Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Graph Convolution Neural Network And Deep Q-Network Optimization-Based Intrusion Detection With Explainability Analysis, Kelvin Mwiga, Mussa Dida, Leandros Maglaras, Ahmad Mohsin, Helge Janicke, Iqbal H. Sarker

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

As networks expand in size and complexity, coupled with an exponential increase in intrusions on network and IoT systems, this leads to traditional models failing to capture increasingly intricate correlations among network components accurately. Graph Convolution Networks (GCNs) have recently acquired prominence for their capacity to represent nodes, edges, or entire graphs by aggregating information from adjacent nodes. However, the correlations between nodes and their neighbours, as well as related edges, differ. Assigning higher weights to nodes and edges with high similarity improves model accuracy and expressiveness. In this paper, we propose the GCN-DQN model, which integrates GCN with a …

Software Engineering In The Age Of Coding Agents: Failure Modes And Rejection Patterns, Mahd Mohd Hindi

Theses

This thesis investigates the real-world behavior of LLM-driven coding agents that generate code changes and submit pull requests (PRs) to public software repositories. As these tools evolve from autocomplete-style assistants into more autonomous agents, their contributions increasingly interact with socio-technical review processes (human reviewers, bots, CI/CD gates, and project norms). The thesis focuses on understanding why agent-generated PRs are accepted or rejected and what these outcomes reveal about current agent limitations in practical development workflows.

The main objective of this thesis is to systematically characterize rejection patterns and failure modes of agent-generated pull requests in real repositories. Specifically, the thesis …

Optimizing And Fortifying Ai Software Through The Lens Of Artifact Synthesis, Jieke Shi

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has transformed the software landscape, ushering in a new era of intelligent systems that increasingly shape our daily lives. This transformation is evident in various domains, including Software Engineering (SE), where Large Language Models (LLMs) support many development tools, and control systems, where self-driving cars and autonomous drones rely on deep learning models for real-time decision-making. These AI systems are collectively referred to as AI software, with the former categorized as AI4SE software (AI for Software Engineering) and the latter as AI4Control software (AI for Control). As AI software becomes central to modern computing infrastructure, its reliability …

Securing Ai Models Against Backdoors, Jailbreaks, And Prompt Injections, Myat Min Nay

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Deep neural networks (DNNs) and large language models (LLMs) in safety-critical settings face a family of related threats: an adversary can corrupt training so a hidden trigger flips a model’s behavior (backdoor), craft inference-time inputs that override safety alignment (jailbreaks) or smuggle in task-overriding instructions (prompt injections), or steer the model’s stance on whole concepts (semantic inconsistencies). Current defenses address each of these in isolation. This dissertation argues they admit a unified treatment through a shared diagnostic design principle: a matched perturbation, probing, or operating condition exposes a method-specific diagnostic signal in the model’s internal computation or observable behavior, and …

Microstructural Evolution Of Zirconium Diboride Irradiated With 5–10 Mev Au Ions At Room Temperature And 570 °C, Narrie Loftus, José Olivares, Miguel Crespillo, Esther Enríquez Pérez, Jeremy Watts, Eric W. Bohannan, Gregory Hilmas, William Fahrenholtz, Joseph Graham

Materials Science and Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Zirconium diboride was irradiated with 5 MeV Au^2 + , 7 MeV Au⁴⁺ and 10 MeV Au³⁺ ions at room temperature and 570 °C to doses from 1 to 8 displacements per atom (dpa). Grazing incidence X-ray diffraction (GIXRD) analysis revealed no secondary phase formation. Rietveld analysis of the GIXRD data indicated an accumulation of microstrain at low dpa and room temperature. Dislocations observed in transmission electron microscopy (TEM) cross-sections are likely the main contributor to the microstrain. High dpa and high-temperature samples exhibit lower lattice distortion than lower dpa samples, suggesting the presence of enhanced defect …

A Mineralogical And Geochemical Characterization Of The Amo Meteorite, Karinn Johnson '27, Kenneth Brown, Chad Byers, Thomas Grier

Annual Student Research Poster Session

Meteorites provide a wealth of information about solar system evolution, planetary formation and differentiation, and provide clues to the origins of water and life on Earth. On December 10th, 2024 (4:04 EST), a meteor fall was observed approximately 50 km west of Indianapolis, over the small town of Amo, Indiana (Hendricks County). Several pieces of the meteor ranging from about 1g to >60kg were recovered. A local Greencastle, IN resident collected a 1451.3g sample, of which a 7.5g piece was donated to DePauw University for detailed textural, mineralogical, and geochemical characterization using stereomicroscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy-dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), …

Iowa Waste Reduction Center Newsletter, March 2026, University Of Northern Iowa. Iowa Waste Reduction Center.

Iowa Waste Reduction Center Newsletter

Contents:

--- Welcome, IWRC Advisory Committee
--- Growing Iowa’s Composting Movement to National Leadership
--- Diane Albertson Memorial Scholarship
--- P2 Green Brewery Webinar Registration is Now Open
--- Potential Hazards of Lithium-Ion Batteries in Landfills

Hybrid Deep Learning For Anti-Money Laundering: Unsupervised Detection Of Emerging Schemes Via Feature Fusion And Explainable Artificial Intelligence, Cosmas Ochieng Kungu, Kennedy Senagi, Evans Omondi

All Peer-Reviewed Publications

Traditional rule-based anti-money laundering (AML) transaction monitoring systems suffer from high false-positive rates and rigidity in detecting complex emerging risk. This limitation has prompted changes to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) recommendation 16, mandating the use of advanced systems for detecting money laundering schemes in cross-border payments. This study developed a hybrid framework integrating VAE-learned behavioural latent factors, GNN-captured relational network signals, and rule-based heuristics for enhanced anomaly detection. The model was evaluated on 54,258 real-world cross-border transaction records from an East African commercial bank. The One-Class SVM, optimised via a rigorous grid search proved superior compared to Isolation …

Efficient Active Training For Deep Lidar Odometry, Beibei Zhou, Zhiyuan Zhang, Zhenbo Song, Jianhui Guo, Hui Kong

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Robust and efficient deep LiDAR odometry models are crucial for accurate localization and 3D reconstruction, but typically require extensive and diverse training data to adapt to diverse environments, leading to inefficiencies. To tackle this, we introduce an active training framework designed to selectively extract training data from diverse environments, thereby reducing the training load and enhancing model generalization. Our framework is based on two key strategies: Initial Training Set Selection (ITSS) and Active Incremental Selection (AIS). ITSS begins by breaking down motion sequences from general weather into nodes and edges for detailed trajectory analysis, prioritizing diverse sequences to form a …

Interactions Between Air Pollution And Weather/Climate From Urban To Global Scales, Meng Gao, Xin Huang, Yucong Miao, Mengmeng Li, Claudio Mazzoleni

Michigan Tech Publications

Air pollution and meteorology are intricately linked. Weather modulates the formation, transport, and removal of pollutants, while aerosols and trace gases modify radiation balance, cloud microphysics, boundary-layer structure, and other factors. These two-way interactions span scales from urban to global and have important consequences. The papers collected in this special issue of Meteorological Applications examine how interactions between weather and pollution at various scales affect visibility, pollutant transport, crop yields, and other outcomes, collectively highlighting the crucial role of the interplay between air pollution and meteorology.

A Cryptographic Perspective On The Verifiability Of Quantum Advantage, Nai-Hui Chia, Honghao Fu, Fang Song, Penghui Yao

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

In recent years, achieving verifiable quantum advantage on a NISQ device has emerged as an important open problem in quantum information. The sampling-based quantum advantages are not known to have efficient verification methods. This article investigates the verification of quantum advantage from a cryptographic perspective. We establish a strong connection between the verifiability of quantum advantage and cryptographic and complexity primitives, including efficiently samplable, statistically far but computationally indistinguishable pairs of (mixed) quantum states (EFI), pseudorandom states (PRS), and variants of minimum circuit size problems (MCSP). Specifically, we prove that a) a sampling-based quantum advantage is either verifiable or can …

In What Style Shall I Confront Them? The Role Of Social Relationships In Social Correction Of Misinformation Among The Uk And Arab Social Media Users, Muaadh Noman, Mohamed B. Almourad, Ala Yankouskaya, Firoj Alam, Raian Ali

All Works

This study investigates how social factors influence the likelihood of employing direct or indirect communication styles when correcting misinformation on social media in two different cultural contexts, the United Kingdom (UK) and the Arab Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. We conducted an online survey, supported by vignettes, that involved 686 participants, 367 from the UK and 319 from the Arab GCC countries. Participants were presented with a misinformation scenario and asked about their likelihood of using direct or indirect communication styles to correct their acquaintances. The survey captured variations in gender similarity (same vs. different gender), social status (lower vs. …

Generative Ai For Text-To-Video Generation: Recent Advances And Future Directions, Kadhim Hayawi, Sakib Shahriar

All Works

Text-to-video (T2V) generation has recently emerged as a transformative technology within the field of generative AI, enabling the creation of realistic, temporally coherent videos based on natural language descriptions. This paradigm provides significant added value in many domains such as creative media, human-computer interaction, immersive learning, and simulation. Despite its growing importance, systematic discussion of T2V is still limited compared with adjacent modalities such as text-to-image and image-to-video. To alleviate the scarcity of discussions in the T2V field, this paper provides a systematic review of works published from 2024 onward, consolidating fragmented contributions across the field. We survey and categorize …

Identification Of Microplastics And Additives From The Lake Erie Watershed And The Cuyahoga River Via Maldi-Ms And Dart-Ms, Chrys Wesdemiotis, Calum Bochenek, Luciana Rivera Molina, Robert Brand

University Research

Micro(nano)plastics have received increased attention as environmental contaminants due to their harmful effects on ecosystems and human health. Conventional extraction methods for microplastic analysis are often lengthy and complicated, resulting in the loss of important chemical components such as additives. In this study, we provide a complementary approach, utilizing matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) and direct analysis in real time (DART) mass spectrometry (MS) techniques, with minimal extraction and sample preparation to preserve both polymer and additive information. MALDI-MS was applied to aqueous samples collected along the shores of Lake Erie and the Cuyahoga River, successfully identifying the base polymer(s) in …

No Name Ditch Filter Request, Chad Pritchard, Sonja Durr

EWU PFAS Research Collection

This is a one-page request showing the need for filtration at No Name Ditch at the SE corner of Fairchild Air Force Base (FAFB), West Plains, Spokane County, Washington.  Surface water levels in the ditch and stormwater ponds that feed the system can exceed 20,000 ppt for PFOS while groundwater can be up to 2,000 ppt for PFOS, per a remedial investigation report for FAFB in 2025.  The federal drinking water standard for PFOS is 4 ppt. While surface water and stormwater are not regulated for PFAS levels, these polluted waters enter the groundwater just off base and likely contaminate …

Opencil: Benchmarking Out-Of-Distribution Detection In Class Incremental Learning, Wenjun Miao, Guansong Pang, Trong-Tung Nguyen, Ruohuan Fang, Jin Zheng, Xiao Bai

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Class incremental learning (CIL) aims to learn a model that can not only incrementally accommodate new classes, but also maintain the learned knowledge of old classes. Out-of-distribution (OOD) detection in CIL is to retain this incremental learning ability, while being able to reject unknown samples that are drawn from different distributions of the learned classes. This capability is crucial to the safety of deploying CIL models in open worlds. However, despite remarkable advancements in the respective CIL and OOD detection, there lacks a systematic and large-scale benchmark to assess the capability of advanced CIL models in detecting OOD samples. To …

Comprehensively Evaluating The Perception Systems Of Autonomous Vehicles Against Hazards, Xiaodong Zhang, Jie Bao, Jianlei Chi, Jun Sun, Zijiang Yang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Perception systems are vital for the safety of autonomous driving. In complex autonomous driving scenarios, autonomous vehicles must overcome various natural hazards, such as heavy rain or raindrops on the camera lens. Therefore, it is essential to conduct comprehensive testing of the perception systems in autonomous vehicles against these hazards, as demanded by the regulatory agencies of many countries for human drivers. Since there are many hazard scenarios, each of which has multiple configurable parameters, the challenges are (1) how do we systematically and adequately test an autonomous vehicle against these hazard scenarios, with measurable outcome; and (2) how do …

Interpretable Machine Learning For Personalized Profiling Of Mild Cognitive Impairment From Daily Activities, Budhitama Subagdja, Ah-Hwee Tan, Kenneth Kwok, Iris Rawtaer

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Continuous monitoring of individual daily activities is essential to detect mild cognitive impairment (MCI) wherein timely intervention can still be applied to prevent more severe mental decline. Recent approaches in predicting MCI are mostly considering digital biomarkers across individuals but often neglecting specific indicators from a single person over a long period of time. Making this personalized, dynamic, and highly noisy prediction model with irregular distribution of missing information to be explainable and actionable for clinical use, remains a challenge. This paper presents a study on a personalized MCI prediction and profiling from an in-home and mobile cognitive health monitoring …

Improving Credit Card Transaction Fraud Detection Using Cvqboosting, Bethel Hui Ting Loke, Nirvik Sahoo, Bingyan Guan, Minrui Xu, Dev Verma, Paul R. Griffin

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper introduces a novel hybrid quantum-classical approach to credit card fraud detection using CVQBoost, a hybrid quantum-classical boosting algorithm executed on the photonic Dirac-3 processor from Quantum Computing Inc. (QCi). By integrating a diverse set of weak classifiers, which includes K-nearest neighbours (KNN), linear discriminant analysis, logistic regression, and XGBoost, within a hybrid quantum-classical ensemble, the proposed method demonstrates significant improvements over the latest published classical benchmarks. Experiments on a Kaggle credit card fraud dataset show that the quantum-enhanced model achieves a mean AUC-PR score of over 0.8, corresponding to an approximately 9% relative improvement over the best published …

A Knowledge Transfer-Based Membrane Evolutionary Algorithm For Solving Large-Scale Sorted Waste Collection Problem With Timeliness, Wenxue Zhang, Boquan Gao, Aldy Gunawan, Yunyun Niu, Jianhua Xiao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The sorted collection of municipal solid waste has emerged as an effective waste management strategy due to varying timeliness requirements across different waste types, giving rise to the critical research challenge of timeliness-based waste collection. While existing algorithms primarily focus on small-scale versions of this problem, solving large-scale timeliness-based waste collection problems remains particularly challenging. To tackle this issue, this paper proposes a knowledge transfer-based membrane evolutionary algorithm. Specifically, the original problem and simplified problem are constructed in different membranes respectively, and the knowledge transfer learning mechanism is incorporated into the membrane evolutionary algorithm, enabling effective information exchange between the …

Learning To Search For Vehicle Routing With Multiple Time Windows, Kuan Xu, Zhiguang Cao, Chenlong Zheng, Lindong Liu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this study, we propose a reinforcement learning-based adaptive variable neighborhood search (RL-AVNS) method designed for effectively solving the Vehicle Routing Problem with Multiple Time Windows (VRPMTW). Unlike traditional adaptive approaches that rely solely on historical operator performance, our method integrates a reinforcement learning framework to dynamically select neighborhood operators based on real-time solution states and learned experience. We introduce a fitness metric that quantifies customers’ temporal flexibility to improve the shaking phase, and employ a transformer-based neural policy network to intelligently guide operator selection during the local search. Extensive computational experiments are conducted on realistic scenarios derived from the …

Addressing Graph Heterogeneity And Heterophily From A Spectral Perspective, Kangkang Lu, Yanhua Yu, Ruopei Guo, Nan Cheng, Zhiyong Huang, Yunshan Ma, Meiyu Liang, Yuling Wang, Xiting Qin, Yimeng Ren, Tat-Seng Chua

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) face two key challenges, heterogeneity and heterophily, which often degrade performance. Existing approaches either focus narrowly on specific meta-paths, limiting their expressiveness, or are expressive but cannot effectively leverage higher-order neighbors. In this paper, we propose the Heterogeneous Heterophilic Spectral Graph Neural Network (H2SGNN), which combines local independent filtering to adaptively handle meta-path subgraphs with varying homophily ratios, and global hybrid filtering to capture high-order neighbor interactions with linear computational complexity. On five heterogeneous graph benchmarks—DBLP, ACM, IMDB, AMiner, and Yelp—H2SGNN consistently outperforms strong baselines, for example, achieving +1.0% Macro-F1 and +1.3% Micro-F1 on IMDB. It …

Edgeclip: Injecting Edge-Awareness Into Visual-Language Models For Zero-Shot Semantic Segmentation, Jiaxiang Fang, Shiqiang Ma, Guihua Duan, Fei Guo, Shengfeng He

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Effective segmentation of unseen categories in zero-shot semantic segmentation is hindered by models’ limited ability to interpret edges in unfamiliar contexts. In this paper, we propose EdgeCLIP, which addresses this by integrating CLIP with explicit edge-awareness. Based on the premise that edge variation patterns are similar across both seen and unseen class objects, EdgeCLIP introduces the Contextual Edge Sensing module. This module accurately discerns and utilizes edge information, which is crucial in complex border areas where conventional models struggle. Further, our Text-Guided Dense Feature Matching strategy precisely aligns text encodings with corresponding visual edge features, effectively distinguishing them from background …

Navigating Ethical Considerations And Implications Of Ai Chatbots In Higher Education: A Systematic Review, Ons Al-Shamaileh, Ramy Hammady, Mahmoud Abdelrahman, Omar Mubin

All Works

This systematic review explores the ethical challenges associated with the use of AI-based chatbots in higher education, focusing on their implications for students, educators, institutions, and administrative stakeholders. Following PRISMA guidelines, peer-reviewed literature published between 2014 and 2024 was systematically identified across eight major academic databases, yielding a total of 109 eligible studies. A thematic analysis of the included literature indicates that concerns related to academic integrity are most frequently discussed, alongside recurring issues involving data privacy and security, algorithmic bias, overreliance on automated systems, and the risk of inaccurate or misleading outputs. The findings further demonstrate considerable variation in …

Automated Machine Learning For High-Resolution Daily And Hourly Methane Emission Mapping For Rice Paddies Over South Korea: Integrating Modis, Era5-Land, And Soil Data, Jiah Jang, Seung Hee Kim, Menas Kafatos, Jaeil Cho, Gayoung Yoo, Sujong Jeong, Yangwon Lee

Institute for ECHO Articles and Research

Agriculture is a major global source of methane (CH4), and accurate emission estimates are essential for refining national greenhouse gas inventories and supporting climate-resilient policies. This study develops a high-resolution estimation framework for CH4 emissions from Korean rice paddies by integrating multi-source datasets, including Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) vegetation indices, European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) Reanalysis Version 5 (ERA5)-Land meteorological variables, and Harmonized World Soil Database (HWSD) soil properties. Using CH4 flux observations from four global rice ecosystems (Italy, Japan, South Korea, and USA), we constructed parallel daily and hourly machine learning models using an automated machine …

Driver Behavior Analyzer 2.0: A Modular Framework For Interpretable Driver Safety Analysis From Obd-Ii And Gps Telemetry, Sangwhan Cha, Venkata Sundar Kamesh Durvasula

Harrisburg University Other Works

Driver behavior analysis plays a central role in advancing road safety and enabling data-driven driver feedback. Although commercial telematics platforms offer sophisticated analytics, they are frequently expensive, proprietary, and optimized for enterprise-scale use. At the same time, low-cost On-Board Diagnostics II (OBD-II) adapters make telemetry collection widely accessible, but they typically do not provide higher-level behavioral interpretation.

In this paper, we present Driver Behavior Analyzer 2.0 (DBA 2.0), an offline-first, modular analytics framework that converts OBD-II and GPS telemetry into interpretable safety insights. DBA 2.0 supports ingestion of telemetry logs in CSV and JSON formats, data normalization, rule-based detection of …

Vaccination Games Of Boundedly Rational Parents Toward New Childhood Immunization, Wei Yin, Martial L. Ndeffo-Mbah, Tamer Oraby

School of Mathematical & Statistical Sciences Faculty Publications

Infectious diseases harm societies through disease-induced morbidity, mortality, loss of productivity, and inequality. Thus, controlling and preventing them is critical for public health and societal well-being. However, societies can hinder efforts to control the spread of diseases by failing to adhere to public health recommendations, such as through vaccine hesitancy. Various disease-transmission models have been utilized to help policymakers respond to (re)emerging outbreaks. The usefulness of such models in assessing the effectiveness of public health policies is significantly dependent on human behavior. This paper introduces a new model of parental behavior toward a new childhood immunization. The model incorporates societal …

Watersmart Farms - Desalination: Summary Report, Wendell Ela, Abdulla Rasheed, Sharmina Begum, Vaibhav Patel, Goruck Soubans, John K. Ruprecht, V Ravisankar, S Aktar, B Husbands, L Li

Natural resources commissioned reports

In 2026, Murdoch University completed a series of investigations into farm and community scale desalination in the Wheatbelt of Western Australia for the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD) and Water Corporation. The key studies investigated farm scale desalination, community scale desalination, best practice techniques for desalination in agriculture and brine management review.

The key findings of the studies are presented here, followed by an overview of the considerations concerning the potential for desalination across the Wheatbelt. Readers are referred to the Technical Reports for more detailed information.

This report is an overview of the following reports:

Ela, …

X-Ray Emission In Illustristng Circum-Cluster Environments: Ii. Possible Origins Of The Soft X-Ray Excess Emission, Celine Gouin, Daniela Galárraga-Espinosa, Massimiliano Bonamente, Stephen Walker, Mohammad Mirakhor, Richard Lieu, Clotilde Laigle, Etienne Bonnassieux, Charlotte Welker, Stefano Gallo, Tony Bonnaire, Jade Paste

Publications and Research

Context. An excess of soft X–ray emission (∼0.2 − 1 keV) above the contribution from the hot intracluster medium (ICM) has been detected in a number of galaxy clusters, including the Coma cluster. The physical origin of this emitting medium above the hot ICM has not yet been determined, in particular, it is unclear whether it is thermal or nonthermal.

Aims. We investigate the gas phase and gas structure that reproduce the soft excess radiation from the cluster core to the outskirts best using simulations.

Method. By using the IllustrisTNG simulation (TNG300), we predict the radial profile of thermodynamic properties …

A High-Fidelity Multimodal Synthetic Dataset Generation Framework For Off-Road Unstructured Terrain Navigation Training Of Autonomous Robots, Liyana Wijayathunga, Dulitha Dabare, Alexander Rassau, Douglas Chai, Syed Mohammed Shamsul Islam

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

The success of deep learning methods in a wide range of application areas has inspired many recent developments in the urban and off-road autonomous navigation domain. In particular, techniques for semantic scene understanding, a key aspect of the navigation pipeline, have been researched extensively, resulting in many real-world and synthetic datasets. However, in comparison to urban semantic segmentation datasets, the availability of datasets for off-road environments remains sparse. In this paper, we aim to overcome this challenge by introducing a methodology capable of efficiently generating photorealistic synthetic datasets for off-road environments with support for multiple sensor modalities. The developed approach …