Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Science, Technology, Engineering, And Mathematics (Stem) Project-Based Learning (Pbl) Education: A New Mexico Case Study For Equity And Inclusion, Kimberly A. Scheerer

Teacher Education, Educational Leadership & Policy ETDs

This research addresses how student participation in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) project-based learning (PBL) education activities encourages underrepresented minority student achievement in STEM career field trajectories. Seven New Mexico high school counselors and 12 STEM organization personnel were interviewed during this study. Their responses represent the nuanced professional voices where New Mexico public education intersects with STEM student interest and cultural influence.

For students, STEM PBL can foster deep integration across educational disciplines and enhance STEM career trajectory interest and readiness. STEM education converged with PBL methodologies has the ability to leverage community support while broadening student networks. …

All-Sky Search For Short Gravitational-Wave Bursts In The Third Advanced Ligo And Advanced Virgo Run, Ligo Scientific Collaboration, Virgo Collaboration, Kagra Collaboration, Tiffany Z. Summerscales

Faculty Publications

After the detection of gravitational waves from compact binary coalescences, the search for transient gravitational-wave signals with less well-defined waveforms for which matched filtering is not well suited is one of the frontiers for gravitational-wave astronomy. Broadly classified into “short” ≲1  s and “long” ≳1  s duration signals, these signals are expected from a variety of astrophysical processes, including non-axisymmetric deformations in magnetars or eccentric binary black hole coalescences. In this work, we present a search for long-duration gravitational-wave transients from Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo’s third observing run from April 2019 to March 2020. For this search, we use …

Kinetic And Structural Characterization Of A Flavin-Dependent Putrescine N-Hydroxylase From Acinetobacter Baumannii, Noah S. Lyons, Alexandra N. Bogner, John J. Tanner, Pablo Sobrado

Chemistry Faculty Research & Creative Works

Acinetobacter baumannii is a Gram-negative opportunistic pathogen that causes nosocomial infections, especially among immunocompromised individuals. The rise of multidrug resistant strains of A. baumannii has limited the use of standard antibiotics, highlighting a need for new drugs that exploit novel mechanisms of pathogenicity. Disrupting iron acquisition by inhibiting the biosynthesis of iron-chelating molecules (siderophores) secreted by the pathogen is a potential strategy for developing new antibiotics. Here we investigated FbsI, an N-hydroxylating monooxygenase involved in the biosynthesis of fimsbactin A, the major siderophore produced by A. baumannii. FbsI was characterized using steady-state and transient-state kinetics, spectroscopy, X-ray crystallography, and small-angle …

A Review Of Risk Concepts And Models For Predicting The Risk Of Primary Stroke, Elizabeth Hunter, John D. Kelleher

Articles

Predicting an individual's risk of primary stroke is an important tool that can help to lower the burden of stroke for both the individual and society. There are a number of risk models and risk scores in existence but no review or classification designed to help the reader better understand how models differ and the reasoning behind these differences. In this paper we review the existing literature on primary stroke risk prediction models. From our literature review we identify key similarities and differences in the existing models. We find that models can differ in a number of ways, including the …

A Framework For Securing Edge Computing In Medical Devices, David Mcquaid

HECA Research Conference

Edge computing brings data collection, processing and analysis closer to data sources, either enabling execution within devices themselves or outsourcing to local servers and data centres instead of central locations The basic idea is to minimize data transmission time as much as possible and to leverage the implicit processing power that most IOT’s hardware possess.

Simulations Of Plasma Species During Liquid Plasma Interaction In Two Phase Flow At Atmospheric Pressure, Muhammad Iqbal

HECA Research Conference

Understand the characteristics of liquid plasma interaction in the PlasmaStream atmospheric pressure jet deposition system (PSAJD) during downward transport and find the operating conditions under which it will be useful for various applications, such as medicine, tissue engineering and surface deposition of materials. How to solve this problem using numerical modelling as well as computer programming? Which mathematical model would be most appropriate to describe the essential characteristics of plasma in the PlasmaStream System?

Evaluating Multi-Agent Modeller Representations, Jonathan Demke

Theses and Dissertations

The way a multi-agent modeller represents an agent not only affects its ability to reason about agents but also the interpretability of its representation space as well as its efficacy on future downstream tasks. We utilize and repurpose metrics from the field of representation learning to specifically analyze and compare multi-agent modellers that build real-valued vector representations of the agents they model. By generating two datasets and analyzing the representations of multiple LSTM- or transformer-based modellers with various embedding sizes, we demonstrate that representation metrics provide a more complete and nuanced picture of a modeller's representation space than an analysis …

Secure Cloud-Based Iot Water Quality Gathering For Analysis And Visualization, Soin Abdoul Kassif Baba M Traore, Maria Valero, Amy Gruss

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

Water quality refers to measurable water characteristics, including chemical, biological, physical, and radiological characteristics usually relative to human needs. Dumping waste and untreated sewage is the reason for water pollution and several diseases to the living hood. The quality of water can also have a significant impact on animals and plant ecosystems. Therefore, keeping track of water quality is a substantial national interest. Much research has been done for measuring water quality using sensors to prevent water pollution. In summary, those systems are built based on online and reagent-free water monitoring SCADA systems in wired networks. However, centralized servers, transmission …

Cybercrime In The Developing World, David A. Ghelerter, John E. Wilson, Noah L. Welch, John-David Rusk

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

This paper attempts to discover the reasons behind the increase in cybercrime in developing nations over the past two decades. It discusses many examples and cases of projects to increase internet access in developing countries and how they enabled cybercrime. This paper examines how nations where many cybercrimes occurred, did not have the necessary resources or neglected to react appropriately. The other primary focus is how cybercrimes are not viewed the same as other crimes in many of these countries and how this perception allows cybercriminals to do as they please with no stigma from their neighbors. It concludes that …

Microtransactions And Gambling In The Video Game Industry, Christopher L. Antepenko, Samuel R. Rickey, Angel L. Hibbets, John-David Rusk

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

The beginning of the 21st century has had a drastic effect on the video game industry. The advent of almost universal Internet access, the release of inexpensive broadband-enabled consoles, and the availability of mobile gaming have led to game developers and publishers heavily relying on premium in-game currencies, exclusive paid items, and loot boxes to subsidize or even replace profits from traditional video game business models. By 2020, in-game purchases made up a market of $92.6B worldwide and, in the US, experienced growth of over 30%.[1] In this highly lucrative market, the legal and ethical landscape is constantly bubbling with …

Social Media Platforms And Responsibility For Disinformation, Matt T. Figlia, Brandon M. Henschen, Joseph T. Sims, John-David Rusk

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

Researchers are paying closer attention to the rise of disinformation on social media platforms and what responsibility, if any, the companies that control these platforms have for false information being spread on their websites. In this paper, we highlight the recent growth in concern regarding online disinformation, discuss other works regarding the use of social media as a tool for spreading disinformation, and discuss how coordinated disinformation campaigns on social media platforms are used to spread propaganda and lies about current political events. We also evaluate the reactions of social media platforms in combatting disinformation and the difficulty in policing …

Using Experts For Improving Project Cybersecurity Risk Scenarios, Steven S. Presley, Jeffrey P. Landry, Jordan Shropshire, Philip Menard

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

This study implemented an expert panel to assess the content validity of hypothetical scenarios to be used in a survey of cybersecurity risk across project meta-phases. Six out of 10 experts solicited completed the expert panel exercise. Results indicate that although experts often disagreed with each other and on the expected mapping of scenario to project meta-phase, the experts generally found risk present in the scenarios and across all three project meta-phases, as hypothesized.

Authentication Based On Periocular Biometrics And Skin Tone, Kennedy Marsh, Clifton Wallace, Jeffrey Hernandez, Rodney Dejournett, Xiaohong Yuan, Kaushik Roy

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

Face images with masks have a major effect on the identification and authentication of people with masks covering key facial features such as noses and mouths. In this paper, we propose to use periocular region and skin tone for authenticating users with masked faces. We first extract the periocular region of faces with masks, then detect the skin tone for each face. We then train models using machine learning algorithms Random Forest, XGBoost, and Decision Trees using skin tone information and perform classification on two datasets. Experiment results show these models had good performance.

Towards Assessing Organizational Cybersecurity Risks Via Remote Workers’ Cyberslacking And Their Computer Security Posture, Ariel Luna, Yair Levy, Gregory Simco, Wei Li

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

Cyberslacking is conducted by employees who are using their companies’ equipment and network for personal purposes instead of performing their work duties during work hours. Cyberslacking has a significant adverse effect on overall employee productivity, however, recently, due to COVID19 pandemic move to remote working also pose a cybersecurity risk to organizations networks and infrastructure. In this work-in-progress research study, we are developing, validating, and will empirically test taxonomy to assess an organization’s remote workers’ risk level of cybersecurity threats. This study includes a three-phased developmental approach in developing the Remote Worker Cyberslacking Security Risk Taxonomy. With feedback from cybersecurity …

Towards The Development And Assessment Of A Method For Educating Users Into Choosing Complex, Memorable Passphrases, Juan M. Madrid, Yair Levy, Laurie Dringus, Ling Wang

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

The currently most used method for authentication is the password because it is simple to implement, and computer users are very familiarized with it. However, passwords are vulnerable to attacks that can be mitigated by increasing the complexity of the chosen password, particularly in terms of length. One possible approach to accomplish this is through the usage of passphrases, which can be easier to remember than a standard password, thus reducing the loss of work time and productivity related to forgotten passwords. To achieve the required balance between complexity and memorability, the concept of passphrase categories can be used, i.e. …

Nids In Airgapped Lans--Does It Matter?, Winston Messer

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

This paper presents an assessment of the methods and benefits of adding network intrusion detection systems (NIDS) to certain high-security airgapped isolated local area networks. The proposed network architecture was empirically tested via a series of simulated network attacks on a virtualized network. The results show an improvement of double the chances of an analyst receiving a specific, appropriately-severe alert when NIDS is implemented alongside host-based measures when compared to host-based measures alone. Further, the inclusion of NIDS increased the likelihood of the analyst receiving a high-severity alert in response to the simulated attack attempt by four times when compared …

What You See Is Not What You Know: Deepfake Image Manipulation, Cathryn Allen, Bryson Payne, Tamirat Abegaz, Chuck Robertson

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

Research indicates that deceitful videos tend to spread rapidly online and influence people’s opinions and ideas. Because of this, video misinformation via deepfake video manipulation poses a significant online threat. This study aims to discover what factors can influence viewers’ capability of distinguishing deepfake videos from genuine video footage. This work focuses on exploring deepfake videos’ potential use for deception and misinformation by exploring people’s ability to determine whether videos are deepfakes in a survey consisting of deepfake videos and original unedited videos. The participants viewed a set of four videos and were asked to judge whether the videos shown …

Editors' Preface, Michael E. Whitman, Herbert J. Mattord, Hossain Shahriar

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

Since 2004, Kennesaw State University, Georgia, has hosted an academic conference. Over the years, the event has brought together hundreds of faculty and students from throughout the U.S., sharing research into pedagogical efforts and instructional innovations. Initially, the conference was named the Information Security Curriculum Development conference and served as KSU’s contribution to engage our colleagues in growing security education from its infancy. It was paired with KSU’s inaugural security education journal, the Information Security Education Journal. In 2016, the event was rebranded as the Conference on Cybersecurity Education, Research, and Practice to reflect both an expansion of topics suitable …

The Nitrogen Dynamics Of Deer Cave, Sarawak, And The Role Of Bat Caves As Biogeochemical Sinks In Tropical Moist Forests., Joyce Lundberg, Donald A. Mcfarlane, Guy Van Rentergem

International Journal of Speleology

A better understanding of the role of bat caves as nitrogen sinks in tropical moist forest ecosystems can be expected to shed light on regional and spatial variability in nutrient recycling studies. We measured the nitrogen flux (in air and water) associated with a very large Chaerephon plicata bat colony in Deer Cave, Borneo, in the process generating a new, quantitative, estimate of the total bat population (774,828 ±48,320), and the first detailed modelling of an ammonia plume in a cave. Long-term storage of N does not occur in this wet cave. Our final budget numbers indicate that, of the …

Statistical Methods For Differential Gene Expression Analysis Under The Case-Cohort Design, Lidong Wang

Mathematics & Statistics ETDs

Differential gene expression analysis has the potential to discover candidate biomarkers, therapeutic targets, and gene signatures. How to save money when using an unaffordable sample is a practical question. The case-cohort (CCH) study design can blend the economy of case-control studies with the advantages of cohort studies. But it has not been seen in the medical research literature where high-throughput genomic data were involved.

A score test does not need to fit the Cox PH model iteratively; hence, it can save computing time and avoid potential convergence issues. We developed a score test under the CCH design to identify DEGs …

Dense Array Seismic Imaging Of Earth's Crust Using Active And Passive Sources, Evans Awere Onyango

Earth and Planetary Sciences ETDs

Imaging Earth’s crust is critical to understanding processes in the near-surface that affect civilization such as the interaction of seismic waves with the near-surface to generate natural or man-made hazards or investigating how the shallow crust affects the distribution of resources. In chapter 1, I processed and analyzed active source seismic data recorded by ~1000 geophones that were acquired over the legacy HADDOCK nuclear test at the Nevada National Security Site. Using seismic reflection and refraction methods, we image the partially collapsed post-detonation structure to better understand the velocity structure in and around the HADDOCK chimney. Results from this work …

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