Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Binary Multicriteria Collaborative Filtering, Emre Yalçin, Alper Bi̇lge

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Collaborative filtering is specialized in suggesting appropriate products and services to the users concerning personal characteristics and past preferences without requiring any effort of users. It might be more efficient to collect preferences of users based on multiple subcriteria of products and services. For this purpose, researchers propose multicriteria recommender systems that are convenient for more accurate and useful evaluation of items. Insuchsystems, it might be preferable tocollect binary ratings instead of numerical ones due to the large number of subcriteria. However, there is a gap in the literature to satisfy a binary preferences-based multicriteria recommender system. In this study, …

A New Grid Partitioning Technology For Location Privacy Protection, Yue Sun, Lei Zhang, Jing Li, Zhen Zhang

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Nowadays, the location-based service (LBS) has become an essential part of convenient service in people's daily life. However, the untrusted LBS servers can store lots of information about the user, such as the user's identity, location, and destination. Then the information can be used as background knowledge and combined with the query frequency of the user to launch the inference attack to obtain user's privacy. In most of the existing schemes, the author considers the algorithm of virtual location selection from the historical location of the user. However, the LBS server can infer the user's location information on the historical …

A Genome-Wide Association Study Of Cocaine Use Disorder Accounting For Phenotypic Heterogeneity And Gene–Environment Interaction, Jiangwen Sun, Henry R. Kranzler, Joel Gelernter, Jinbo Bi

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Background: Phenotypic heterogeneity and complicated gene-environment interplay in etiology are among the primary factors that hinder the identification of genetic variants associated with cocaine use disorder. Methods: To detect novel genetic variants associated with cocaine use disorder, we derived disease traits with reduced phenotypic heterogeneity using cluster analysis of a study sample (n = 9965). We then used these traits in genome-wide association tests, performed separately for 2070 African Americans and 1570 European Americans, using a new mixed model that accounted for the moderating effects of 5 childhood environmental factors. We used an independent sample (918 African Americans, 1382 European …

Gabapentin Drug Misuse Signals: A Pharmacovigilance Assessment Using The Fda Adverse Event Reporting System, Rachel Vickers-Smith, Jiangwen Sun, Richard J. Charnigo, Michelle R. Lofwall, Sharon L. Walsh, Jennifer R. Havens

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Background: Although there have been increasing reports of intentional gabapentin misuse, epidemiological evidence for the phenomenon is limited. The purpose of this study was to determine whether there are pharmacovigilance abuse signals for gabapentin.

Methods: Using FDA Adverse Events Reporting System reports from January 1, 2005 to December 31, 2015, we calculated pharmacovigilance signal measures (i.e., reporting odds ratio, proportional reporting ratio, information component, and empirical Bayes geometric mean) for abuse-related adverse event (AR-AE)-gabapentin pairs. Loglinear modeling assessed the frequency of concurrent reporting of abuse-related and abusespecific AEs (AS-AEs) associated with gabapentin. Findings were compared to a positive (pregabalin) and …

Extreme Ultraviolet Quasar Colours From Galex Observations Of The Sdss Dr14q Catalogue, Daniel E. Vanden Berk, Sarah C. Wesolowski, Mary J. Yeckley, Joseph M. Marcinik, Jean M. Quashnock, Lawrence M. Machia, Jian Wu

Computer Science Faculty Publications

The rest-frame far to extreme ultraviolet (UV) colour–redshift relationship has been constructed from data on over 480,000 quasars carefully cross-matched between SDSS Data Release 14 and the final GALEX photometric catalogue. UV matching and detection probabilities are given for all the quasars, including dependencies on separation, optical brightness, and redshift. Detection limits are also provided for all objects. The UV colour distributions are skewed redward at virtually all redshifts, especially when detection limits are accounted for. The median GALEX far-UV minus near-UV (FUV − NUV) colour–redshift relation is reliably determined up to z ≈ 2.8, corresponding to rest-frame wavelengths as …

A Heuristic Baseline Method For Metadata Extraction From Scanned Electronic Theses And Dissertations, Muntabir H. Choudhury, Jian Wu, William A. Ingam, Edward A. Fox

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Extracting metadata from scholarly papers is an important text mining problem. Widely used open-source tools such as GROBID are designed for born-digital scholarly papers but often fail for scanned documents, such as Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs). Here we present a preliminary baseline work with a heuristic model to extract metadata from the cover pages of scanned ETDs. The process started with converting scanned pages into images and then text files by applying OCR tools. Then a series of carefully designed regular expressions for each field is applied, capturing patterns for seven metadata fields: titles, authors, years, degrees, academic programs, …

Streaming Analytics And Workflow Automation For Dfs, Yasith Jayawardana, Sampath Jayarathna

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Researchers reuse data from past studies to avoid costly re-collection of experimental data. However, large-scale data reuse is challenging due to lack of consensus on metadata representations among research groups and disciplines. Dataset File System (DFS) is a semi-structured data description format that promotes such consensus by standardizing the semantics of data description, storage, and retrieval. In this paper, we present analytic-streams – a specification for streaming data analytics with DFS, and streaming-hub – a visual programming toolkit built on DFS to simplify data analysis work-flows. Analytic-streams facilitate higher-order data analysis with less computational overhead, while streaming-hub enables storage, retrieval, …

Shari- An Integration Of Tools To Visualize The Story Of The Day, Shawn M. Jones, Alexander C. Nwala, Martin Klein, Michele C. Weigle, Michael L. Nelson

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Tools such as google news and flipboard exist to convey daily news, but what about the news of the past? In this paper, we describe how to combine several existing tools and web archive holdings to convey the “biggest story” for a given date in the past. StoryGraph clusters news articles together to identify a common news story. Hypercane leverages ArchiveNow to store URLs produced by Story-Graph in web archives. Hypercane analyzes these URLs to identify the most common terms, entities, and highest quality images for social media storytelling. Raintale then takes the output of these tools to produce a …

Repurposing Visual Input Modalities For Blind Users: A Case Study Of Word Processors, Hae-Na Lee, Vikas Ashok, I.V. Ramakrishnan

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Visual 'point-and-click' interaction artifacts such as mouse and touchpad are tangible input modalities, which are essential for sighted users to conveniently interact with computer applications. In contrast, blind users are unable to leverage these visual input modalities and are thus limited while interacting with computers using a sequentially narrating screen-reader assistive technology that is coupled to keyboards. As a consequence, blind users generally require significantly more time and effort to do even simple application tasks (e.g., applying a style to text in a word processor) using only keyboard, compared to their sighted peers who can effortlessly accomplish the same tasks …

Towards Making Videos Accessible For Low Vision Screen Magnifier Users, Ali Selman Aydin, Shirin Feiz, Vikas Ashok, Iv Ramakrishnan

Computer Science Faculty Publications

People with low vision who use screen magnifiers to interact with computing devices find it very challenging to interact with dynamically changing digital content such as videos, since they do not have the luxury of time to manually move, i.e., pan the magnifier lens to different regions of interest (ROIs) or zoom into these ROIs before the content changes across frames.

In this paper, we present SViM, a first of its kind screen-magnifier interface for such users that leverages advances in computer vision, particularly video saliency models, to identify salient ROIs in videos. SViM's interface allows users to zoom in/out …

Sail: Saliency-Driven Injection Of Aria Landmarks, Ali Selman Aydin, Shirin Feiz, Vikas Ashok, Iv Ramakrishnan

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Navigating webpages with screen readers is a challenge even with recent improvements in screen reader technologies and the increased adoption of web standards for accessibility, namely ARIA. ARIA landmarks, an important aspect of ARIA, lets screen reader users access different sections of the webpage quickly, by enabling them to skip over blocks of irrelevant or redundant content. However, these landmarks are sporadically and inconsistently used by web developers, and in many cases, even absent in numerous web pages. Therefore, we propose SaIL, a scalable approach that automatically detects the important sections of a web page, and then injects ARIA landmarks …

Structural And Dosage Dependence Of Electron Transfer From Conjugated Polymer Nanoparticles, Jaclyn Rebstock

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Conjugated polymer nanoparticles (CPNs or Pdots) have become popular fluorophores for a variety of fluorescence imaging applications due to their brightness, photostability, and aqueous compatibility. Recently, their ability to generate charged species has begun to be exploited in applications ranging from photocatalysis to photovoltaic cells. Upon excitation, CPNs can eject an electron via photoinduced electron transfer (PET) to oxygen or other acceptors. The competition between fluorescence and PET is undesirable in redox-based applications. However, CPNs are capable of the simultaneous generation and detection of reactive oxygen species, expanding their use in photodynamic therapy (PDT). We seek to determine the dependence …

Growth Engineering And Characterization Of Vanadium Dioxide Films For Ultraviolet Detection, Jason Andrew Creeden

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

There is a need for efficient ultraviolet (UV) detectors in many fields, such as aerospace, automotive manufacturing, biology, environmental science, and defense, due to photomultiplier tubes (the currently available technology) often not meeting application constraints in weight, robustness, and power consumption. In my thesis, I demonstrate that high quality vanadium dioxide (VO2) thin films, epitaxially grown on niobium doped titanium dioxide substrates (TiO2:Nb), display a strong photoconductive response in the UV spectral range, making them promising candidates for photomultiplier-free UV photodetection. By adjusting the characteristics of the substrate and VO2 film, the samples achieve external quantum efficiency exceeding 100% (reaching …

Wearable Technology For Healthcare And Athletic Performance, Amanda Annette Watson

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Wearable technology research has led to advancements in healthcare and athletic performance. Devices range from one size fits all fitness trackers to custom fitted devices with tailored algorithms. Because these devices are comfortable, discrete, and pervasive in everyday life, custom solutions can be created to fit an individual's specific needs. In this dissertation, we design wearable sensors, develop features and algorithms, and create intelligent feedback systems that promote the advancement of healthcare and athletic performance. First, we present Magneto: a body mounted electromagnet-based sensing system for joint motion analysis. Joint motion analysis facilitates research into injury prevention, rehabilitation, and activity …

Temporal Variability In Cohesive Sediment Dynamics In A Partially Mixed Estuary, The York River Estuary, Virginia, Usa: A Numerical Study Developed From Observations, Danielle Tarpley

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Fine-grained material such as silts and clays are the predominant sediment type in low energy systems such as micro-tidal embayments and estuaries. Due to its cohesive nature, fine sediment typically moves through marine systems as aggregated particles, or flocs, rather than as individual mineral grains. The particle's components, local hydrodynamics, and concentration influence floc size, density, and fall velocity. These, in turn, impact suspended sediment transport, which complicates predictions of the fate of sediment for water quality, contaminant distribution, and dredging purposes in these systems. This dissertation used a state-of-the-art modeling system and observations to examine the variability in sediment …

Environmental Controls On Pteropod Ecology And Physiology Along The Western Antarctic Peninsula, Patricia Susan Thibodeau

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Pteropods (pelagic snails) are ubiquitous zooplankton in the Southern Ocean and abundant along the Western Antarctic Peninsula (WAP), one of the most rapidly warming regions on the planet. They are important prey for higher trophic levels, grazers of phytoplankton, and contribute to particulate organic and inorganic carbon export. Pteropods are heralded as bioindicators of ecosystem health due to the vulnerability of their aragonitic shells under ocean acidification conditions, which could greatly affect their abundances in the future. Despite their importance within Antarctic food webs, few studies have analyzed the effects of climate change on pteropod physiology and biogeography in the …

Copper(I) Iodide-Based Chemical Sensor Materials In Gaseous And Aqueous Media, Matthew D. Kessler

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Chemical detection is an area of great importance in the shift to more green approaches to industry. Some of the chemical species produced by assorted industries can be harmful, long lived, and challenging to differentiate. Copper(I) iodide (CuI) is a material that readily forms complexes of multiple colors, both under visible and ultraviolet (UV) light. The process of CuI reacting with dimethyl sulfide vapor to produce a color change (vapochromism) has been analyzed to propose mechanistic information about the process. Using the information obtained, a series of potential sensor materials were developed with CuI as the base. The complexes were …

Insulator To Metal Transition Dynamics Of Vanadium Dioxide Thin Films, Scott Madaras

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Vanadium Dioxide (VO2) is a strongly correlated material which has been studied for many decades. VO2 has been proposed for uses in technologies such as optical modulators, IR modulators, optical switches and Mott memory devices. These technologies are taking advantage of VO2’s insulator to metal transition (IMT) and the corresponding changes to the optical and material properties. The insulator to metal transition in VO2 can be accessed by thermal heating, applied electric field, or ultra-fast photo induced processes. Recently, thin films of VO2 grown on Titanium Dioxide doped with Niobium (TiO2:Nb), have shown promise as a possible UV photo detector …

Exploring Heterogeneous Architectures With Tools And Applications, Du Shen

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Heterogeneous architectures have become popular due to programming flexibility and energy efficiency. Heterogeneous architectures include GPU accelerators, and memory subsystems consisting fast and slow components. Achieving high performance for programs running on heterogeneous architectures requires sophisticated tools and applications. They either lack hardware support for fast memory component, or provide complex programming model, which puts extra burdens on compilers and programmers. However, existing tools either rely on simulators or lack support across different GPU architectures, runtime or driver versions. Thus, they only provide insufficient insights. In the first project, we develop DataPlacer, a profiling tool to provide guidance for data …

Filling In The Gaps: Applications Of Deep Learning, Satellite Imagery, And High Performance Computing For The Estimation And Distribution Of Geospatial Data, Seth Goodman

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Many regions around the world suffer from a lack of authoritatively-collected data on factors critical to understanding human well-being. This challenges our ability to understand the progress society is making towards reducing poverty, improving lifespans, or otherwise improving livelihoods. A growing body of research is exploring how deep learning algorithms can be used to produce novel estimates of sparse development data, and how access to such data can impact development efforts. This dissertation contributes to this literature in three parts. First, using Landsat 8 satellite imagery and data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, convolutional neural networks …

Reducing Avian Collisions With Human-Made Structures: A Sensory Ecology Approach To Open-Air Settings, Timothy James Boycott

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Billions of birds fatally collide with human-made structures each year. These mortalities have impacts on species of conservation concern and potentially on avian populations as a whole. This source of human-wildlife conflict also places economic and operational constraints on various human industries. Furthermore, with continued increases in urbanization, the rate and extent of collisions continues to increase. Efforts to reduce collisions have largely centered on making structures more visible to birds but have been met with limited success. Currently, there is a call for solutions to be tailored to both the environmental context of hazardous structures and to the sensory …

Development Of Quantum Information Tools Based On Multi-Photon Raman Processes In Rb Vapor, Nikunjkumar Prajapati

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Multi-photon nonlinear processes in atoms have served as important tools for quantum metrology, quantum communications, and quantum sensing. In this thesis, we experimentally address the interplay of various multi-photon Raman processes in hot Rb vapor, with the four-wave mixing (FWM) process being a central theme. FWM is the nonlinear response of a medium to a strong optical pump field inelastically scattering off atomic resonances and resulting in the generation of additional photons in different modes. FWM is a detrimental, but inherent part of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) and Raman based quantum memories. However, we were able to weaken the four-photon …

Impacts Of Fertilization On Salt Marsh Resilience: Altered By Location-Specific Drivers, Kenneth Michael Czapla

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Salt marshes provide valuable ecosystem services to human society, but are currently under threat from accelerating sea level rise and nutrient enrichment. Carbon (C) and mineral accumulation allow salt marshes to maintain elevation above sea level and survive. Anthropogenic nitrogen (N) loading is increasing in many salt marshes, causing negative impacts on marsh resilience such as increased decomposition and decreased below-ground production. However, increasing N may also have simultaneous positive effects such as increased primary production and above-ground biomass, surface sediment accretion, and denitrification rates, which remove excess N from coastal waters. Many studies have been conducted to determine the …

Into The River Activity: Magnetic Fishing Game, University Of Dayton. Rivers Institute

Rivers Institute Publications

Do-it-yourself game using paper, paper clips, string, magnets and craft sticks.

Brownstein (Kenneth Robert) Papers, 1967-2001, Special Collections, Raymond H. Fogler Library, University Of Maine

Finding Aids

Kenneth Brownstein graduated with a Ph.D. in physics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He came to the University of Maine in 1965 as a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. Brownstein was a prolific author of articles and served as the chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy from 1992 to 1998. Brownstein retired in 2004 with emeritus status. Brownstein died in 2008.

The records mainly contain textual information but also contains some computer discs containing manuscripts of Brownstein's text book on quantum mechanics. Also, includes a facsimile of an obituary for Brownstein, copies of various articles by …

Mechanistic Study Of C-H Activation By Iridium Complexes, Rozalie S G Corea

Theses and Dissertations

C-H activation is considered the “holy grail” of chemistry. Remote, selective C-H activation has many applications such as modifying precursors, adding complexity to molecules, and modifying pre- existing structures in a reduced number of steps. Previous work by Swift and Gronert identified an iridium(III) phenanthroline complex that can activate C-H bonds of cyclohexane. The objective of this dissertation is to study the mechanism and regioselectivity of this complex in common precursors, namely 1-butanol, 1-methoxybutane and butyl acetate.

The studies were carried out in the gas phase on a modified mass spectrometer. Selectively deuterated alcohol, ether and ester were used to …

Deriving Statistical Inference From The Application Of Artificial Neural Networks To Clinical Metabolomics Data, Kevin M. Mendez

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Metabolomics data are complex with a high degree of multicollinearity. As such, multivariate linear projection methods, such as partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) have become standard. Non-linear projections methods, typified by Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) may be more appropriate to model potential nonlinear latent covariance; however, they are not widely used due to difficulty in deriving statistical inference, and thus biological interpretation. Herein, we illustrate the utility of ANNs for clinical metabolomics using publicly available data sets and develop an open framework for deriving and visualising statistical inference from ANNs equivalent to standard PLS-DA methods.

Iot-Mqtt Based Denial Of Service Attack Modelling And Detection, Naeem Firdous Syed

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Internet of Things (IoT) is poised to transform the quality of life and provide new business opportunities with its wide range of applications. However, the bene_ts of this emerging paradigm are coupled with serious cyber security issues. The lack of strong cyber security measures in protecting IoT systems can result in cyber attacks targeting all the layers of IoT architecture which includes the IoT devices, the IoT communication protocols and the services accessing the IoT data. Various IoT malware such as Mirai, BASHLITE and BrickBot show an already rising IoT device based attacks as well as the usage of infected …

Determining Ground-Level Composition And Concentration Of Particulate Matter Across Regional Areas Using The Himawari-8 Satellite, Miles Sowden

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Speciated ground-level aerosol concentrations are required to understand and mitigate health impacts from dust storms, wildfires and other aerosol emissions. Globally, surface monitoring is limited due to cost and infrastructure demands. While remote sensing can help estimate respirable (i.e. ground level) concentrations, current observations are restricted by inadequate spatiotemporal resolution, uncertainty in aerosol type, particle size, and vertical profile. One key issue with current remote sensing datasets is that they are derived from reflectances observed by polar orbiting imagers, which means that aerosol is only derived during the daytime, and only once or twice per day.

Sub-hourly, infrared (IR), geostationary …

An Investigation Into The Spatial Distribution, Habitat Selection And Resource Usage Of The Red Fox (Vulpes Vulpes) Inhabiting Urban Reserves Within Perth, Western Australia, Michael Thomas Main

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

I attempted to track a population of urban foxes in Kings Park, but due to collar failure, only one collar was retrieved. The GPS telemetry data from this fox produced home range estimates for minimum convex polygon (MCP) and kernel density (KD) of 0.302 km² and 0.331 km², respectively. The fox was predominantly active at night, with a ten-fold increase in movement during nocturnal periods when compared to daytime movements. Roads and man-made tracks were important for facilitating movement of the fox through its home range, with almost 97% of location fixes recorded within 100m of these features. The fox …