I conducted a literature review to examine the key aspects of restoring watersheds affected by pollution from historical mining. This review is then applied to a case study discussion of the Red Boy Mine and Clear Creek remediation project in Granite, Oregon. The goal of this discussion is to explore how an analysis of site conditions along with current literature on management practices can help guide these projects. Thousands of abandoned hard rock mines remain throughout the country, and many pose serious environmental health effects. Heavy metals like cadmium, nickel, and copper are brought to the surface from mining activity, …

Santa Maria Climate Action Plan Recommendations: Building Energy And Transportation, Thomas Zimmerman, Elena Blewett

City and Regional Planning

The Santa Maria Climate Action Plan Recommendations addresses GHG emissions reduction for the largest sectors in the City of Santa Maria- Building Energy and Transportation. The project includes GHG forecasts and reduction targets from the City’s Draft 2020 Community-Wide Greenhouse Gas Inventory Report. The reduction targets are met through a series of actionable measures to help the City meet aggressive reduction targets by 2030 and 2045.

A Pilot Study On Particulate Matter Concentrations From Cooking And Its Effects On Indoor Air Pollution In A Mexican American Household In Mission, South Texas, Usa, Sai Deepak Pinakana, Carlos Garcia Patlan, Esmeralda Mendez, Amit U. Raysoni

School of Earth, Environmental, & Marine Sciences Faculty Publications

This pilot study focuses on particulate matter (PM) while cooking in a South Texan household. Dishes such as Beef, Burger, Fish, Chicken, Egg Sandwich, and Hotdog were prepared. Indoor PM levels were compared with outdoor PM levels. A DustTrak DRX was used to monitor the PM released during the cooking process. PM2.5 levels were highest while cooking beef, 162.79 + 209.62 μg m−3. Hot Dog preparation resulted in the lowest PM2.5 concentration of 27.72 + 5.58 μg m−3. Indoor PM2.5 levels were observed to be greater in contrast to outdoor levels when compared to the outdoor levels (96 words).

Investigating H2s Occurrence In Bakken Oil-Producing Wells Using Sulfur Isotopes In Gas, Water, And Rock Samples, Alexander V. Chakhmakhchev, Marc D. Kurz, T. Austin Mcrae, Xue Yu, Arash Abarghani, Darren D. Schmidt, Nicholas A. Azzolina, Bethany A. Kurz, James A. Sorensen

EERC Publications, Papers, & Presentations

This work investigated multiple mechanisms that can potentially lead to H₂S in the oil production stream of Bakken wells, including TSR, BSR, source rock generation, migration from deeper or shallower formations that contain H₂S, and geomechanical mechanisms related to reservoir stimulation work.

Smart Hpa: A Resource-Efficient Horizontal Pod Auto-Scaler For Microservice Architectures, Hussain Ahmad, Christoph Treude, Markus Wagner, Claudia Szabo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Microservice architectures have gained prominence in both academia and industry, offering enhanced agility, reusability, and scalability. To simplify scaling operations in microservice architectures, container orchestration platforms such as Kubernetes feature Horizontal Pod Auto-scalers (HPAs) designed to adjust the resources of microservices to accommodate fluctuating workloads. However, existing HPAs are not suitable for resourceconstrained environments, as they make scaling decisions based on the individual resource capacities of microservices, leading to service unavailability and performance degradation. Furthermore, HPA architectures exhibit several issues, including inefficient data processing and a lack of coordinated scaling operations. To address these concerns, we propose Smart HPA, a …

Efficient Cross-Modal Video Retrieval With Meta-Optimized Frames, Ning Han, Xun Yang, Ee-Peng Lim, Hao Chen, Qianru Sun

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Cross-modal video retrieval aims to retrieve semantically relevant videos when given a textual query, and is one of the fundamental multimedia tasks. Most top-performing methods primarily leverage Vision Transformer (ViT) to extract video features [1]-[3]. However, they suffer from the high computational complexity of ViT, especially when encoding long videos. A common and simple solution is to uniformly sample a small number (e.g., 4 or 8) of frames from the target video (instead of using the whole video) as ViT inputs. The number of frames has a strong influence on the performance of ViT, e.g., using 8 frames yields better …

Applicability And Challenges Of Indoor Localization Using One-Sided Round Trip Time Measurements, Quang Hai Truong, Xi Kai Justin Lam, Guru Anand Anish, Rajesh Krishna Balan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Radio Frequency fingerprinting, based on WiFi or cellular signals, has been a popular approach for localization. However, adoptions in real-world applications have confronted with challenges due to low accuracy, especially in crowded environments. The received signal strength (RSS) could be easily interfered by a large number of other devices or strictly depends on physical surrounding environments, which may cause localization errors of a few meters. On the other hand, the fine time measurement (FTM) round-trip time (RTT) has shown compelling improvement in indoor localization with ~1-2 meter accuracy in both 2D and 3D environments [13]. This method relies on the …

Refining Chatgpt-Generated Code: Characterizing And Mitigating Code Quality Issues, Yue Liu, Thanh Le-Cong, Ratnadira Widyasari, Chakkrit Kla Tantihamthavorn, Li Li, Xuan-Bach Dinh Le, David Lo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Since its introduction in November 2022, ChatGPT has rapidly gained popularity due to its remarkable ability in language understanding and human-like responses. ChatGPT, based on GPT-3.5 architecture, has shown great promise for revolutionizing various research fields, including code generation. However, the reliability and quality of code generated by ChatGPT remain unexplored, raising concerns about potential risks associated with the widespread use of ChatGPT-driven code generation.In this article, we systematically study the quality of 4,066 ChatGPT-generated programs of code implemented in two popular programming languages, i.e., Java and Python, for 2,033 programming tasks. The goal of this work is threefold. First, …

The Low-Carbon Vehicle Routing Problem With Dynamic Speed On Steep Roads, Jianhua Xiao, Xiaoyang Liu, Huixian Zhang, Zhiguang Cao, Liujiang Kang, Yunyun Niu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The low-carbon vehicle routing problem with dynamic speeds on steep roads (LCVRPDS-SR) considers the combined effects of dynamic speeds, steep roads, and loads on carbon emissions. Earlier low-carbon vehicle routing problems typically assumed that vehicles travel at a constant speed on flat roads. However, such models do not apply in urban or rural areas with steep roads. Although the subsequent studies further explored the effect of steep roads, their performance are still suboptimal since they fail to take into account the varying speeds on the terrain. This paper proposes an extended LCVRPDS-SR model that tackles dynamic speed decisions on steep …

Posmlp-Video: Spatial And Temporal Relative Position Encoding For Efficient Video Recognition, Yanbin Hao, Diansong Zhou, Zhicai Wang, Chong-Wah Ngo, Xiangnan He, Meng Wang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In recent years, vision Transformers and MLPs have demonstrated remarkable performance in image understanding tasks. However, their inherently dense computational operators, such as self-attention and token-mixing layers, pose significant challenges when applied to spatio-temporal video data. To address this gap, we propose PosMLP-Video, a lightweight yet powerful MLP-like backbone for video recognition. Instead of dense operators, we use efficient relative positional encoding (RPE) to build pairwise token relations, leveraging small-sized parameterized relative position biases to obtain each relation score. Specifically, to enable spatio-temporal modeling, we extend the image PosMLP’s positional gating unit to temporal, spatial, and spatio-temporal variants, namely PoTGU, …

Physician-Patient Interactions In Online Healthcare Communities: The Effects Of Preconsultation On Service Delivery And Patient Satisfaction, Qian Tang, Anqi Zhao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Preconsultation by medical professionals is a common practice in offline healthcare services to improve consultation efficiency but is rarely adopted for online healthcare services. In a noteworthy departure from this trend, a Chinese online healthcare community (OHC) has instituted preconsultation by assistant physicians prior to online consultations. Using comprehensive service data from this OHC, this study scrutinizes the effects of preconsultation on online healthcare services from both the physician and patient perspectives. The findings reveal that preconsultation by the assistant physician can significantly increase the attending physician’s response speed, length, and provision of informational support, while maintaining a consistent level …