Graphics and Human Computer Interfaces Commons^™

Revealing Spatiotemporal Neural Activation Patterns In Electrocorticography Recordings Of Human Speech Production By Mutual Information, Julio Kovacs, Dean Krusienski, Minu Maninder, Willy Wriggers

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

Background

Spatiotemporal mapping of neural activity during continuous speech production has been traditionally approached using correlation coefficient (CC) analysis between cortical signals and speech recordings. A prior study employed this approach using electrocorticography (ECoG) data from participants who underwent invasive intracranial monitoring for epilepsy. However, CC cannot detect nonlinear relationships and is dominated by the correspondence between periods of silence and of non-silence.

New Method

We introduce the mutual information (MI) measure, which can capture both linear and nonlinear dependencies. We validated CC and MI on the sub-second spatiotemporal brain activity recorded during continuous speech tasks. To refine the results, …

Openmuse: Integrating Open-Source Models Into Music Creation Workflows, Tyler K. Vergho

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

This master's thesis introduces OpenMUSE (Open Multimodal Unified Sound Engine), a platform that demonstrates the potential of open-source AI music generation by integrating state-of-the-art deep learning models into a unified system. By unifying ten different open-source models, including MusicGen, AudioLDM2, and custom-trained text-to-symbolic music generation models, OpenMUSE aims to create a user-friendly interface that empowers artists to produce complex, adaptive musical compositions. The system enhances accessibility by providing a simple web interface and natural language controls, while improving controllability through features like melody conditioning and semantic audio editing. Specifically, OpenMUSE offers a digital audio workstation (DAW)-inspired interface that lowers the …

Procedural Terrain Generation: Noise Functions, Modern Methods, And Style Transfer, Hunter Barton

EWU Masters Thesis Collection

Procedural terrain generation, the algorithmic creation of digital terrain, finds use in multiple types of digital media. As the capabilities of modern computation increase, the ability to create more and more realistic terrains fully procedurally at scale improves. Modern methods of procedural generation have also overlapped with these advances, most notably advances in hardware. To account for this, a survey was done of modern methods for procedural terrain generation. Smooth procedural noise functions are one of the backbones of procedural terrain generation. Perlin noise, value noise, and fractal noise were explored in-depth. These noise functions were also tested for capabilities …

Eulerian Smoke Simulation With Multiple Fields, Diyang Zhang

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

Fluid simulation is a cornerstone of computer graphics, enabling the realistic depiction of dynamic phenomena such as smoke, fire, and other gaseous behaviours. This thesis focuses on advancing Eulerian smoke simulation techniques, with a particular emphasis on grid-based simulations that capture intricate vortical structures and fine visual details.

We propose several detail-preserving frameworks that incorporate various scalar and vector fields within the simulation pipeline, including velocity, impulse, and Lamb vectors, along with their decompositions and transformed representations. By mathematically analyzing the properties of impulse, we derive its scalar fields decomposition (ImpSFD), which introduces an alternative numerical interpretation, and Vortex-Particles in …

Generalizing Classification Of Pilot Workload: Transfer Learning Versus A Jepa-Inspired Transformer Architecture, Naim Barnett, Shivani Nagrecha, Morgan Glover, Clayton Harper, Justin Wilson, James Maher, Eric C. Larson

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

Within the context of learning, there poses difficulty when objectively measuring human performance. In this work, we investigate the evaluation of human performance via its relation to the individual's mental capacity by classification of cognitive load within the domain of aviation. By utilizing a mixed virtual and physical flight simulation environment in conjunction with biometric sensing, we create and evaluate the predictive capabilities of a Joint-Embedding Predictive Architecture (JEPA) and compare the architecture and results to traditional methods for transfer learning and domain adaptation. We find that our JEPA inspired architecture can achieve more than 70% accuracy of cognitive workload, …

Robust Text Input For Smartwatches: Compensating For Imprecise Tapping And Swiping, Jianwei Lai, Lina Zhou, Kanlun Wang, Dongsong Zhang

Faculty Publications - Information Technology

Entering text on a smartwatch is challenging due to the difficulty of tapping tiny keys. This study introduces a novel keyboard, Tap’nSwipe, to address the challenge. The keyboard features nine areas, each containing up to four characters. To enter a character, users swipe in a specific direction within the area containing the character, freeing them from precisely tapping on the target key. In addition, Tap’nSwipe leverages word predictions to enter words by allowing users to tap anywhere in the areas containing the target characters. The results of a user experiment show that Tap’nSwipe improves text entry accuracy and reduces error …

Weakly-Supervised Semantic Segmentation With Image-Level Labels: From Traditional Models To Foundation Models, Zhaozheng Chen, Qianru Sun

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The rapid development of deep learning has driven significant progress in image semantic segmentation—a fundamental task in computer vision. Semantic segmentation algorithms often depend on the availability of pixel-level labels (i.e., masks of objects), which are expensive, time consuming, and labor intensive. Weakly supervised semantic segmentation (WSSS) is an effective solution to avoid such labeling. It utilizes only partial or incomplete annotations and provides a cost-effective alternative to fully supervised semantic segmentation. In this article, our focus is on the WSSS with image-level labels, which is the most challenging form of WSSS. Our work has two parts. First, we conduct …

Clinician Perspectives On Virtual Reality Use In Physical Therapy Practice In The United States, Danielle T. Felsberg, Jared T. Mcguirt, Scott E. Ross, Louisa D. Raisbeck, Charlend K. Howard, Christopher K. Rhea

Rehabilitation Sciences Faculty Publications

The primary goal of physical rehabilitation is to assess movement impairments and restore function to improve overall quality of life. Virtual reality (VR) may provide the optimal environment to promote these goals due to its motivating and modifiable nature which can be difficult to accomplish through traditional real-world therapeutic methods. Current research of VR for rehabilitation has demonstrated that VR interventions can produce clinically meaningful change in motor outcomes. Despite this, adoption and usage of VR by physical therapy professionals is unclear due to the limited research in this area. Thus, the purpose of this study was to identify the …

Nexus: Network Exploration For Exploiting Unsafe Sequences In Multi-Turn Llm Jailbreaks, Javad Rafiei Asl, Sidhant Narula, Mohammad Ghasemigol, Eduardo Blanco, Daniel Takabi

School of Cybersecurity Faculty Publications

Large Language Models (LLMs) have revolutionized natural language processing, yet remain vulnerable to jailbreak attacks—particularly multi-turn jailbreaks that distribute malicious intent across benign exchanges, thereby bypassing alignment mechanisms. Existing approaches often suffer from limited exploration of the adversarial space, rely on hand-crafted heuristics, or lack systematic query refinement. We propose NEXUS (Network Exploration for eXploiting Unsafe Sequences), a modular framework for constructing, refining, and executing optimized multi-turn attacks. NEXUS comprises: (1) ThoughtNet, which hierarchically expands a harmful intent into a structured semantic network of topics, entities, and query chains; (2) a feedback-driven Simulator that iteratively refines and prunes these chains …

Flexible Hybrid Self-Powered Piezo-Triboelectric Nanogenerator Based On Bto-Pvdf/Pdms Nanocomposites For Human Machine Interaction, Wentao Dong, Mengyun Li, Chang Chen, Kun Xie, Jinhua Hong, Lin Yang

Civil & Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

As flexible and wearable electronics play more and more important role in smart watches, smart glass and virtual reality, and the power supply to the wearable electronics have been revealed more attentions for long-term usage and continuous healthy monitoring. To overcome the challenge, flexible self-powered BTO-PVDF/PDMS piezoelectric-triboelectric electric hybrid generators (BPP-HNG) are developed to human gesture monitoring and human machine interaction (HMI) application without external power supply. BPP-HNG based on BTO-PVDF and PDMS films are prepared by sol-gel and spin-coating method. When the BTO content is 20 wt.%, BPP-HNG exhibits better electrical performance with an output voltage of 20.51 V. …

Quickque: Enabling Quick Access To Information In User Reviews For Screen Reader Users, Mohan Sunkara, Akshay Kolgar Nayak, Sandeep Kalari, Yash Prakash, Sampath Jayarathna, Hae-Na Lee, Vikas Ashok

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Efficiently perusing online customer reviews is presently challenging for blind users, who rely on a screen reader that supports predominantly one-dimensional narration of content via keyboard shortcuts. To address this, with restaurant reviews as seminal case study, we developed QuickCue, a browser extension prototype that enables screen reader users to quickly obtain the positives and negatives regarding different aspects of a restaurant (e.g., food quality, hygiene, ambiance), without having to sift through numerous reviews containing redundant information. At its core, QuickCue utilizes a large language model to perform aspect and sentiment-based joint classification of reviews to group them based on …

Automatic Scoring Cornhole Board System, Eric Diffendal, Jonah Harsh, Connor Lengel, Brett Sukie

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The objective is to create a self-scoring cornhole board that can detect and calculate each team's score based on the bags thrown each round and to be created at a low cost/eventually being sold at the current cost of a normal board. When playing cornhole, the game is simple: throw a bag on the board; however, the scores are variable (deduct and add) across each round. The most common issue when playing cornhole is miscalculations of the scores and forgetting the correct scores. Thus, this invention will make gameplay easy for all to play.

User Interface For Custom Car Infotainment Systems, Dylan Miller

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The infotainment system is often considered one of the most functional and luxurious aspects of modern cars, containing functions that are useful to drivers in ways that range from convenient to safety-enhancing. However, modern infotainment systems can have some drawbacks such as making it more difficult to repair the vehicles they are in, helping to artificially limit the lifespan of the vehicles they are in, and not being present in most vehicles more than 15 years old. The software described in this paper, OpenQarUI, seeks to be a part of a solution to these problems. It is a piece of …

Ultrasonic Sensor-Based Sound Synthesis Using Raspberry Pi Pico W, Niraj Jaishwal

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

At the intersection of Human Computer Interaction and digital art, this project transforms simple motion into musical expression. It explores an interactive real-time sound synthesis system using ultrasonic sensors to generate continuous audio. The objective is to design a system that maps physical distances into musical parameters such as pitch and amplitude, which will create a responsive audio environment. Two ultrasonic sensors are used in combination with the Raspberry Pi Pico W microcontroller running CircuitPython and Adafruit Audio Hat for real-time sound output. One sensor controls the pitch of the generated tone, while the other controls volume. This enables expressive …

Personalized Physics Learning Through Ai: Insights From Problem Generation, Chatbot Dialogues, And Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Atharva Dange

Physics Dissertations - Archive

Artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to transform science education, yet questions remain on how best to integrate these technologies into teaching and learning. This dissertation investigates the use of AI-driven tools in university physics courses through three complementary studies. In the first study, a generative language model (ChatGPT) was used to create novel physics homework problems aligned with course objectives. Analysis showed that, after expert vetting, AI-generated questions can foster higher-order problem-solving and reduce student reliance on solution memorization, though careful instructor oversight is required to ensure accuracy. The second study embedded an AI chatbot as a learning aid in …

Polarimetric Capture And Differentiable Rendering, Katherine Anne Salesin

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Many scientific fields rely on the capture and modeling of light to extract underlying information about the world. Often, more information can be extracted by capturing more about the nature of the light, such as its spectral shape or polarization state. While polarization is a relatively unexplored topic in computer graphics, when used in tandem with other recent advancements in the field it has enormous potential to improve both forward and inverse models in other scientific disciplines. We demonstrate this potential in two distinct settings in this thesis.

First, we apply the capture of polarized light to an inverse problem …

Optimizing Radial Interfaces For Eye-Movement Authentication On Smartphones, Trey V. Tuscai

Honors Theses

Radial authentication interfaces offer privacy-preserving, calibration-free eye-movement authentication. While their effectiveness has been demonstrated on large displays, their performance on smartphones remains underexplored. This study investigates seven radial interface configurations on the iPhone 13, varying the number of radial indicators and password lengths to examine trade-offs between accuracy, security, and entry time. Through a controlled eye-tracking experiment with 27 participants, we evaluate each configuration’s performance and collect user prioritizations of the three factors. Our findings reveal that shorter passwords with fewer indicators improve speed and accuracy but reduce security, while longer configurations enhance security at the cost of usability. Based …

Flowing Together Or Alone: Impact Of Collaboration In The Metaverse, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, Brenda Eschenbrenner, Langtao Chen

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The metaverse is the next-generation Internet (Web3) that facilitates social connections and collaborations in a virtual world environment. Given the potential of the metaverse to provide more satisfying and effective means of remote collaborations, exploring the possibility of leveraging the metaverse for these endeavors is warranted. Therefore, an important question to address is whether greater engagement occurs when tasks are completed collaboratively versus individually in the metaverse. We address this question by drawing on flow and transportation theories to hypothesize the effect of carrying out a creative task in the metaverse collaboratively versus alone on one's cognitive absorption, a contextually …

Gnnsynergy: A Multi-View Graph Neural Network For Predicting Anti-Cancer Drug Synergy, Zhifeng Hao, Jianming Zhan, Yuan Fang, Min Wu, Ruichu Cai

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Drug combinations play very important roles in cancer therapy, as they can enhance curative efficacy and overcome drug resistance. Due to the increasing size of combinatorial space, experimental screening for all the drug combinations becomes infeasible in practice. Therefore, there is a great need to develop accurate computational approaches that can predict potential drug combinations to direct the experimental screening. In this paper, we propose a novel method called GNNSynergy to learn drug embeddings for drug synergy prediction. Given a specific cancer cell line, we propose a multi-view graph neural network framework which considers the current cell line as main …

Recdreamer: Consistent Text-To-3d Generation Via Uniform Score Distillation, Chenxi Zheng, Yihong Lin, Bangzhen Liu, Xuemiao Xu, Yongwei Nie, Shengfeng He

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Current text-to-3D generation methods based on score distillation often suffer from geometric inconsistencies, leading to repeated patterns across different poses of 3D assets. This issue, known as the Multi-Face Janus problem, arises because existing methods struggle to maintain consistency across varying poses and are biased toward a canonical pose. While recent work has improved pose control and approximation, these efforts are still limited by this inherent bias, which skews the guidance during generation. To address this, we propose a solution called RecDreamer, which reshapes the underlying data distribution to achieve more consistent pose representation. The core idea behind our method …