Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Cloud, Edge And Fog Computing: Trends And Case Studies, Eng Lieh Ouh, Stanislaw Jarzabek, Geok Shan Lim, Masayoshi Ogawa

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

As it is done today, an informal – solely based on experts’ intuition – evaluation of profitability of adopting cloud services is undependable and not scalable as there are many conflicting factors and constraints such evaluation should account for. The revenue from service tenants and the cost of implementing the service architecture are the leading service factors that drive profitability. Cloud service architectures also need to handle a growing number of tenants with increasingly diverse requirements which must be weighed against the capabilities and costs of various service architectures, particularly single- versus multi-tenanted models. We believe a conceptual model enumerating …

Assessing Generalizability Of Codebert, Xin Zhou, Donggyun Han, David Lo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Pre-trained models like BERT have achieved strong improvements on many natural language processing (NLP) tasks, showing their great generalizability. The success of pre-trained models in NLP inspires pre-trained models for programming language. Recently, CodeBERT, a model for both natural language (NL) and programming language (PL), pre-trained on code search dataset, is proposed. Although promising, CodeBERT has not been evaluated beyond its pre-trained dataset for NL-PL tasks. Also, it has only been shown effective on two tasks that are close in nature to its pre-trained data. This raises two questions: Can CodeBERT generalize beyond its pre-trained data? Can it generalize to …

Condensing A Sequence To One Informative Frame For Video Recognition, Qiu. Zhaofan, Ting Yao, Yan Shu, Chong-Wah Ngo, Tao Mei

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Video is complex due to large variations in motion and rich content in fine-grained visual details. Abstracting useful information from such information-intensive media requires exhaustive computing resources. This paper studies a two-step alternative that first condenses the video sequence to an informative" frame" and then exploits off-the-shelf image recognition system on the synthetic frame. A valid question is how to define" useful information" and then distill it from a video sequence down to one synthetic frame. This paper presents a novel Informative Frame Synthesis (IFS) architecture that incorporates three objective tasks, ie, appearance reconstruction, video categorization, motion estimation, and two …

Land Use As A Predictor Of Water Hyacinth (Eichhornia Crassipes) Presence On The Entebbe Coast Of Lake Victoria, Uganda, Zachary Hoffman

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Lake Victoria is shared amongst Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda and has tremendous ecological, economical, and cultural significance. Within the lake system, there are several problems, including the proliferation of an invasive weed, water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes). Therefore, this study aims to assess several factors that may correlate with water hyacinth proliferation. The specific objectives are (1) to identify possible correlations of water hyacinth density and land use around Entebbe, Uganda, and (2) to identify annual trends in water hyacinth coverage, to better inform policy and conservation efforts. Entebbe has a coastline of six land cover types: flooded vegetation, trees, grasses, …

Geology And Hydrogeology Of Northeastern Nebraska: Geology, Water Management And Geological Hazards, Nebraska Geological Society Field Trip 2021, Robert F. Diffendal Jr., Sue Olafsen Lackey, Douglas R. Hallum

Conservation and Survey Division

The 2021 Nebraska Geological Society field trip will provide an overview of the geology and hydrogeology of northeast Nebraska, the groundwater quality and quantity issues unique to the region, water management issues and decision-making, and ongoing work relating to water quality and geologic (hydrostratigraphic) framework, along the lower Niobrara and Missouri rivers Between Spencer Dam and Homer Nebraska. This program will be comprised of an auto tour with multiple stops on Saturday October 16 through Monday October 18 as illustrated in Map 1. The tour will begin with an examination of the Spencer Dam site and several locations in and …

Timescales And Dynamics Of Rhyolitic Melt Generation In Upper Crustal Magmatic Reservoirs: Insights From New Geochronologic And Petrologic Data On The Valle Mosso Pluton And Sesia Caldera, Sesia Magmatic System, Italy, Lorenzo Tavazzani

Earth Sciences Theses and Dissertations

This work may have a narrow geographic focus, namely a handful of steep and densely forested valleys of the Southern Italian Alps, but its scientific goals are certainly wide. Through a combined analyses of the spatial distribution, geochemical characteristics and temporal duration of the Permian silicic magmatism in the renown Ivrea crustal section (Sesia Magmatic System), this dissertation addresses fundamental questions regarding the physical mechanisms of rhyolitic magma storage, mobilization and eruption.

A brief introduction serves to define the broader context of the scientific questions addressed in the three main chapters of this dissertation. Through Chapters 2 to 4 we …

Beach Suitability For Nesting Olive Ridley Sea Turtles (Lepidochelys Olivacea), Playa Malena, Azuero Peninsula, Panama, Soleil Foy

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Sea turtle species all over the world are facing continuous declines in their populations partly due to diminished viable nesting habitat. Understanding sea turtle nesting preferences and the suitability of beaches for reproductive success is necessary in order to sustain their populations and ensure their conservation. Olive ridley sea turtles (Lepidochelys olivacea) are one of the species experiencing this trend, especially in the Eastern Pacific. This study examined the beach suitability of a site known as Playa Malena in the Azuero Peninsula in Panama for Olive ridley nesting. This site was compared to the suitability of 7 other …

A Ladder Of Endemicity: A Pioneering Study Of Anuran Communities Along An Elevational Gradient In The Eastern Andean Cloud Forests, Ecuador, Ella Halbert

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Per unit of area, Ecuador is home to the most herpetofauna of any region on Earth, yet many ecosystems are under researched. Positioned between the Eastern Andes and the Amazon rainforest, the Río Pastaza Basin of Ecuador has been the recent focus of anuran biodiversity surveys and is home to many endemic species. This study aimed to determine how the anuran community composition of a vertical transect in the Llanganates National Park varied between elevations. A 7-day expedition was conducted along a new trail up Abitagua Range spanning 1,050 m in elevation. Each night, visual encounter surveys were employed to …

Political Processes Of Displacement In Infrastructure Development: The Case Of Aldeia Da Luz And The Alqueva Dam, Cordelia Walz

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

In 2002, the residents of Aldeia da Luz left their village for the final time, displaced to make room for the Alqueva Dam, a massive regional hydropower and irrigation project almost half a century in the making. The Alqueva Multipurpose Project was marketed by the Portuguese government as a way to develop the impoverished region of the Alentejo and bring innovation to the agricultural sector. The village of Luz was the only physical obstacle to this goal and, therefore, its residents were dispossessed, sacrificed for the development of the greater Alentejo region. However, unlike many other large-scale infrastructure projects that …

Taking The Waste Out Of Wastewater: Evaluation And Implementation Of Sustainability Measures At Base Aérea N.°5’S Wastewater Treatment Plant, Abigail Monahan

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Wastewater treatment is a critical process by which the concentration of pollutants in wastewater are reduced to minimize the resulting effluent’s impact on human health and the environment. Base Aérea N.°5, an airbase located in Monte Real, Portugal, is striving to enhance their wastewater treatment methods to decrease the impact of the treated effluent on the environment. They can reduce the effluent’s impact by implementing more advanced wastewater treatment to decrease the concentration of micropollutants and pathogens in the effluent, and they can reuse the treated effluent to decrease the volume of freshwater they extract. This work seeks to evaluate …

Public Perception Of Forest And Fire Management Policy In Portugal, Jensen Rocha

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The impacts of forest fires are growing as climate change creates more frequent ideal temperature conditions for extreme wildfires. With the devastating fires it experienced in 2017, Portugal stands as an example of the impacts of dangerous wildfires and is working on developing a plan to protect its country from this rising threat. Important in the plan development is the opinion of the many stakeholders involved and the public whom the fires impact. Using an interview and survey approach, this study gathers public and stakeholder opinion on the forest and fire management policy in Portugal to understand what issues in …

The Role Of Public And Private Sectors: How To Promote National Cybersecurity Strategies And Critical Infrastructure Protection In Southeastern Europe, Larry Cruz

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This paper seeks to address the important role of public and private interests in protecting critical infrastructure in Southeastern Europe, providing examples from Serbia. While the public sector does have a role in protecting critical infrastructure needs, it is the private sector which holds major oversight of the critical infrastructures of the region, therefore having an important role in maintaining their functionality and protection. The literature in this field argues for more collaboration and information sharing between the public and private sectors of the region, though the task is not as simple as it appears given the varying aspirations of …

The Labyrinth Of Data Collection For Humanitarian Project Funding And Implementation, Maria Alejandra Pulido

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

My research concentrates on four NGOs: IOM, IDMC, JIPS, and OCHA which use different tools to collect data and translate the information into evidence for data-driven decision making (DDDM) for the implementation of humanitarian assistance projects. I focus on the importance, advantages, and various data collection tools which help ameliorate the humanitarian sector since it does not have a current professionalized path to enter the workforce. I incorporated four interviews, attended two conferences and analyzed multiple online sources during my project.

Investigating The Impact Of Land Use On Avian Diversity And Abundance In Areas Surrounding Mabamba Swamp, Uganda, Sydney Marie Jones

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The primary objective of this study was to investigate the impact of wetland-adjacent land use on avian species richness and abundance areas surrounding Mabamba Swamp, Uganda. Four types of land use were investigated: Eucalyptus plantations, wetland-edge agricultural fields, residential areas, and mature secondary forests. A total of 40-morning point counts were conducted for ten days in late November and late December of 2021. One-way ANOVA tests and Tukey’s HSD tests revealed significant differences in mean avian richness and abundance between all sites except residential areas and Nkima Forest. Additionally, Nkima Forest was found to contain the most number of specialist …

Man V.S. Wild: An Analysis Of Language Used Regarding Human-Wildlife Conflict In The Kibale National Park Community, Western Region, Uganda, Sophie Perfetto

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

If humans are to live sustainably and in harmony with wildlife in the vicinity of Protected Areas, policy makers, and government authorities need to make informed decisions with consideration to the needs of local communities. For this to happen, policy makers must understand the perceptions of local communities and take local perspectives into account. As language is at the root of perception, language was studied in the context of its role in shaping local perceptions of human-wildlife conflict and consequential conflict mitigation strategies. Six communities around the Northern region of Kibale National Park, Uganda, were studied, with sites located in …

Using Concurrent Functional Regression To Reconstruct River Stage Data During Flood Events And Identify Influential Functional Measurements, Ryan Pittman

Theses and Dissertations

On October 4, 2015, the Cedar Creek gage at Congaree National Park stopped reporting stages, and the readings did not resume until approximately two weeks later because of record-breaking rainfall that led to some of the worst flooding in South Carolina history. Our goal is to reconstruct the Cedar Creek stage during this missing two-week window. The Congaree River gage in Congaree National Park remained functioning throughout the October 2015 flood, when the stage reached its maximum recorded crest. The stages from the two gages are directly related during floods as water travels through the local spillways and flood planes …

Correct Web Service Transactions In The Presence Of Malicious And Misbehaving Transactions, John Thomas Ravan Iii

Theses and Dissertations

Concurrent database transactions within a web service environment can cause a variety of problems without the proper concurrency control mechanisms in place. A few of these problems involve data integrity issues, deadlock, and efficiency issues. Even with today’s industry standard solutions to these problems, they have taken a reactive approach rather than proactively preventing these problems from happening. We deliver a solution, based on prediction-based scheduling to ensure consistency while keeping execution time the same or faster than current industry solutions. The first part of this solution involves prototyping and formally proving a prediction-based scheduler.

The prediction-based scheduler leverages a …

Multi-Objective Routing For Distributed Controllers, Konstantin Y. Rubin

Theses and Dissertations

A long-term goal of future naval shipboard power systems is the ability to manage energy flow with sufficient flexibility to accommodate future platform requirements such as better survivability, continuity, and support of pulsed and other demanding loads. To facilitate scalable, low-latency global distributed system control, each control module can include an integrated network interface connected through multiple channels onto a direct, multi-hop network topology. In this work, we focus on a 2D Torus, in which control nodes are arranged in a regular 2D grid, with each node connected through point-to-point connections to its four immediate neighbors. An important advantage of …

Optimization And Application Of Electrochemical Probes For Neurotransmitter Detection, Colby E. Witt

Theses and Dissertations

The brain is a complex matrix that is difficult to study. Signaling molecules, neurotransmitters, are constantly being released and sequestered back into neurons within milliseconds to facilitate communication and normal function, a process called neurotransmission. There are few analytical techniques available to selectively probe such a dynamic system, and even fewer can detect these discrete changes in real-time. In order to make robust measurements in the brain you need speed, sensitivity, selectivity and small probe size, which are encompassed by fast-voltammetry with microelectrodes. Traditional fast-voltammetry at carbon fiber microelectrodes (fast-scan cyclic voltammetry (FSCV)) requires background subtraction to overcome the large …

Towards More Trustworthy Deep Learning: Accurate, Resilient, And Explainable Countermeasures Against Adversarial Examples, Fei Zuo

Theses and Dissertations

Despite the great achievements made by neural networks on tasks such as image classification, they are brittle and vulnerable to adversarial example (AE) attacks, which are crafted by adding human-imperceptible perturbations to inputs in order that a neural-network-based classifier incorrectly labels them. Along with the prevalence of deep learning techniques, the threat of AEs attracts increasingly attentions since it may lead to serious consequences in some vital applications such as disease diagnosis.

To defeat attacks based on AEs, both detection and defensive techniques attract the research community’s attention. Given an input image, the detection system outputs whether it is an …

Cluster Hire In Social Networks Using Modified Weighted Structural Clustering Algorithm For Networks (Mwscan), Harshil Patal

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The concept of effective collaboration within a group is immensely used in organizations as a viable means for improving team performance. Any organization or prominent institute, who works with multiple projects needs to hire a group of experts who can complete a set of projects. When hiring a group of experts, numerous considerations must be taken into account. In the Cluster Hire problem, we are given a set of experts, each having a set of skills. Also, we are given a set of projects, each requiring a set of skills. Upon completion of each project, a profit is generated for …

Computational Enzymology On Sulfur-Containing Enzymes: From Method To Application, Paul Meister

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Sulfur-containing biomolecules display incredible functional diversity. Indeed, in addition to thiols and thioethers, S-nitrosothiols, 3,4-coordinate, sulfoxides, persulfides and now even polysulfides are commonly observed intermediates. Unfortunately, however, their biological synthesis and roles remain poorly understood. In addition, sulfur-containing species can access a broad range of oxidation states and thus can act as either an electrophile or nucleophile giving rise to an even more diverse set of sulfur-derived functional groups. However, these unique properties can lead to difficulties in characterizing such compounds experimentally and reinforces the need for computational studies to reliably predict their structural and energetic properties. In this dissertation, …

Comparative Study Of Reinforcement Learning Methods In Path Planning, Daniel Obawole

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In order to perform a large variety of tasks and achieve human-level performance in complex real-world environments, an intelligent agent must be able to learn from its dynamically changing environment. Generally speaking, agents have limitations in obtaining an accurate description of the environment from what they perceive because they may not have all the information about the environment. The present research is focused on reinforcement learning algorithms that represent a defined category in the field of machine learning because of their unique approach based on a trial-error basis. Reinforcement learning is used to solve control problems based on received rewards. …

Exploring The Relationship Between Mandatory Helmet Use Regulations And Adult Cyclists’ Behavior In California Using Hybrid Machine Learning Models, Fatemeh Davoudi Kakhki, Maria Chierichetti

Mineta Transportation Institute

In California, bike fatalities increased by 8.1% from 2015 to 2016. Even though the benefits of wearing helmets in protecting cyclists against trauma in cycling crash has been determined, the use of helmets is still limited, and there is opposition against mandatory helmet use, particularly for adults. Therefore, exploring perceptions of adult cyclists regarding mandatory helmet use is a key element in understanding cyclists’ behavior, and determining the impact of mandatory helmet use on their cycling rate. The goal of this research is to identify sociodemographic characteristics and cycling behaviors that are associated with the use and non-use of bicycle …

Cluster Hire In Social Networks Using Modified Weighted Structural Clustering Algorithm For Networks (Mwscan), Harshil Patel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The concept of effective collaboration within a group is immensely used in organizations as a viable means for improving team performance. Any organization or prominent institute, who works with multiple projects needs to hire a group of experts who can complete a set of projects. When hiring a group of experts, numerous considerations must be taken into account. In the Cluster Hire problem, we are given a set of experts, each having a set of skills. Also, we are given a set of projects, each requiring a set of skills. Upon completion of each project, a profit is generated for …

The Development And Application Of Targeted Edna Metabarcoding For Monitoring Freshwater And Marine Ais, Yueyang Wu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Species invasions are of critical concern due to their significant impacts on ecosystems and social economies, of which aquatic invasive species (AIS) often pose significant challenges in their control and management, notably because of difficulties in early detection. Environmental DNA (eDNA) provides a promising tool in advancing the detection of newly introduced aquatic organisms because of its high sensitivity and ease of use compared to traditional capture-based methods. Although eDNA-based methods are increasingly used worldwide, especially in aquatic ecosystems, most studies focus on a limited number of target species despite a pressing need for broad taxonomic monitoring for conservation and …

Meta-Heuristic Approach For Course Scheduling Problem, Amanta Sunny

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Nowadays, much research is being carried out to find efficient algorithms for optimal automated university course timetable problems (UCTP). UCTP allocates the university's events like lectures, exams to the various resources, including instructors, students, lecture time and classrooms. Class scheduling is one of the biggest challenging problems of educational institutions. In this thesis, the aim is to improve the state-of-art for a class scheduling problem considering some hard and soft constraints. Hard constraints must be satisfied. Soft constraints need not be satisfied, but there is a penalty for each soft constraint violation. We also have a timing penalty for scheduling …

Neural Network Based Approach For Detecting Location Spoofing In Vehicular Communication, Smarth Kukreja

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Vehicular Ad hoc Network (VANET) is an evolving subset of MANET. It's deployed on the roads, where vehicles act as mobile nodes. Active security and Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) are integral applications of VANET, which require stable and uninterrupted vehicle-to-vehicle communication technology. VANET, is a type of wireless network, due to which it is quite prone to security attacks. Extremely dynamic connections, sensitive data sharing and time-sensitivity of this network make it a vulnerable to security attacks. The messages shared between the vehicles are the basic safety message (BSM), these messages are broadcasted by each vehicle in the network to …

A Study Of Some Transportation Networks From A Complex Network Perspective Chakrabarthy, Pooja., Pooja Chakrabarthy

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Complex networks are ubiquitous; consider, for example, road networks, protein-protein interaction networks, metabolic networks, power networks etc. They can be applied to a wide range of areas like mathematics, computer science, social, and biological sciences. Random graphs can aid in observing the topological features in various data sources and give insights on their respective real-world networks. In this thesis, we study the particular case of small-world networks and compare them with random and regular networks. We start by explaining the complexity of networks and how graph theory can be applied to complex networks to understand their topological properties. Using which, …

Multifaceted Environmental Enrichment In Industrial Fish Hatcheries: The Influence Of Enriched Rearing On The In-Situ Behaviour And Post-Stocking Success Of Juvenile Atlantic Salmon (Salmo Salar), Justine Elizabeth Mcandrews

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Hatchery fish reared and stocked to sustain or restore wild populations often perform poorly in novel environments compared to their wild counterparts. To combat maladaptive hatchery-acquired traits environmental enrichment is an emerging tool used to provide ‘life skills training’ to hatchery fish prior to release. Through the application of simple yet multifaceted enrichment protocols in an industrial fish hatchery, this thesis aimed to demonstrate how enrichment could be applied to improve the ecological viability of stocked fish. At a provincially-run fish hatchery, a subgroup of juvenile Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) were subject to 10 weeks of environmental enrichment …