Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Surficial Geologic Map Of The Rockfield 7.5-Minute Quadrangle, Warren, Logan, And Simpson Counties, Kentucky, Wes Buchanan, Meredith Swallom, Antonia Bottoms, Matthew Massey, Bailee Nicole Hodelka, Emily Morris

Contract Reports--KGS

The Rockfield 7.5-minute quadrangle is located west of Bowling Green, Kentucky situated mostly in Warren County, but also includes small areas of Simpson and Logan Counties in its southwestern corner. Regionally, the quadrangle includes parts of the Pennyroyal and Mammoth Cave plateau within the Mississippian Plateaus physiographic region (McDowell, 1986). The Dripping Springs escarpment, which separates the lower-elevation Pennyroyal from the higher-elevation Mammoth Cave plateau is highly dissected in the quadrangle. Topography in the Pennyroyal is characterized by pervasive sinkhole development across a low-relief plain, which is mostly underlain by the Mississippian Ste. Genevieve Limestone. Higher-relief topography is restricted to …

Iere Annual Report 2023, Erin Largo-Wight, James Taylor, Kelly Rhoden, Ruby Cox, Nicole Lowe

Annual Reports

2023 Annual Report of the Institute for Environmental Research and Education

College Of Natural Sciences 2022 Year-End Publication, College Of Natural Sciences

College of Natural Sciences Newsletters and Reports

This is the 2022 issue of the annual College of Natural Sciences year-end publication.

Contents:
[Page] 2 Dean's message
[Page] 3 Department highlights
[Page] 4 Overview of Bold & Blue Campaign
[Page] 5 Dr. Edward Hogan recognition & endowment
[Page] 6 Career milestones
[Page] 7 Student travel and research
[Page] 8 $11 million COBRE grant
[Page] 9 Professional Science Masters & Research highlights
[Page]10 Outreach highlights throughout the state
[Page] 11 2022 events recap – join us in 2023!
[Page] 12 Updates on our VR initiative
[Page] 14 Overview of awards and recognitions from 2022

Carbon Capture, Utilization, And Storage, University Of North Dakota. Energy And Environmental Research Center

EERC Brochures and Fact Sheets

Fact sheet about carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) and the Energy & Environmental Research Center’s (EERC’s) CCUS capabilities. Includes information on the Plains CO₂ Reduction (PCOR) Partnership initiative, Brine Extraction and Storage Test (BEST), Carbon Storage Assurance Facility Enterprise (CarbonSAFE), Red Trail Energy Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), a feed study at Coal Creek Station, Bell Creek and Cedar Creek anticline projects, and Partnership for CO₂ Capture (PCO₂C).

Integrating Second Moment Of Area With Osteohistology To Identify Limitations In Weight-Bearing Limb Bones, Justin Kramer, Jeffrey Stephens, Mateusz Wosik

Student Research Poster Presentations 2023

No abstract provided.

Analysis Of Fiber Uv Degradation Through An Environmental Chamber, Davis A. Eames

Undergraduate Research Posters

Environmentally degraded fibers could impact multiple aspects of a fiber comparison, considering that collected weathered fabrics/fibers may express an altered chemical structure and/or colorimetric property compared to their unexposed counterparts. Depending on the amount of degradation the evidence has suffered, it could be challenging for forensic scientists to make conclusions from their comparative analyses. Observations presented in this study were orchestrated to test the possible outcomes that sunlight has on fabric-based materials. Photodegradation of fabrics was investigated through the use of an environmental chamber for a duration of six weeks, which would be equivalent to three months of real-world UV …

Dvgq Joint Data, Steven L. Martin

Research Data--KGS

A compilation of digitally vectorized joint data from the U.S. Geological Survey geologic quadrangle maps. Joint data was collected by USGS and KGS geologists using a compass during geologic mapping of the 7.5-minute quadrangle. Field notes of mappers are not available, therefore the orientation of joints was determined by a script written by KGS personnel during the digitization process.

The Mystery Of The Missing Megafauna, Maggie Colangelo, Bernard Means

Virtual Curation Lab's Comic Publications

The creative team behind Founding Monsters and Founding Monsters Tales have created a new comic that takes a more scientific and less historic approach to the giant mammals that once roamed North America. The Mystery of the Missing Megafauna explores how changing climate impacted biodiversity and megafauna populations in North America at the end of the last Ice Age. Particular attention is placed on the extinction of mastodons, mammoths, giant ground sloths and other megafauna whose fossils are found at Saltville in southwestern Virginia. This comic draws a connection to contemporary climate change and the major extinctions happening today. The …

State Energy Research Center, University Of North Dakota. Energy And Environmental Research Center

EERC Brochures and Fact Sheets

Information on the Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC) and its role as the State Research Center (SERC) for North Dakota. Showcases the EERC’s technological capabilities, outreach efforts, funding sources, and workforce development.

Demonstration Co2 Storage In The Pcor Partnership Region, University Of North Dakota. Energy And Environmental Research Center

EERC Brochures and Fact Sheets

Fact sheet about the Plains CO₂ Reduction (PCOR) Partnership region and the importance of CO₂ storage.

Communiqué: College Of Humanities, Arts & Sciences Alumni Magazine, Volume 11, Winter 2023-2024, University Of Northern Iowa. College Of Humanities, Arts, And Sciences.

Communiqué: College of Humanities, Arts & Sciences Alumni Magazine

In this issue:

EVERY ISSUE
Message from the Dean --- 4
Donor Feature --- 5
CHAS Briefs --- 38
Class Notes --- 44

FEATURES
Cave Research --- 6
From Student to CEO --- 10
Alum Opens Math Museum --- 14
New Class ExploresVideo Game Music --- 18
Wise Broadway Tour --- 24
Public Art Incubator --- 28
Alum Finds Success as Celebrity Videographer --- 34

STORIES
Science Trip to Iceland --- 22
Clinical Ethicist Alumnus --- 32
Computer Education Grant --- 33
ESL Program Grant --- 40
Floral Macrophotography --- 42

The Proof Is In The Pudding – Using Perceived Stress To Measure Short-Term Impact In Initiatives To Enhance Gender Balance In Computing Education, Alina Berry, Sarah Jane Delany

Academic Posters Collection

The problem of gender imbalance in computing higher education has forced academics and professionals to implement a wide range of initiatives. Many initiatives use recruitment or retention numbers as their most obvious evidence of impact. This type of evidence of impact is, however, more resource heavy to obtain, as well as often requires a longitudinal approach. There are many shorter term initiatives that use other ways to measure their success.

First, this poster presents with a review of existing evaluation measures in interventions to recruit and retain women in computing education across the board. Three main groups of evaluation come …

Classifying Recaptured Identity Documents Using The Biomedical Meijering And Sato Algorithms, John Magee, Stephen Sheridan, Christina Thorpe

Academic Posters Collection

Recaptured identity documents are a low-cost, high-risk threat to modern eKYC systems. Bad actors can easily manipulate images and print them. Existing solutions typically demand manual review of remotely captured identity documents, this is expensive and does not scale. In 2022, the UK National Crime Agency estimated fraud cost business hundreds of billion pounds per year and document forgery is an area of investigation by Europol.

Evaluation Of Gender-Based Differences In Primary School Maths Education: The Potential Of Digital Games, Maíra Amaral

Academic Posters Collection

Digital Game-Based Learning is shown to be a more effective instructional method than traditional instruction, however less effective than other technology-supported instruction according to Byun and Joung (2018). Regarding gender aspects, according to findings by Mclaren and colleagues in 2022, girls may learn more mathematics from digital learning games than boys. In their study, even reporting greater behavioural and cognitive engagement, boys did not learn more with the game than girls.

A Mode Sum Regularization Prescription In Quantum Field Theory In Curved Spacetimes In Higher Dimensions And For Charged Scalar Fields, Eoin Scanlon

Academic Posters Collection

Semi-classical gravity combines classical treatment of the gravitational field with quantum mechanical treatment of matter fields. A significant challenge however is the divergence contained within the stress-energy tensor when solving the semi-classical Einstein equations. This work extends to higher dimensions an extremely efficient method for renormalizing the stress-energy tensor of a quantum scalar field in spherically-symmetric black hole spacetimes, thereby removing the divergences. The method applies to a scalar field with arbitrary field parameters. The utility of the method is demonstrated by computing the renormalized stress-energy tensor for a scalar field in the Schwarzschild black hole spacetime for odd dimensions.

Feedback, Learning Outcomes And Mathematics Anxiety In A Digital Game Based Learning Approach In Mathematics Education, André Almo

Academic Posters Collection

Feedback is a crucial part of learning, and an essential element in digital game-based learning approaches, in which digital games - known as 'serious games' - are used to deliver educational content. Feedback features respond to players' actions within the game, providing them with information and guidance, as well as potentially impacting their learning, motivation and engagement. However, these features may be designed differently, since they include various distinct characteristics and dimensions. This work proposes a new taxonomy for feedback features in serious games, with an emphasis in game design aspects, in order to provide clearer descriptions and distinctions of …

Identifying Gendered Language, Shweta Soundararajan, Sarah Jane Delany

Academic Posters Collection

Gendered language refers to the use of words that indicate the gender of an individual. It can be explicit, where the gender is directly implied by the specific words used (e.g., mother, she, man), or it can be implicit, where societal roles and behaviors convey a person's gender. For example, expectations that women display communal traits (e.g., affectionate, caring, gentle) and men display agentic traits (e.g., assertive, competitive, decisive). The presence of gendered language in natural language processing (NLP) systems can reinforce gender stereotypes and bias. Our work introduces an approach to creating gendered language datasets using ChatGPT. These datasets …

Detecting Road Intersections From Satellite Images Using Convolutinal Neural Networks, Fatmaelzahraa Eltaher, Luis Miralles-Pechuán, Jane Courtney, Susan Mckeever

Academic Posters Collection

The location of intersections is an important consideration for vulnerable road users such as People with Blindness or Visually Impairment (PBVI) or children. Route planning applications, however, do not give information about the location of intersections as this information is not available at scale. In this paper, we propose a deep learning framework to automatically detect the location of intersections from satellite images using convolutional neural networks. For this purpose, we labelled 7,342 Google maps images from Washington, DC, USA to create a dataset. This dataset covers a region of 58.98 km$^{2}$ and has 7,548 intersections. We then applied a …

Application Of The Two-Variable Model To Simulate A Multisensory Reaction-Time Task, Rebecca Brady, John Butler

Academic Posters Collection

To navigate the world in an efficient manner, the brain seamlessly integrates signals received across multiple sensory modalities. Behavioral studies have suggested that multisensory processing is a winner-take-all sensory response mechanism to some optimal combination of sensory signals. In addition, multiple sensory cues are not always beneficial with some studies showing maladaptive multisensory processing as an identifier of older adults prone to falls from age matched healthy controls.

A stalwart of modelling sensory decision-making is the work by (Wong &Wang, 2006) but to date almost all of this research has been focused on unisensory tasks. We extend the reduced two-variable …

Enhancing Health Data Representation For Older Adults: Unlocking Opportunities, Peterson Jean

Academic Posters Collection

The prevalence of off-the-shelf wearable devices increases the monitoring and measurement of critical physiological parameters like activity, sleep, heart rate, and blood pressure. However, the accessibility of health data representations poses challenges for older adults, who often struggle to understand the criticality of their own health data without assistance. This poster highlights the challenges older adults face in accessing their health data from wearable technologies, specifically focusing on data representations.

To address these challenges, it proposes a methodology that involves a heuristic evaluation of existing data representations with experts and accessibility studies with older adults using a mixed methods approach …

Computer Science Outreach To Inform Secondary School Students’ Perceptions Of Computer Science: Preliminary Findings, Karen Nolan, Roisin Faherty, Keith Quille, Keith Nolan, Amanda O'Farrell, Brett A. Becker

Academic Posters Collection

This poster describes a longitudinal K-12 outreach programme to promote Computer Science in Ireland, which ran over a three-year period from 2017- 2020. A pilot phase was conducted in the first year from 2017-2018 with 2900 students participating. The implementation phase began in 2018, when 7320 students participated across the 2018-2019 and 2019-2020 academic years. The programme consisted of a free onsite school delivery of a two-hour camp that introduced students to a range of Computing topics: addressing computing perceptions, introduction to coding, and exploration of computational thinking. Schools self-selected, and the programme reached a large number of schools with …

Cslinc: A Nationwide Cs Mooc For Second-Level Students, Karen Nolan, Keith Quille, Brett A. Becker

Academic Posters Collection

This poster introduces CSLINC, a free scaffolded MOOC framework tailored to second-level students in Ireland that consists of: an online platform built for accessibility; a suite of modules developed upon international best practices with varying co-creators; and automated assessment and certificates of completion. Its aim is to provide content to promote national CS curricula to all second-level students in Ireland. In September 2021, CSLINC launched to 10,000 students across 100 schools. Future work will include collecting and collating research to validate CSLINC’s goals, scaffolding that will build foundations for national curriculum learning outcomes, and measure its impact on students, their …

Investigating The Use Of Conversational Agents As Accountable Buddies To Support Health And Lifestyle Change, Ekaterina Uetova, Dympna O'Sullivan, Lucy Hederman, Robert J. Ross

Academic Posters Collection

The poster focuses on the role of conversational agents in promoting health and well-being. Results of the literature review indicate that negative emotions can hinder individuals from taking necessary actions related to their health. The study concludes that understanding and addressing emotional barriers is essential to facilitating early access to health services and improving well-being. The poster outlines plans to investigate motivation strategies, develop a prototype conversational agent based on user study insights and chat log data, and incorporate emotion regulation to effectively manage users' emotional experiences.

Improve Engagement With Full Labs And Motivated Students: Interactive Labs Via Low Stakes Assessment, Susan Mckeever, Patricia O'Byrne, Amanda O'Farrell

Academic Posters Collection

Poor engagement and attendance is an endemic problem at third level, particularly post covid. Our approach shows how the use of regular in-lab assessment and challenges can dramatically increase student participation and learning. Using three case studies, we demonstrate how we have successfully used this low-stakes assessment approach to improve student outcomes, across a range of modules.

Attention-Based Gender-Stereotype Detection, Manuela Nayantara, Sarah Jane Delany

Academic Posters Collection

Gender stereotypes are perceptions about the typical physical, emotional, and social characteristics of individuals. Unlike gender bias which can result in the systematic and unfair treatment of individuals based on their gender, gender stereotypes do not always perpetuate a negative impact. Hence, there is no solid definition that frames what is considered a gender-stereotype in text. In addition, there is also a lack of labelled gender-stereotype datasets. This has led to most of the work in literature being about gender bias and not gender stereotypes. Therefore, in our research, we frame a clear definition of what constitutes a gender-stereotype in …

Detecting Patches On Road Pavement Images Acquired With 3d Laser Sensors Using Object Detection And Deep Learning, Ibrahim Hassan Syed, Dympna O'Sullivan, Susan Mckeever, David Power, Ray Mcgowan, Kieran Feighan

Academic Posters Collection

Regular pavement inspections are key to good road maintenance and road defect corrections. Advanced pavement inspection systems such as LCMS (Laser Crack Measurement System) can automatically detect the presence of different defects using 3D lasers. However, such systems still require manual involvement to complete the detection of pavement defects. This work proposes an automatic patch detection system using an object detection technique. Results show that the object detection model can successfully detect patches inside LCMS images and suggest that the proposed approach could be integrated into the existing pavement inspection systems.

Framework For Trustworthy Ai In The Health Sector, Mykhailo Danilevskyi

Academic Posters Collection

The European Commission defines that Trustworthy AI should be lawful, ethical and robust. The ethical component and its technical methods are the main focus of the research. According to this, the initial research goal is to create a methodology for evaluating datasets for ML modeling using ethical principles in the healthcare domain. Ethical risk assessment will help to ensure compliance with principles such as privacy, fairness, safety and transparency which are especially important for the Health Care sector. At the same time, risks must be evaluated with respect to AI model performance and possible scenarios of risk mitigation. Ethical risk …

Explaining Deep Learning Time Series Classification Models Using A Decision Tree, Ephrem T. Mekonnen, Pierpaolo Dondio, Luca Longo

Academic Posters Collection

This preliminary study proposes a new post hoc method to explain deep learning-based time series classification models using a decision tree. Our approach generates a decision tree graph or rulesets as an explanation, improving interpretability compared to saliency map-based methods. The method involves two phases: training and evaluating the deep learning-based time series classification model and extracting prototypical events from the evaluation set to train the decision tree classifier. We conducted experiments on artificial and real datasets, evaluating the explanations based on accuracy, fidelity, number of nodes, and depth. Our preliminary findings suggest that our post-hoc method improves the interpretability …

From Overlay To Interplay - Subverting The Message And Creating The Surreal With Augmented Reality, Nina Lyons

Academic Posters Collection

This proof of concept utilises content creation tools that create diegetic presentation which is not commonly utilised in AR systems. In this study, the virtual overlay that becomes visible through AR displays diegetic content that disrupts the meaning of the poster highlighting the potential for AR as a visual communication medium and the opportunities that AR has, as a medium, for creating narrative.

Spoken Language To Irish Sign Language Machine Translation: A Linguistically Informed Approach, Jesus Aguilar Lopez, Irene Murtagh, Sheila Castilho

Academic Posters Collection

Many deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals rely on sign language (SL) on a daily basis as a preferred language. Although nowadays there are significant advances on spoken language research, current approaches are often neither linguistically motivated nor tailored to the unique features of SLs. Further research and development are necessary to enhance Sign Language Machine Translation (SLMT) and bring it to a similar level as spoken language MT. This research will endeavour to improve the accuracy and efficiency of SLMT systems, making them more accessible to the Deaf community and empowering deaf and hard of hearing individuals to communicate more effectively …