Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Butte Priority Soils Operable Unit Preliminary (30%) Design Butte Reduction Works Smelter Area Remedial Action Construction Drawings, Pioneer Technical Services, Inc.

Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund Site

No abstract provided.

Teachability And Interpretability In Reinforcement Learning, Jeevan Rajagopal

Department of Computer Science and Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

There have been many recent advancements in the field of reinforcement learning, starting from the Deep Q Network playing various Atari 2600 games all the way to Google Deempind's Alphastar playing competitively in the game StarCraft. However, as the field challenges more complex environments, the current methods of training models and understanding their decision making become less effective. Currently, the problem is partially dealt with by simply adding more resources, but the need for a better solution remains.

This thesis proposes a reinforcement learning framework where a teacher or entity with domain knowledge of the task to complete can assist …

Association Between Dietary Inflammatory Index, Dietary Patterns, Plant-Based Dietary Index And The Risk Of Obesity, Yoko B. Wang, Nitin Shivappa, James R. Hébert Scd, Amanda J. Page, Yohannes Adama Melaku

Faculty Publications

Evidence on the association between various dietary constructs and obesity risk is limited. This study aims to investigate the longitudinal relationship between different diet indices and dietary patterns with the risk of obesity. Non-obese participants (n = 787) in the North West Adelaide Health Study were followed from 2010 to 2015. The dietary inflammatory index (DII®), plant-based dietary index (PDI) and factor-derived dietary pattern scores were computed based on food frequency questionnaire data. We found the incidence of obesity was 7.62% at the 5-year follow up. In the adjusted model, results from multivariable log-binomial logistic regression showed that a prudent …

Development Of High Throughput Assays For Identification And Evaluation Of Small Molecule Inhibitors Of Microrna-31 Expression, Jackline A. Onyango

Masters Theses

Dysregulated expression of miRNAs has been linked to numerous cancers. On the other hand, miRNAs are potential drug targets due to the ability of their precursor molecules to fold into ligand binding structures. Small-molecule modulators of miRNAs offers opportunity for the development of new therapeutic agents and tools to further probe the mechanisms of miRNA functions. To facilitate the identification of miRNA modulators, the appropriate screening systems are needed, which would be adaptable for high-throughput applications, and allow for quantitative measurements. In this text, we present a molecular beacon-based assay to identify molecules that inhibit miRNA-31 processing by Dicer and …

A Process For Adm-300 Radiation Detector Modernization For Military Applications, Caesar R. Pereira

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

An investigation to re-evaluate the current use in military applications of the ADM-300 Multi-Functional Survey Instrument and its requirements are provided. This paper outlines a method to upgrade the ADM-300 due to its eventual obsolescence using newly developed requirements that meet the original justification for use in the USAF in 1992. The capabilities and features of various detectors are analyzed and compared to the ADM-300. Response curves are generated using Monte Carlo simulations. The detectors are prioritized based on their performance to create metrics. A metanalysis of the metrics is conducted to limit bias within the process and justify their …

Brave New World Reboot: Technology’S Role In Consumer Manipulation And Implications For Privacy And Transparency, Allie Mertensotto

Marketing Undergraduate Honors Theses

Most consumers are aware that our data is being obtained and collected through the use of our devices we keep in our homes or even on our person throughout the day. But, it is understated how much data is being collected. Conversations you have with your peers – in a close proximity of a device – are being used to tailor advertising. The advertisements you receive on your devices are uniquely catered to your individual person, due to the fact it consistently uses our data to produce efficient and personal ads. On the flip side, our government is also tapping …

The Bridge To Closing The Green Gap, Samantha Rife

Marketing Undergraduate Honors Theses

In today’s society, we have seen the theme of green consciousness and sustainability become more prevalent as the years pass by. Even as this concept seems to increase in consumer engagement there is not a proportional increase in consumer behavior. This is what is referred to as the gap between green consciousness and green consumerism. Many believe the root of this issue can be solved by increasing regulations. However, I believe this gap can be narrowed by using brands to shift consumers behaviors through their message. The main question that I want to focus in on is, “Can a brand …

Technology And Sustainability: The New Business Playing Field, Havovi Joshi

Asian Management Insights

Two topics that have consistently cropped up in conversations among business leaders during the pandemic are technology, in the context of the pervasiveness and quickening pace of digital transformation, and sustainability, especially how we should be doing business without harming the environment and society. The collective belief is that both topics will continue to rise on the world’s agenda, reshaping entire industries while creating new ones. They have changed the way of doing business. So what does the new playbook look like?

A Novel Mra-Based Framework For Segmenting The Cerebrovascular System And Correlating Cerebral Vascular Changes To Mean Arterial Pressure, Fatma Taher, Heba Kandil, Yitzhak Gebru, Ali Mahmoud, Ahmed Shalaby, Shady El‐Mashad, Ayman El‐Baz

All Works

Blood pressure (BP) changes with age are widespread, and systemic high blood pressure (HBP) is a serious factor in developing strokes and cognitive impairment. A non‐invasive methodology to detect changes in human brain’s vasculature using Magnetic Resonance Angiography (MRA) data and correlation of cerebrovascular changes to mean arterial pressure (MAP) is pre-sented. MRA data and systemic blood pressure measurements were gathered from patients (n = 15, M = 8, F = 7, Age = 49.2 ± 7.3 years) over 700 days (an initial visit and then a follow‐up period of 2 years with a final visit.). A novel segmentation algorithm …

Study Of Neutral Hadron Production In A High Intensity Particle Physics Experiment., Jake W. Berg

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation I present independent measurements of the multiplicities, R, of π⁰ and η mesons produced in annihilation interactions of electrons and positrons at a center-of-mass energy of 10.54 GeV. Data were collected using the BaBar detector at the PEP-II storage rings located at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, California. Both mesons have a decay mode to two photons, which is used to identify them and measure their production per event. I find R(π⁰) = 2.8±0.3 per event and R(η) = 0.25±0.03 per event. I also present my contributions to …

Observing Changes In Vegetable Production Through Alternative Agricultural Practices, Austin Grey Livingston

MSU Graduate Theses

Locally, responsibly grown produce is becoming more popular as consumers are shifting to organic products or those obtained at a local farmer’s market. The importance of soil health through conservation practices is increasing as the negative effects of industrial production are apparent. The over-application of synthetic fertilizers, soil erosion from wind and water, and nutrient leaching in high vegetable production areas has initiated a need for the investigation of alternative management practices. The main objective of this study is to evaluate the effects of tillage and cover crops in the production of green beans and okra. In 2019 and 2020, …

An Analysis Of Modern Password Manager Security And Usage On Desktop And Mobile Devices, Timothy Oesch

Doctoral Dissertations

Security experts recommend password managers to help users generate, store, and enter strong, unique passwords. Prior research confirms that managers do help users move towards these objectives, but it also identified usability and security issues that had the potential to leak user data or prevent users from making full use of their manager. In this dissertation, I set out to measure to what extent modern managers have addressed these security issues on both desktop and mobile environments. Additionally, I have interviewed individuals to understand their password management behavior.

I begin my analysis by conducting the first security evaluation of the …

Learning Hierarchical Traversability Representation For Efficient Multi-Resolution Path Planning, Reza Etemadi Idgahi

Computer Science and Engineering Theses

Path finding on grid-based obstacle maps is an important and much studied problem with applications in robotics and autonomy. Traditionally, in the AI community, heuristic search methods (e.g. based on Dijkstra and A*, or based on random trees) are used to solve this problem. This search, however incurs significant computational cost that grows with the size and resolution of the obstacle grid and has to be mitigated with effective heuristics in order to allow path finding in real time. In this work we introduce a learning framework using deep neural networks with a stackable convolution kernel to establish a hierarchy …

Machine Learning With Graphs, Jianjin Deng

Computer Science and Engineering Dissertations

In recent years, graph-based machine learning methods have attracted great attention because of their effectiveness and efficiency. Inspired by this trend, this thesis summarizes my research topics on machine learning techniques for the purpose of handling various kinds of problems on large graph data. Generally, this thesis contains two parts. The first part is devoted to graph embedding, which aims to encode graph structure into dense vectors (or embeddings). In particular, we will consider a low rank-matrix factorization based approach to learn embeddings of attributed graphs. By jointly preserving graph structure and attribute-level similarity, our approach can generate embeddings, whose …

Structure Aware Human Pose Estimation Using Adversarial Learning, Suryam Sharma

Computer Science and Engineering Theses

Pose estimation using Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) has shown outstanding performance in recent years, due to the availability of powerful GPUs and larger training datasets. However, there are still many challenges due to the large variability of human body appearances, lighting conditions, complex background, occlusions and postures. Among all these peculiarities, partial occlusions, and overlapping body poses often result in deviated pose predictions. These circumstances can result in wrong and sometimes unrealistic results. The human mind can predict such poses because of the underlying structural awareness of the geometry, of a human body. In this thesis, we discuss an efficient …

Low-Dose Ct Image Denoising Using Deep Learning Methods, Zeheng Li

Computer Science and Engineering Theses

Low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) has raised highly attention since the counterpart, full-dose computed tomography (FDCT), brings potential ionizing radiation influence to patients. However, LDCT still suffers from several issues such as relatively higher noise level, which limits its uses in practical applications. To improve LDCT image quality, conventional denoising methods, such as KSVD and BM3D, are first introduced to suppress noise in low-dose images. These methods, however, works under assumptions that are not robust to various data. In this paper, we conduct an extensive research on deep learning based denoising method in LDCT images. We mainly base on Generative-Adversarial Network …

Using Sentiment And Emotion Analysis Of News Articles To Analyze The Effects Of Leader’S Statements On Covid-19 Spread, Poojitha Thota

Computer Science and Engineering Theses

Leaders generally include government officials, politicians, etc. Their statements can highly affect people’s decisions in many ways. Currently, in the pandemic situation, many statements were being passed every hour and day, which showed an impact on the spread of corona virus cases at certain location. So, this paper proposes a supervised model to analyze the variations of COVID-19 data based upon the leader’s statements passed at certain time and location. The proposed methodology consists of sentiment and emotion analysis for the leader’s statements to determine the true intentions of the leader. The leader’s statements are a collection of data obtained …

Predict Behavioural Scores In Sleep Apnea Patients From Resting State Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (Fnirs), Amnah Abdelrahman

Computer Science and Engineering Theses

Sleep disorders are common among adults and children; it has serious consequences on their heath, cognitive development and quality of life. However, some sleep disorders are challenging to diagnose and more challenging to treat. Practitioners often rely on AIH for OSA patients’ classification task, where considering one measurement could raise a risk of oversimplification. Studies show the correlation between sleep disorders, specifically OSA, and mental health. On the other side there are an increasing number of studies suggested evidence of a relationship between the dynamic properties of functional brain structure with the behaviors and cognition attributes. This novel work objective …

End-User Framework For Robot Control, Kaustubh Kedar Rajpathak

Computer Science and Engineering Theses

This thesis describes in detail a developed end-user framework for a humanrobot collaborative system for common tasks, such as pick and place. The system is designed for semi-automated pick and place tasks as well as manual operation making it flexible for multiple use-case scenarios. The goal of the system is to make the robotic system multi-functional, easy to use with a graphical user interface and should perform common tasks with the help of a human teammate. Integration with object recognition neural networks (YOLOv3) and an RGB-Depth camera help automate pick and place tasks with a wide variety of objects.

Human Factors Analysis And Monitoring To Enhance Human-Robot Collaboration, Akilesh Rajavenkatanarayanan

Computer Science and Engineering Dissertations

Human-Machine Interaction (HMI) can be defined as a way for us to communicate with machines through user interfaces. User interfaces have evolved from complicated punch cards and levers in the first analog computers to a more natural way of interaction using speech or gestures in today's digital assistants. Technological advancements in computing devices have paved the way for smart, powerful computers to be part of our everyday lives. There is also an increasing trend of using smart computing devices and robots in manufacturing lines, medical procedures, rehabilitation, and personal care. The umbrella of HMI typically covers several areas like Human-Robot …

Glaze Epochs: Externalizing Material Knowledge Through Tangible Data Records In A Ceramics Studio, Hedieh Moradi

Computer Science and Engineering Theses

The "material turn" in HCI has placed a renewed focus on informing design from the relationships found in material-based interactions. While several ethnographic works provide insight into how practitioners converse with materials, it is less understood how these conversations transform into a skilled practitioner's mental model. I examine the material practice of glazing that gives ceramics its decorative and functional characteristics and involves fusing mixtures of silica, alumina, and flux onto a clay body through kiln firing. This practice evolves over decades, developing from multiple trajectories, including theoretical foundations, systematic experimentation, and happy accidents. This work describes virtual site visits …

Continuous American Sign Language Translation With English Speech Synthesis Using Encoder-Decoder Approach, Preetham Ganesh

Computer Science and Engineering Theses

Interaction between human beings brings about improvements in science and technology. However, the interaction is limited for people who are deaf or hard-of-hearing, as they can only communicate with others who also know their sign language. With the help of recent technologies, such as Deep Learning, the gap can be bridged by converting Sentence-based Sign Language videos into English language speech. The methods discussed in this thesis are taking a step closer to solve that problem. There are four steps involved in converting ASL (American Sign Language) videos to English language speech. Step 1 is to recognize the phrases performed …

Image Analysis Of Charged Bimodal Colloidal Systems In Microgravity., Adam J. Cecil

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Colloids are suspensions of two or more phases and have been topics of research for advanced, tunable materials for decades. Stabilization of colloids is typically attributed to thermodynamic mechanisms; however, recent studies have identified transport or entropic mechanisms that can potentially stabilize a thermodynamically unstable colloidal system. In this study, suspensions of silsesquioxane microparticles and zirconia nanoparticles were dispersed in a nitric acid solution and allowed to aggregate for 8-12 days in microgravity aboard the International Space Station. The suspensions were subsequently imaged periodically at 2.5x magnification. Due to the inadequacy of existing image analysis programs, the python package “Colloidspy” …

Presence Of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 In Urban Streams Receiving Sewer Overflow, Louisville, Kentucky, Usa., Cullen Hunter

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Pathogens may enter surface waters as they are shed in human feces and potentially delivered to surface waters via sewer overflows, particularly in the eastern United States. This study examined of the presence of fecal indicators in two forks of Beargrass Creek in Louisville, Kentucky. Surface water grab samples (N=30), sediment samples, water quality, and a paired wastewater surveillance study were analyzed. SARS-CoV-2 was detected in a single stream sample despite ubiquitous presence of the virus within the area in wastewater and consistent evidence of a human fecal indicator. These findings demonstrate the need for more green and gray infrastructure …

Estimating Cumulative Incidence Rate On Interval Censored Data In An Illness-Death Model., Chen Qian

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Phase IV clinical trials are designed to monitor long-term side effects caused overtime by the medical treatment. For instance, in advanced primary cancer treatment, childhood cancer survivors are often at risk of developing undesired events, such as cardiotoxicity, during their adulthood. Such problems could be due to their cancer or the treatment they received for their cancer such as radiation or intensive chemotherapy. Cardiotoxicity can be diagnosed with electrophysiology with measurements of fraction shortening, afterload, etc. Often the primary focus of a study could be on estimating the cumulative incidence of a particular outcome of interest such as cardiotoxicity. However, …

Observational Studies In Group Testing And Potential Applications., Alexander Christopher Noll

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The use of group testing to identify individuals with targeted outcomes in a population can greatly improve the efficiency, speed, and cost effectiveness of testing a population for an outcome, or at least for identifying the prevalence of an outcome in a population. The implementation of causal inference techniques can provide the basis for an observational study that would allow an investigator to gather estimates for treatment effectiveness if group testing was conducted on the population in a certain way. This thesis examines a simulation of the above outlined principles in order to demonstrate a potential application for determining treatment …

Ga-Based Iii-V Semiconductor Photoanodes For Solar Fuels And Novel Techniques To Investigate Their Photocorrosion., Sahar Pishgar

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Solar energy is one of the most abundant renewable energy sources. However, the diurnal variation of the sun as well as seasonal and weather effects, limits the widespread global implementation of solar energy. Thus, Cost-effective energy storage is critical to overcome the intermittent nature of solar energy available on the earth. Photoelectrolysis of water to oxygen and hydrogen fuel is a promising large-scale solution to store intermittent solar energy in a dense and portable form. Photoelectrochemical (PEC) water-splitting, or artificial photosynthesis, research strives to develop a semiconductor photoelectrode with both high efficiency and long-term stability. Semiconductors of the III–V class …

On Elliptic Curves, Montana S. Miller

MSU Graduate Theses

An elliptic curve over the rational numbers is given by the equation y² = x³+Ax+B. In our thesis, we study elliptic curves. It is known that the set of rational points on the elliptic curve form a finitely generated abelian group induced by the secant-tangent addition law. We present an elementary proof of associativity using Maple. We also present a relatively concise proof of the Mordell-Weil Theorem.

Thorium Dioxide Extraction From Monazite Ore, Jason Pan, Niall Phelan Terry, Katherine Glass, Eli Jenkins, Connor High

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Attendio: Attendance Tracking Made Simple, Benjamin L. Greenberg, Spencer L. Howell, Tucker R. Miles, Vicki Tang, Daniel N. Troutman

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.