Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Engagement Detection Using Prosodic Cues: An Approach For Measuring Child Emotional Engagement Level In Child-Robot Interaction Scenario, Mustafa Oztoprak

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The ultimate goal of advanced child-robot interaction is to develop a high-level intelligencecommunication channel in a closed-loop configuration with the child as the focal point of the instructional scenario. This goal can be met by establishing efficient sensing mechanisms on the robot’s side, such as automatic engagement measuring, which will allow the robot to alter its behavior or even the instructional scenario’s execution.Recent researches, regarding engagement recognition systems mostly based on facial or multi-modal features.We would like to investigate this topic using prosodic cues only. We believe speech characteristics are more likely to be related to child speaker engagement level.This …

Supervised Machine Learning Techniques Applied To Low-Cost Air Quality Sensor Suites, Peter Wahman

All Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

Low-cost PM sensors have garnered interest for their ability to reduce the cost of investigating PM concentrations in both indoor and outdoor spaces. They perform well in high concentration lab testing with correlation coefficients greater than 0.9. In real-world applications, the correlation coefficients drop significantly because of sensing floors and adverse ambient conditions. There are plenty of supervised machine learning techniques that aim to correct the measurements ranging from linear regression to more advanced neural networks and random forests. This work aims to use those more complicated techniques to adjust the measurements using other data sets gathered by a sensor …

Extremophilic Fungi From Marine Environments: Underexplored Sources Of Antitumor, Anti-Infective And Other Biologically Active Agents, Lesley Ann Giddings, David J. Newman

Chemistry: Faculty Publications

Marine environments are underexplored terrains containing fungi that produce a diversity of natural products given unique environmental pressures and nutrients. While bacteria are commonly the most studied microorganism for natural products in the marine world, marine fungi are also abundant but remain an untapped source of bioactive metabolites. Given that their terrestrial counterparts have been a source of many blockbuster antitumor agents and anti-infectives, including camptothecin, the penicillins, and cyclosporin A, marine fungi also have the potential to produce new chemical scaffolds as leads to potential drugs. Fungi are more phylogenetically diverse than bacteria and have larger genomes that contain …

Performance Of Near-Infrared High-Contrast Imaging Methods With Jwst From Commissioning, Jens Kammerer, Julien Girard, Aarynn L. Carter, Marshall D. Perrin, Rachel Cooper, Deepashri Thatte, Thomas Vandal, Jarron Leisenring, Jason Wang, William O. Balmer, Anand Sivaramakrishnan, Laurent Pueyo, Kimberly Ward-Duong, Ben Sunnquist, Jéa Adams Redai

Astronomy: Faculty Publications

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will revolutionize the field of high-contrast imaging and enable both the direct detection of Saturn-mass planets and the characterization of substellar companions in the mid-infrared. While JWST will feature unprecedented sensitivity, angular resolution will be the key factor when competing with ground-based telescopes. Here, we aim to characterize the performance of several extreme angular resolution imaging techniques available with JWST in the 3-5 µm regime based on data taken during the instrument commissioning. Firstly, we introduce custom tools to simulate, reduce, and analyze JWST NIRCam and MIRI coronagraphy data and use these tools to …

Direct Imaging & Spectroscopy Of Exoplanetary Systems With The Jwst Early Release Science Program, Sasha Hinkley, Aarynn L. Carter, Shrishmoy Ray, Beth Biller, Andrew Skemer, Elodie Choquet, Maxwell A. Millar-Blanchaer, Stephanie Sallum, Brittany Miles, Niall Whiteford, Polychronis Patapis, Marshall Perrin, Laurent Pueyo, Karl Stapelfeldt, Jason Wang, Kimberly Ward-Duong, Julien H. Girard, Dean Hines, Jens Kammerer, Jarron Leisenring, Yifan Zhou, Michael Meyer, Michael C. Liu, Mickael Bonnefoy, Simon Petrus, Mariangela Bonavita, Gael Chauvin, Christine Chen, Thayne Currie, Kielan K.W. Hoch, Cecilia Lazzoni, Elisabeth C. Matthews

Astronomy: Faculty Publications

The direct characterization of exoplanetary systems with high contrast imaging is among the highest priorities for the broader exoplanet community. As large space missions will be necessary for detecting and characterizing exo-Earth twins, developing the techniques and technology for direct imaging of exoplanets is a driving focus for the community. For the first time, JWST will directly observe extrasolar planets at mid-infrared wavelengths beyond 5 μm, deliver detailed spectroscopy revealing much more precise chemical abundances and atmospheric conditions, and provide sensitivity to analogs of our solar system ice-giant planets at wide orbital separations, an entirely new class of exoplanet. However, …

Assessment Of The Negative Role Amur Honeysuckle Has On Urban Forest Diversity, Hayley Schlabowske, Paige Lundborg, Jason Koontz, Michael Reisner

Independent Research Projects

Lonicera maackii (Amur Honeysuckle), an invasive shrub species, has out-competed native species in urban riparian zones for decades due to its ability to receive more sunlight and it also secretes an allelochemical from its leaves that negatively impacts the ecosystems. Our research question is how does Lonicera maackii affect native plant species in the herbaceous understory? Five forest communities were sampled in Northwest Illinois. Sites were separated into four different categories with L. maackii only, Garlic Mustard (Alliaria petiolata) only, Neither invasive species, and sites where both occur. There were 12 sites for each of the four categories resulting in …

Exploring The Integration Of Corporate Sustainability Into Small-Scale Business Activities, Olushola O. Odutola

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Small and medium-scale enterprises contribute 49% of the gross domestic product in Nigeria. The lack of research studies on how small and medium-scale enterprises integrate corporate sustainability into their business operations might present challenges for policymakers in achieving Nigeria’s sustainable development goals (SDG). The purpose of this descriptive phenomenological study was to explore how managers of small and medium-scale enterprises integrate the corporate sustainability dimensions into their business operations based on the concepts of the corporate entity, corporate nature, and corporate obligations. The central research question of this study was how managers of small and medium-scale enterprises integrate the economic, …

The Algebra Of Type Unification, Verity James Scheel

Senior Projects Spring 2022

Type unification takes type inference a step further by allowing non-local flow of information. By exposing the algebraic structure of type unification, we obtain even more flexibility as well as clarity in the implementation. In particular, the main contribution is an explicit description of the arithmetic of universe levels and consistency of constraints of universe levels, with hints at how row types and general unification/subsumption can fit into the same framework of constraints. The compositional nature of the algebras involved ensure correctness and reduce arbitrariness: properties such as associativity mean that implementation details of type inference do not leak in …

Diagnosis Of Errors In Stalled Inter-Organizational Workflow Processes, Mudassar Habib Ghazi

CCE Theses and Dissertations

Fault-tolerant inter-organizational workflow processes help participant organizations efficiently complete their business activities and operations without extended delays. The stalling of inter-organizational workflow processes is a common hurdle that causes organizations immense losses and operational difficulties. The complexity of software requirements, incapability of workflow systems to properly handle exceptions, and inadequate process modeling are the leading causes of errors in the workflow processes.

The dissertation effort is essentially about diagnosing errors in stalled inter-organizational workflow processes. The goals and objectives of this dissertation were achieved by designing a fault-tolerant software architecture of workflow system’s components/modules (i.e., workflow process designer, workflow engine, …

Experimental Study To Assess The Role Of Environment And Device Type On The Success Of Social Engineering Attacks: The Case Of Judgment Errors, Tommy Pollock

CCE Theses and Dissertations

Phishing continues to be an invasive threat to computer and mobile device users. Cybercriminals continuously develop new phishing schemes using e-mail and malicious search engine links to gather the personal information of unsuspecting users. This information is used for financial gains through identity theft schemes or draining victims' financial accounts. Many users of varying demographic backgrounds fall victim to phishing schemes at one time or another. Users are often distracted and fail to process the phishing attempts fully, then unknowingly fall victim to the scam until much later. Users operating mobile phones and computers are likely to make judgment errors …

A Universal Cybersecurity Competency Framework For Organizational Users, Patricia A. Baker

CCE Theses and Dissertations

The global reliance on the Internet to facilitate organizational operations necessitates further investments in organizational information security. Such investments hold the potential for protecting information assets from cybercriminals. To assist organizations with their information security, The National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE) Cybersecurity Workforce Framework (NCWF) was created. The framework referenced the cybersecurity work, knowledge, and skills required to competently complete the tasks that strengthen their information security. Organizational users’ limited cybersecurity competency contributes to the financial and information losses suffered by organizations year after year. While most organizational users may be able to respond positively to a cybersecurity threat, …

Beta Invariant And Chromatic Uniqueness Of Wheels, Sooyeon Lee, Haidong Wu

Faculty and Student Publications

A graph G is chromatically unique if its chromatic polynomial completely determines the graph. An n-spoked wheel, Wn, is shown to be chromatically unique when n ≥ 4 is even [S.-J. Xu and N.-Z. Li, The chromaticity of wheels, Discrete Math. 51 (1984) 207–212]. When n is odd, this problem is still open for n ≥ 15 since 1984, although it was shown by di erent researchers that the answer is no for n = 5, 7, yes for n = 3, 9, 11, 13, and unknown for other odd n. We use the beta invariant of matroids to prove …

Study Of B ¯ 0 →D+H- (H=K/Π) Decays At Belle Study Of B ¯ 0 →D+H- (H=K/Π) ... Waheed E. Et Al., E. Waheed, P. Urquijo, I. Adachi, H. Aihara, S. Al Said, D. M. Asner, H. Atmacan, V. Aulchenko, T. Aushev, S. Bahinipati, P. Behera, K. Belous, J. Bennett, M. Bessner, V. Bhardwaj, B. Bhuyan, T. Bilka, J. Biswal, A. Bobrov

Faculty and Student Publications

We present a measurement of the branching fractions of the Cabibbo favored B¯0→D+π- and the Cabibbo suppressed B¯0→D+K- decays. We find B(B¯0→D+π-)=(2.48±0.01±0.09±0.04)×10-3 and B(B¯0→D+K-)=(2.03±0.05±0.07±0.03)×10-4 decays, where the first uncertainty is statistical, the second is systematic, and the third uncertainty is due to the D+→K-π+π+ branching fraction. The ratio of branching fractions of B¯0→D+K- and B¯0→D+π- is measured to be RD=[8.19±0.20(stat)±0.23(syst)]×10-2. These measurements are performed using the full Belle dataset, which corresponds to 772×106BB¯ pairs and use the Belle II software framework for data analysis.

A Kinetic Analysis Of Bleaching Synthetic Indigo In Solution, Emily Fry

Belmont University Research Symposium (BURS)

Indigo's ability to dye a wide variety of fabric types gives it a prominent place in the textile industry. As a vat dye, indigo must be reduced to leuco-indigo to dissolve in water and dye fabric. It is common practice in the textile industry to bleach indigo-dyed denim to alter the final appearance of the garment. This research aims to determine the kinetic order of this bleaching process, using hydrogen peroxide as a bleaching agent for synthetic indigo. Vat solutions of synthetic indigo were made using fructose as the reducing agent and sodium hydroxide to create a reducing environment. Four …

Covidalert - A Wristwatch-Based System To Alert Users From Face Touching, Mrinmoy Roy

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Worldwide 219 million people have been infected and 4.5 million have lost their lives in ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Until vaccines became widely available, precautions and safety measures like wearing masks, physical distancing, avoiding face touching were some of the primary means to curb the spread of virus. Face touching is a compulsive human behavior that can not be prevented without constantly making a conscious effort, even then it is inevitable. To address this problem, we have designed a smartwatch-based solution, CovidAlert, that leverages Random Forest algorithm trained on accelerometer and gyroscope data from the smartwatch to detect hand transition to …

Conductors For Maximal Orders Of Group Rings Over Local Fields, Brooke Randazzo

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation examines conductors for maximal orders of group rings, $FD$, contained in integral group rings, $\mathcal{O}_F D$, where $D$ is a finite group, $F$ a local field, and $\mathcal{O}_F$ its discrete valuation ring. (Given two rings $R \subseteq S$, the conductor of $S$ in $R$, if it exists, is the largest ideal of $S$ contained in $R$.) First, we use a theorem of Jacobinski to make this conductor explicit where $F$ is a particular extension of $\mathbb{Q}_p$ of varying ramification index and $D$ is any elementary abelian $p$-group. Next, we examine this conductor problem for this same $F$ within …

A Data Repository For Clarifying Water Clarity: A Call To Use Metrics Best Suited To Corresponding Research And Management Goals In Aquatic Ecosystems (York River Estuary Case Study Dataset), Jessica S. Turner, Kelsey A. Fall, Carl T. Friedrichs

Data

This data repository is a permanent archive of the results presented in the associated publication (Turner et al. 2022, Limnology & Oceanography Letters, doi.xxxx). The objective of this study was to illustrate a water clarity phenomenon in the lower York River Estuary of the Chesapeake Bay. The data include light attenuation, Secchi depth, turbidity, and salinity from the lower York River Estuary in western Chesapeake Bay, Virginia, USA from the years 2014-2016.

Password Managers: Secure Passwords The Easy Way, Alexander Master

CERIAS Technical Reports

Poor passwords are often the central problem identified when data breaches, ransomware attacks, and identity fraud cases occur. This Purdue Extension publication provides everyday users of Internet websites and computer systems with tools and strategies to protect their online accounts. Securing information access with password managers can be convenient and often free of cost, on a variety of devices and platforms. “Do’s and Don’ts” of password practices are highlighted, as well as the benefits of multi-factor authentication. The content is especially applicable for small businesses or non-profits, where employees often share access to systems or accounts.

Sok: Analysis Of Software Supply Chain Security By Establishing Secure Design Properties, Chinenye Okafor, Taylor R. Schorlemmer, Santiao Torres-Arias, James C. Davis

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

This paper systematizes knowledge about secure software supply chain patterns. It identifies four stages of a software supply chain attack and proposes three security properties crucial for a secured supply chain: transparency, validity, and separation. The paper describes current security approaches and maps them to the proposed security properties, including research ideas and case studies of supply chains in practice. It discusses the strengths and weaknesses of current approaches relative to known attacks and details the various security frameworks put out to ensure the security of the software supply chain. Finally, the paper highlights potential gaps in actor and operation-centered …

Reflecting On Recurring Failures In Iot Development, Dharun Anandayuvaraj, James C. Davis

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

As IoT systems are given more responsibility and autonomy, they offer greater benefits, but also carry greater risks. We believe this trend invigorates an old challenge of software engineering: how to develop high-risk software-intensive systems safely and securely under market pressures? As a first step, we conducted a systematic analysis of recent IoT failures to identify engineering challenges. We collected and analyzed 22 news reports and studied the sources, impacts, and repair strategies of failures in IoT systems. We observed failure trends both within and across application domains. We also observed that failure themes have persisted over time. To alleviate …

Exploiting Input Sanitization For Regex Denial Of Service, Efe Barlas, Xin Du, James C. Davis

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Web services use server-side input sanitization to guard against harmful input. Some web services publish their sanitization logic to make their client interface more usable, e.g., allowing clients to debug invalid requests locally. However, this usability practice poses a security risk. Specifically, services may share the regexes they use to sanitize input strings — and regex-based denial of service (ReDoS) is an emerging threat. Although prominent service outages caused by ReDoS have spurred interest in this topic, we know little about the degree to which live web services are vulnerable to ReDoS.

In this paper, we conduct the first black-box …

Discrepancies Among Pre-Trained Deep Neural Networks: A New Threat To Model Zoo Reliability, Diego Montes, Pongpatapee Peerapatanapokin, Jeff Schultz, Chengjun Guo, Wenxin Jiang, James C. Davis

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Training deep neural networks (DNNs) takes significant time and resources. A practice for expedited deployment is to use pre-trained deep neural networks (PTNNs), often from model zoos.collections of PTNNs; yet, the reliability of model zoos remains unexamined. In the absence of an industry standard for the implementation and performance of PTNNs, engineers cannot confidently incorporate them into production systems. As a first step, discovering potential discrepancies between PTNNs across model zoos would reveal a threat to model zoo reliability. Prior works indicated existing variances in deep learning systems in terms of accuracy. However, broader measures of reliability for PTNNs from …

An Empirical Study On The Impact Of Deep Parameters On Mobile App Energy Usage, Qiang Xu, James C. Davis, Y Charlie Hu, Abhilash Jindal

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Improving software performance through configuration parameter tuning is a common activity during software maintenance. Beyond traditional performance metrics like latency, mobile app developers are interested in reducing app energy usage. Some mobile apps have centralized locations for parameter tuning, similar to databases and operating systems, but it is common for mobile apps to have hundreds of parameters scattered around the source code. The correlation between these "deep" parameters and app energy usage is unclear. Researchers have studied the energy effects of deep parameters in specific modules, but we lack a systematic understanding of the energy impact of mobile deep parameters. …

Reflections On Software Failure Analysis, Paschal C. Amusuo, Aishwarya Sharma, Siddharth R. Rao, Abbey Vincent, James C. Davis

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Failure studies are important in revealing the root causes, behaviors, and life cycle of defects in software systems. These studies either focus on understanding the characteristics of defects in specific classes of systems or the characteristics of a specific type of defect in the systems it manifests in. Failure studies have influenced various software engineering research directions, especially in the area of software evolution, defect detection, and program repair.

In this paper, we reflect on the conduct of failure studies in software engineering. We reviewed a sample of 52 failure study papers. We identified several recurring problems in these studies, …

Enhanced Study Of Complex Systems By Unveiling Hidden Symmetries With Dynamical Visibility, Nhat Vu Minh Nguyen

2022 Symposium

One of the great challenges in complex and chaotic dynamics is to reveal its deterministic structures. These temporal dynamical structures are sometimes a consequence of hidden symmetries. Detecting and understanding them can allow the study of complex systems even without knowing the full underlying mathematical description of the system. Here we introduce a new technique, called Dynamical Visibility, that quantifies temporal correlations of the dynamics based upon some symmetry conditions. This visibility measures the departure of the dynamics from internal symmetries. We apply this technique to well-known chaotic systems, such as the logistic map and the circle map, as well …

Detrital Zircon Ages In Heavily Folded Quartzite Compared To Steptoe Butte, Travis A. Morton, Chad Pritchard

2022 Symposium

Folded and altered quartzite along Interstate 90 and the Palouse to Cascades Trail out of Rosalia, WA preserves a record of the region’s tectonic past. The working hypothesis is that the sandstone is Cambrian (roughly 500 million years old) and was metamorphosed and deformed during the Sevier orogeny (roughly 150 to 50 million years ago), and then uplifted about 50 million years ago. The first step to address the hypothesis is to determine the age of the rocks using detrital zircon U/Pb analyses. The second step is for a detailed field study to identify relationships between metamorphic grades and geologic …

Deciphering Regional Geology Using The New Usgs-Ewu Mineral Separation Lab, Zachary Shimp, Katlin Gamache, Travis Morton, Chad Pritchard

2022 Symposium

U/Pb radiometric dating of zircon is one of the most widely used methods to determine the crystallization ages of igneous and metamorphic rocks and the provenance of sedimentary rocks. Eastern Washington University (EWU) has collaborated with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to build a mineral separation lab for isolating zircon (and other) minerals for analysis. This lab was completed in Fall 2022 and is currently being transferred to the new ISC for future use. Graphically illustrated below are the methods used for sampling and pulverizing the rock, as well as grain mount preparation techniques. One of the EWU projects that …

Strategies For The Reduction Of Cybersecurity Breaches In Hospitals, Donovan M. A. Pottinger

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

AbstractRecent cyberattacks in hospitals show the urgency of the need to enhance secure information technology (IT) infrastructure. Hospitals are statistically more at cyber risk than all the multiple industries against ransomware, malware, hacking and internal threats. Guided by routine activity theory, the purpose of this exploratory multiple case study was to explore strategies utilized by hospitals' IT security managers to reduce cybersecurity breaches associated with sensitive data. The participants were nine IT security managers from hospitals in the eastern United States. Data were collected via semistructured interviews and supporting documentation from the consenting participants and hospitals' websites. Through thematic analysis, …

Satdbailiff- Mining And Tracking Self-Admitted Technical Debt, Mohamed Wiem Mkaouer, Eman Abdullah Alomar, Ben Christians, Mihal Busho, Ahmed Hamad Alkhalid, Christian D. Newman

Articles

Self-Admitted Technical Debt (SATD) is a metaphorical concept to describe the self-documented addition of technical debt to a software project in the form of source code comments. SATD can linger in projects and degrade source-code quality, but it can also be more visible than unintentionally added or undocumented technical debt. Understanding the implications of adding SATD to a software project is important because developers can benefit from a better understanding of the quality trade-offs they are making. However, empirical studies, analyzing the survivability and removal of SATD comments, are challenged by potential code changes or SATD comment updates that may …

Perception Of Health Care Access In Rural Georgia: Findings From A Community Health Needs Assessment Survey, Elisa M. Childs, Tiffany R. Washington

Journal of the Georgia Public Health Association

Background: Limited access to health care services has been cited as a barrier to care for individuals who live in rural areas, contributing to significant health disparities in this population. While perception of services has been cited as a determinant of utilization of health services, it is unknown how perception of services influences health care access in rural areas. The paucity of studies specific to areas in the United States that are medically underserved, necessitated this study and its quantification of the issues that are relevant to individuals living in rural Georgia.

Methods: This study examined the perception of health …