Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Deep Adaptive Graph Clustering Via Von Mises-Fisher Distributions, Pengfei Wang, Daqing Wu, Chong Chen, Kunpeng Liu, Yanjie Fu, Jianqiang Huang, Yuanchun Zhou, Jianfeng Zhan, Xiansheng Hua

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Graph clustering has been a hot research topic and is widely used in many fields, such as community detection in social networks. Lots of works combining auto-encoder and graph neural networks have been applied to clustering tasks by utilizing node attributes and graph structure. These works usually assumed the inherent parameters (i.e., size and variance) of different clusters in the latent embedding space are homogeneous, and hence the assigned probability is monotonous over the Euclidean distance between node embeddings and centroids. Unfortunately, this assumption usually does not hold since the size and concentration of different clusters can be quite different, …

Investigating Factors Contributing To Differences In Air Pollutants Between Metropolitan Areas In The Us, Ellen Hu

Scripps Senior Theses

Densely populated regions around the United States exhibit varying concentrations of air pollutants that can impact the health of urban populations and surrounding ecosystems. Understanding why these differences exist can be important in addressing health issues as the human population continues to increase and communities across the globe move to accommodate these trends. To investigate the impact of natural processes and anthropogenic sources on pollutant concentrations, EPA daily fine particulate matter (PM_2.5), nitrogen dioxide (NO₂), and ozone (O₃) pollutant concentrations from seven metropolitan regions across the US for 2018-2022 were used. A Spearman Rank-Order …

Assessing The Impact Of An Intervention To Build Food Agency During Emerging Adulthood, Amy Finley

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Agriculture is an ancient human activity that has always changed the Earth. But the scale and scope of modern, industrialized agriculture is producing emergent problems in the food system, like unprecedented environmental degradation and high-calorie nutrient-poor diets that are driving poor health outcomes. Increasing cooking skills and the frequency of home cooking have been proposed as solutions to escalating rates of nutrition-related public health problems and may also be important to meeting diet-related sustainability goals like reducing meat consumption. Subsequently, the overarching aim of this thesis is to situate the importance of cooking as a strategy for food systems transformation, …

Flexible Attenuation Fields: Tomographic Reconstruction From Heterogeneous Datasets, Clifford S. Parker

Theses and Dissertations--Computer Science

Traditional reconstruction methods for X-ray computed tomography (CT) are highly constrained in the variety of input datasets they admit. Many of the imaging settings -- the incident energy, field-of-view, effective resolution -- remain fixed across projection images, and the only real variance is in the detector's position and orientation with respect to the scene. In contrast, methods for 3D reconstruction of natural scenes are extremely flexible to the geometric and photometric properties of the input datasets, readily accepting and benefiting from images captured under varying lighting conditions, with different cameras, and at disparate points in time and space. Extending CT …

A Road Map For Place Based Collaboration For Conflict Reduction, Joseph L. Zecher

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

No abstract provided.

Interannual Growth-Climate Relationships Of Western Larch After Wildfire In The Northwest, Junior Burks

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

Montane and mixed-conifer forests in the northwestern United States are burning at rates greater than any time in recent decades, due to the combined impacts of global warming and historical and contemporary land use and land management. Western larch (Larix occidentalis) is a tree of high regional significance, exhibiting a variety of traits that make it resistant and resilient to fire. Because seedlings are more sensitive to environmental stressors than adults, the impacts of climate change are expected to be detectable first in juvenile trees. Recent research shows that the natural regeneration of western larch after wildfires has …

Effects Of El Nino And Sunspot Cycles On Global And Reginal Climate, August Nathan Tolzman

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

Sunspots and El Nino affect the interannual variability of temperature on earth. Separately there is a positive relationship between higher sunspots and warmer temperatures or more intense El Nino and warmer temperatures globally and in Missoula. This is with the bias of climate change removed. Putting these two processes together it is expected that when intense El Ninos and high sunspots happen in the same year there will be warmer temperatures. This was not the case, there was no data to support that putting these to processes together makes them more or less intense.

Evaluating Land Cover Change And Opportunities For Bioenergy Crop Development On Surface Mine Sites In West Virginia, U.S.A., Kenzie D. Kohrs

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Surface mining can impact land cover, forests, and water quality. Current reclamation strategies include revegetation with herbaceous species due to the ease and speed of cover establishment. Herbaceous and woody biomass crops have been used in various studies to reclaim surface mines and act as an alternative to nonrenewable energy sources. The objectives of this study were to quantify the state of vegetation growth on former surface mines in West Virginia over a 9-year period and identify suitable acreage for bioenergy production. During 2011 to 2020, we found that over 40,000 acres had been converted to forest and 40,000 acres …

Estimating Home Range Size And Density Of White-Tailed Deer (Odocoileus Virginianus) In West Virginia, Sarah M. Pesi

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Big game hunting is an important source of revenue and recreation in the United States. Of big game species, white-tailed deer (Odocileus virginianus) are the most heavily pursued. White-tailed deer are a widespread generalist species, capable of existing at high densities. Hunting is often used as the primary method of managing deer populations, particularly in the eastern United States, where there is a lack of large predators. When populations reach high densities, there can be negative effects on the environment and conflicts with humans. Managers must consider both creating adequate hunting opportunities and reducing negative impacts when managing …

Global Analysis Of The Neutron Magnetic Form Factor, Joseph P. Jayne

Honors Theses and Capstones

Protons and neutrons, the nucleons, are made up of smaller particles called quarks. Nucleons have three valence quarks, which are the dominant contributors to its properties, as well as sea quarks (quark-antiquark pairs) and gluons. The distribution of the charge and magnetization of these particles is described by the electric and magnetic form factors. These form factors can be measured with scattering experiments since they directly affect the particle’s cross section. Neutron form factors are challenging to measure because a pure neutron target will decay very fast and is not viable for experiments. Instead, targets like 2H and 3H are …

Instances Of Undecidability In The Semigroup Word Problem, Timothy C. Grosky

Honors Theses and Capstones

We will examine the decidability of the word problem in semigroups, which is a yes/no question. We will examine tools that have been developed to help answer it, and then look at some examples where the word problem is decidable or undecidable.

Mining Contamination Of Legacy Deposits On Floodplains Along Turkey Creek, Western Border Of The Ozark Highlands, Hannah Riley Eades

MSU Graduate Theses

Historical mining activities in the Tri State mining district in Southwest Missouri from 1850 to 1950 resulted in widespread metal contamination of stream sediments. Beginning in the 1840s, land disturbances associated with Euro-American settlement and agricultural expansion increased runoff and soil erosion rates resulting in the deposition of contaminated alluvium or legacy sediment on floodplains. This study assesses zinc (Zn) and lead (Pb) contaminated legacy deposits in cut-bank exposures along floodplains in Turkey Creek Watershed (119 km²) which drained mining areas in Missouri. Ore production histories were used date metal contamination profiles and calculate floodplain deposition rates in legacy deposits. …

Road Extraction On Remote Sensing Imagery: Historical Mapping Of The Brazilian Amazon, Jonas Paiva Botelho Jr

MSU Graduate Theses

This work proposes an artificial intelligence model based on U-Net architecture to map road networks in the Brazilian Amazon. Over the years, the Amazon region has been heavily exploited, leading to increased deforestation rates, contributing to CO2 emissions, amplifying global warming, and causing a disturbance in local fauna and flora. The expansion into the forest by illegal miners, loggers, and land grabbers can be tracked down by the construction of roads, which we can refer to as the arteries of deforestation. Previous works on the matter proposed algorithms that use high-resolution imagery to map roads precisely. However, this work approach …

Fr1: Comics, Cyborgs, And “In Between” Identities, Ella Lehavi

Scripps Senior Theses

As a queer Jew who grew up surrounded by immigrant cultures and communities, I find myself in a liminal space between my identities and the dominant culture of my country– one where my perspective on gender and my cultural experiences aren’t fully understood by the world I exist in. Comics and cartoons are an explorational platform for concepts of reality and identity; they are one of very few spaces where I see my identities explored with so much depth and care.

Cartoons and comics exist in between realistic depictions and abstraction. This makes them a great place to express all …

Bayesian Inference In Reinforcement Learning Neural Networks During A Markov Decision Processes?, Katherine Graham

Scripps Senior Theses

The predictive mind theory proposes that brains work in a way that makes predictions about future stimuli to process information efficiently and accurately. Bayesian brain theory suggests that the brain utilizes Bayesian probability models to make predictions, while the free-energy minimization hypothesis proposes that these predictions are made to minimize energy or uncertainty, ensuring accurate perceptions. Vertechi et al. (2020) explored animal participants’ utilization of stimulus-bound strategy versus inference-based strategy to solve a Markov decision process with a 2-state environment, one of which is always active. These sites have a certain probability of switching to a different site and the …

Stream Pedagogy Dataset, Martha L. Carlson Mazur

Environmental Studies Faculty Datasets

This is the dataset for Carlson Mazur, Waters, and Combs. (2024). Developing community partnerships to supplement water-quality data in support of urban watershed management.

Statistically Principled Deep Learning For Sar Image Segmentation, Cassandra Goldberg

Honors Projects

This project explores novel approaches for Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) image segmentation that integrate established statistical properties of SAR into deep learning models. First, Perlin Noise and Generalized Gamma distribution sampling methods were utilized to generate a synthetic dataset that effectively captures the statistical attributes of SAR data. Subsequently, deep learning segmentation architectures were developed that utilize average pooling and 1x1 convolutions to perform statistical moment computations. Finally, supervised and unsupervised disparity-based losses were incorporated into model training. The experimental outcomes yielded promising results: the synthetic dataset effectively trained deep learning models for real SAR data segmentation, the statistically-informed architectures …

Tension Control And Interproximation Techniques Forshape Design And Rgb-Depth Segmentation Reconstruction And Modeling, Anastasia Kazadi

Theses and Dissertations--Computer Science

Human eyes possess remarkable capabilities to perceive and interpret a wealth of information about our environment; from discerning colors and depths to identifying object boundaries and navigating obstacles, our eyes serve as invaluable guides in our daily lives. Ongoing research in the fields of computer vision and computer graphics continuously explore the ways to replicate extraordinary human vision abilities in order to develop systems and frameworks which would enable computers to capture, analyze, and act upon discerned information. In this context, this dissertation seeks to investigate and automate various shape control and data processing techniques for 3D modeling and shape …

Estimating Modeling Parameters For Covid-19 Spread On Campus, Aviel S. Crigger

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Understanding the true burden of community transmission of communicable diseases like COVID-19 is crucial for effective public health response. Clinical cases, while important, only represent a fraction of the actual disease prevalence within a population. In this thesis, we investigate methods to estimate parameters that link clinical cases to the true disease prevalence using a modified compartmental model known as SICR (Susceptible, Infected, Cases, Recovered). We employ Bayesian inference and ensemble Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulations to analyze clinical case data provided by the University of Central Florida Health Center from 2020 to 2022. Our goal is to estimate …

Regional Price Index 2023, Department Of Primary Industries And Regional Development, Western Australia

Statistics

The 2023 Regional Price Index (RPI) is the eleventh State Government Index contrasting the cost of a common basket of goods and services at a number of regional locations to the Perth metropolitan region. The RPI is used as the basis for the construction of the public sector district allowance, and by the private sector when considering remuneration packages for remotely located staff.

The RPI provides an insight into differences in regional consumer costs. The 2023 RPI basket of 185 goods and services was priced in 39 regional centres around Western Australia.

The 2023 RPI results show that, overall, prices …

2024 January - Tennessee Monthly Climate Report, Tennessee Climate Office, East Tennessee State University

Tennessee Climate Office Monthly Report

No abstract provided.

2023 - Tennessee Annual Climate Summary, Tennessee Climate Office, East Tennessee State University

Tennessee Climate Office Monthly Report

No abstract provided.

River Response To Removal Of A Small Dam And Replacement With A Roughened Channel, Chandler Sabin

All Master's Theses

Relatively few studies have analyzed how the removal of small dams and re-engineering of the channel affect river channel processes. The low-head Nelson Dam was built in 1920 on the Naches River in central Washington, causing two miles of aggraded sediments. This resulted in upstream flooding and excessive downstream incision that led to ineffective irrigation diversions, and hindered fish spawning. Nelson Dam was removed in 2021 and replaced with a graded, roughened, nature-like channel and a newly engineered diversion that was completed in 2023. The research presented here quantifies the effects of the Nelson Dam removal and channel redesign on …

Gnss Radio Propagation Through Trapped Atmospheric Lee Waves In The San Bernardino Valley, Ca, Logan Grey

All Master's Theses

Atmospheric lee waves, also known as mountain waves, are a type of gravity wave that form as air that is forced over a mountain creates turbulence downstream. Trapped, or stationary, lee waves located directly over a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receiver on Earth’s surface appear to lead to anomalies in the receiver’s position estimate, usually skewed toward the neighboring mountain range. The exact mechanism by which trapped lee waves might cause these anomalies is not known, and so my research aims to understand this. GNSS station P612 located in the lee of the San Bernardino Mountains in southern California …

Virtual Reality & Pilot Training: Existing Technologies, Challenges & Opportunities, Tim Marron M.S., Niall Dungan Bsc, Captain, Brian Mac Namee Phd, Anna Donnla O'Hagan Phd

Journal of Aviation/Aerospace Education & Research

The introduction of virtual reality (VR) to flying training has recently gained much attention, with numerous VR companies, such as Loft Dynamics and VRpilot, looking to enhance the training process. Such a considerable change to how pilots are trained is a subject that warrants careful consideration. Examining the effect that VR has on learning in other areas gives us an idea of how VR can be suitably applied to flying training. Some of the benefits offered by VR include increased safety, decreased costs, and increased environmental sustainability. Nevertheless, some challenges ahead for developers to consider are negative transfer of learning, …

Application Of Density Altitude Climatology To General Aviation Impacts, Thomas A. Guinn Ph.D., Daniel J. Halperin Ph.D., Sarah Strazzo Ph.D.

Journal of Aviation/Aerospace Education & Research

Density altitude (DA) plays a key role in flight safety because it helps pilots anticipate poor aircraft performance when temperatures are warmer than standard. In this study, a 30-year climatology of DA for the conterminous United States was created using the fifth-generation European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts atmospheric reanalysis of the global climate (ERA5) dataset was applied to four separate DA-based, aircraft-performance, rules-of-thumb for general aviation (GA) flight. The goal was to demonstrate a technique to create educational visualization tools showing the variation of operational flight impacts with both month and location. Four such parameters were chosen to show …

Adaptable And Trustworthy Machine Learning For Human Activity Recognition From Bioelectric Signals, Morgan S. Stuart

Theses and Dissertations

Enabling machines to learn measures of human activity from bioelectric signals has many applications in human-machine interaction and healthcare. However, labeled activity recognition datasets are costly to collect and highly varied, which challenges machine learning techniques that rely on large datasets. Furthermore, activity recognition in practice needs to account for user trust - models are motivated to enable interpretability, usability, and information privacy. The objective of this dissertation is to improve adaptability and trustworthiness of machine learning models for human activity recognition from bioelectric signals. We improve adaptability by developing pretraining techniques that initialize models for later specialization to unseen …

Large Language Models, Prompting, And Synthetic Data Generation For Continual Named Entity Recognition, Charles I. Cutler

Theses and Dissertations

With the ever-growing amount of textual data, the task of Named Entity Recognition (NER) is vital to Natural Language Processing (NLP), a field which focuses on enabling computers to understand and manipulate human language. NER enables the extraction of information from unstructured text. Accurate information extraction is crucial for applications ranging from information retrieval to systems for question-answering. To ensure that NER models are robust to changes in data distributions and capable of recognizing new entity types, one may consider expanding the capabilities of an existing model. Continual learning is a paradigm within machine learning. It studies the objective of …

Towards Effective Developer Communication In Open Source Software Via Emotional Awareness, Mia Mohammad Imran

Theses and Dissertations

Emotions play an integral yet understudied role in open-source software development, profoundly shaping critical collaborative processes such as knowledge sharing, decision-making, and team dynamics. However, accurately detecting and analyzing emotions in developer communications poses significant challenges due to the lack of visual and auditory cues in text-based interactions. This dissertation investigates techniques to enhance the understanding and modeling of emotions within the textual artifacts of open-source projects. We conduct an extensive evaluation of existing emotion classification tools using a novel dataset of annotated GitHub comments. An error analysis reveals deficiencies in handling implicit emotional expressions and figurative language. We demonstrate …

Why Is Grant Lake A Reservoir? A Brief Geological And Human History, From The Pleistocene To The Present, Robert B. Marks

Eastern Sierra History Journal

Drawing on a range of archival resources and illustrative material, Prof. Marks probes why and how Grant Lake in the Eastern Sierra of California became a reservoir. The process is long and involved, and has much to do with a remote and ancient lake ultimately being developed to serve the water needs of the distant city of Los Angeles.