Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Transformer-Enabled Deep Reinforcement Learning For Coverage Path Planning, Daniel B. Tiu

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Coverage path planning (CPP) is the problem of covering all points in an environment and is a well-researched topic in robotics due to its sheer practical relevance. This paper investigates such an offline CPP problem where the primary objective is to minimize the path length to achieve complete coverage. Furthermore, the literature suggests that taking turns leads to a higher energy use than going straight. To this end, we design a novel objective function that aims to minimize the number of turns as well. We have proposed a deep reinforcement learning (DRL)-based framework that uses a Transformer model. Unlike state-of-the-art …

Teaching And Generative Ai: Pedagogical Possibilities And Productive Tensions, Beth Buyserie, Travis N. Thurston

Teaching and Generative AI: Pedagogical Possibilities and Productive Tensions

With the rapid development of generative Al, teachers are experiencing a new pedagogical challenge, one that promises to forever change the way we approach teaching and learning. As a response to this unprecedented teaching context, this collection-Teaching and Generative Al: Pedagogical Possibilities and Productive Tensions-provides interdisciplinary teachers, librarians, and instructional designers with practical and thoughtful pedagogical resources for navigating the possibilities and challenges of teaching in an Al era. Because our goal with this edited collection is to present nuanced discussions of Al technologies across disciplines, the chapters collectively acknowledge or explore both possibilities and tensions-including the strengths, …

Birds Of Costa Rica: Journal & Sketchbook, Clara Magsarili

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This project exhibits the birds of Costa Rica which are extremely beautiful and diverse. I had the opportunity to see 148 species of bird while studying abroad in Costa Rica in the fall of 2023. This project is a collection of personal observations of each species accompanied by a watercolor painting or colored pencil drawing. Inspired by a Tropical Birds class that I took at Veritas University in San Jose, Costa Rica, 'Birds of Costa Rica: Journal & Stetchbook' grew into a piece that encapsulates a lifetime of a love of birds, art, and sharing my passion with others.

Developing Two-Dimensional Ammonium Sensors For Use In Marine Sediments, Zoe Kass

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Nitrogen spatial distribution and denitrification rates are not currently well understood in marine sediments. Both nitrogen distribution and denitrification rates vary widely. Better understanding these processes and the factors that impact them could have a variety of applications, from providing us with a foundation for determining any potential impacts of anthropogenic nitrogen to restoring eel grass beds. This project focused on the development of a two-dimensional ammonium sensor using diffusive equilibrium thin films. We successfully created and calibrated our sensor before deploying it at Padilla Bay to produce a two-dimensional image of the spatial distribution and concentrations of ammonium in …

Properties Of Skew-Polynomial Rings And Skew-Cyclic Codes, Kathryn Hechtel

Theses and Dissertations--Mathematics

A skew-polynomial ring is a polynomial ring over a field, with one indeterminate x, where one must apply an automorphism to commute coefficients with x. It was first introduced by Ore in 1933 and since the 1980s has been used to study skew-cyclic codes. In this thesis, we present some properties of skew-polynomial rings and some new constructions of skew-cyclic codes. The dimension of a skew-cyclic code depends on the degree of its generating skew polynomial. However, due to the skew-multiplication rule, the degree of a skew polynomial can be smaller than its number of roots and hence tricky to …

External Support Structures In Fused Deposition Modeling 3d Printing, Adam Mystkowski

Undergraduate Honors Theses

3D Printing, sometimes also referred to as Additive Manufacturing, is a technology that has garnered a lot of attention in the past several years. While the technology has attracted a significant community of hobbyists, the benefits of the technology have also been recognized in manufacturing. While there are many different types of 3D Printing techniques, the most common type is Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM), mainly due to its relatively low cost compared to other types. However, the technique also present a significant limitation: it tends to struggle with models that have overhanging parts. When a layer is extruded by an …

Predicting An Optimal Medication/Prescription Regimen For Patient Discordant Chronic Comorbidities Using Multi-Output Models, Ichchha Pradeep Sharma, Tam Nguyen, Shruti Ajay Singh, Tom Ongwere

Computer Science Faculty Publications

This paper focuses on addressing the complex healthcare needs of patients struggling with discordant chronic comorbidities (DCCs). Managing these patients within the current healthcare system often proves to be a challenging process, characterized by evolving treatment needs necessitating multiple medical appointments and coordination among different clinical specialists. This makes it difficult for both patients and healthcare providers to set and prioritize medications and understand potential drug interactions. The primary motivation of this research is the need to reduce medication conflict and optimize medication regimens for individuals with DCCs. To achieve this, we allowed patients to specify their health conditions and …

Simulation Studies Of Topological Defect Behavior In Rank-2 Anti-Symmetric Tensor Fields, Wyatt Carbonell

Physics, Astronomy and Geophysics Honors Papers

Lorentz-violating models are a class of theories in which a fundamental field breaks the underlying Lorentz symmetry of a system action by assuming a nonzero vacuum expectation value. In this work, we consider a model which achieves such a Lorentz violation through a rank-2, anti-symmetric tensor field. We present a derivation of the equations governing the time evolution of this tensor field, the specifications of a program capable of numerically simulating this evolution through the solving of differential equations, evidence for the success of our simulation in accurately representing the model, and evidence against the physical viability of such a …

Numerical Black Hole Solutions For A Timelike Bumblebee Field, Azadé Modaressi

Physics, Astronomy and Geophysics Honors Papers

This work builds on a paper by Casana et al. [1], in which they calculated an exact, spherically symmetric solution to the Einstein equations in the presence of a bumblebee vector field. We extend their solutions by introducing a timelike component to the vector field. We are able to obtain series solutions to the Einstein equation in the presence of this field. We then demonstrate that these solutions recover flat spacetime. Our results cast doubt on the physical viability of this model, but a more thorough proof is required.

Pre-Calculus: Thinking Deeply About Simple Things, Jacob Carter

Graduate Research Showcase

“Pre-Calculus: Thinking Deeply About Simple Things” is a research-based creative endeavor focused on designing a high-school pre-calculus course. This course aims to foster deep, meaningful thinking, as well as an appreciation of the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the math classroom. The course leverages students’ funds of knowledge to employ culturally responsive teaching methods to connect mathematical concepts to the students’ backgrounds, interests, and real-life situations. This course also integrates social-emotional learning to create an engaging and supportive learning environment for all students. By combining Peter Liljedahl’s “Building Thinking Classroom in Mathematics” approach with problem-based learning, the course …

Incorporating Equity Into Sea-Level Rise Planning: Perspectives From Practitioners Across California, Nayré Herrera

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Scholars along with national and state governments have increasingly made calls to incorporate an equity lens into climate adaptation processes and into sea-level rise planning specifically. However, the language used in these high-level policies remains vague. There remains a need to learn from practitioners on the ground about the challenges and opportunities for effectively incorporating an equity lens into sea-level rise adaptation and planning efforts. I conducted interviews with 17 individuals who are working within their agencies or organizations to advance equity across the California coast along with a review of 17 California coastal policy documents to gain insights into …

The Science Of Gravitational-Wave Sources And Beyond Compact Binary Coalescences, Yanyan Zheng

Doctoral Dissertations

"This work focuses on the field of gravitational-wave astronomy by extending the scope of detectable sources beyond compact binary coalescences, All the gravitational-wave detections so far come from compact binary coalescences. Focusing on core-collapse supernovae as promising sources for short gravitational-wave transients, this work reports optically targeted searches for gravitational-wave emitted by core-collapse supernovae during the third observing run of the LIGO and Virgo detectors. It also predicts the search sensitivity for the ongoing fourth and forthcoming fifth observing runs. Moreover, the work introduces a novel computational framework for testing the spatial distribution of binary black hole sources, allowing for …

Experimental Investigation Of High-Temperature Brine-Shale Interactions, Anna Atasha Hoffmann

Doctoral Dissertations

"Hydrofracturing (fracking), a common practice in the Petroleum Industry to induce or improve fluid flow in tight formations, creates chemical disequilibrium that further alters the porosity and permeability of host rocks and results in the production of saline and contaminated produced waters (PW). The PW of the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale (TMS) are Na-Ca-Mg-K-Cl brines with mean concentrations of approximately 16% Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) and circumneutral pH. Analysis of composition suggests the PW result from a 20 to 80% dilution of formation waters (relict brines of the Louann Salt) by fracking fluid. Trace element concentrations generally show moderate to strong …

Nitrate Contamination In Two California Groundwater Basins: What Creates Disparities?, Catherine Protiva

Scripps Senior Theses

Nitrate contamination is a major problem within California groundwater basins. A form of nitrogen, nitrates leach into groundwater aquifers from the surface where they remain for many decades. The most common source for the contaminant is agricultural sources like nitrogen fertilizer. Consequently, the problem is concentrated in regions of the state with a history of large-scale agricultural production. When water is pulled from contaminated basins and used as drinking water, the nitrates can cause serious negative health consequences, most commonly methemoglobinemia, also known as blue baby syndrome. In this thesis, I will examine what factors contribute to a region’s ability …

Improving Accessibility And Understanding: Studying The Impact Of Human Activities And Dam Removals On Anadromous Fish Species In The Pacific Northwest, Adia F. Bennett

Scripps Senior Theses

Human activities in North American watersheds have significantly impacted anadromous fish, causing some species of salmon and steelhead to become threatened and endangered. These fish hold ecological, cultural, and economic importance, yet factors such as habitat destruction, overfishing, pollution, climate change, and hydroelectric dams continue to degrade populations. Dams are particularly harmful to anadromous fish, sparking a recent movement advocating for dam removals. This study uses NOAA’s 2022 Biological Viability Assessment to examine the response of anadromous fish to recent dam removals in the Pacific Northwest. Four populations were selected to analyze due to their interaction with sites that had …

Transition Towards A Brighter Future: Energy Usage Analysis At Pilgrim Place And Recommendations For Decarbonization, Zhuoyao Wu

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis summarizes the semester-long project I and other Environmental Analysis major students collaborated on for the EA 190 Capstone Project aims to find effective methods to reduce emissions and increase energy efficiency. Our group partnered with the Climate Resilience Initiative team (CRI) at Pilgrim Place, a social and environmental justice-focused retirement community in Claremont, CA. As the demand for effective methods for energy efficiency in communal spaces increases, we have conducted an energy analysis and researched potential functional technologies to replace high fossil fuel consumption sources. Our final deliverable is a written report that analyzes the data we collected …

Detection Of Tooth Position By Yolov4 And Various Dental Problems Based On Cnn With Bitewing Radiograph, Kuo Chen Li, Yi-Cheng Mao, Mu-Feng Lin, Yi-Qian Li, Chiung-An Chen, Tsung-Yi Chen, Patricia Angela R. Abu

Department of Information Systems & Computer Science Faculty Publications

Periodontitis is a high prevalence dental disease caused by bacterial infection of the bone that surrounds the tooth. Early detection and precision treatment can prevent more severe symptoms such as tooth loss. Traditionally, periodontal disease is identified and labeled manually by dental professionals. The task requires expertise and extensive experience, and it is highly repetitive and time-consuming. The aim of this study is to explore the application of AI in the field of dental medicine. With the inherent learning capabilities, AI exhibits remarkable proficiency in processing extensive datasets and effectively managing repetitive tasks. This is particularly advantageous in professions demanding …

A Little More On Ideals Associated With Sublocales, Oghenetega Ighedo, Grace Wakesho Kivunga, Dorca Nyamusi Stephen

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

As usual, let RL denote the ring of real-valued continuous functions on a completely regular frame L. Let βL and λL denote the Stone- Čech compactification of L and the Lindelöf coreflection of L, respectively. There is a natural way of associating with each sublocale of βL two ideals of RL, motivated by a similar situation in C(X). In [12], the authors go one step further and associate with each sublocale of λL an ideal of RL in a manner similar to one of the ways one does it for sublocales of βL. The intent in this paper …

Constrained Multiview Representation For Self-Supervised Contrastive Learning, Siyuan Dai, Kai Ye, Kun Zhao, Ge Cui, Haoteng Tang, Liang Zhan

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Representation learning constitutes a pivotal cornerstone in contemporary deep learning paradigms, offering a conduit to elucidate distinctive features within the latent space and interpret the deep models. Nevertheless, the inherent complexity of anatomical patterns and the random nature of lesion distribution in medical image segmentation pose significant challenges to the disentanglement of representations and the understanding of salient features. Methods guided by the maximization of mutual information, particularly within the framework of contrastive learning, have demonstrated remarkable success and superiority in decoupling densely intertwined representations. However, the effectiveness of contrastive learning highly depends on the quality of the positive and …

Applications Of Genetic Algorithms To Chess, Elliot M. Harris

Senior Projects Spring 2024

This thesis discusses the use of genetic algorithms to tune the parameters of a chess engine, resulting in a significant increase in playing strength. The design of the genetic algorithms builds on the 2008-2011 work of David-Tabibi et al. and Vázquez-Fernández et al. The overwhelmingly positive result presented in this thesis not only suggests a promising potential for genetic algorithm use to improve computer chess, but also supports the efficacy and potential of applying genetic algorithms to a broader set of use cases.

Machine Learning And Natural Language Processing For Crossword Puzzles, Finn Brennan

Senior Projects Spring 2024

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Science, Mathematics and Computing of Bard College.

Locigraph: Ai Agent Framework For Browser-Based Knowledge Graph Construction, Nathan Cho

Senior Projects Spring 2024

This work presents LociGraph, an artificial intelligence agent that can autonomously search information on the non-public web, such as email inboxes, online communities, social media, or web applications not searchable on a public search engine. With a given query, the agent will browse the web using the keyboard and mouse to find a webpage containing the relevant information and extract the information in a structured format. For example, if the agent is given the query [Alex, studied at, ?] on your email inbox, the agent will start by typing “Alex” into the search bar, click on email related to …

Dumonym: Crafting And Assessing Lexical Simplification, From Algorithms To Models, Jeremias Brea De Los Angeles

Senior Projects Spring 2024

Lexical Simplification is the process of replacing complex words with simpler alternatives in a given text. This project aims to use different approaches in the field of Natural Language Processing to create a series of lexical Simplification models. The framework of lexical simplifiers will also be explored and researched, to give more insight of the mechanisms and approaches used to achieve successful text simplification. I will develop a pipeline of steps, based on my research, with the aim to create a framework for a functional lexical simplification model. I will develop a series of distinct lexical simplification models based on …

Finding Maximal Cap Sizes For Quad Card Decks Using Share Strings, Oliver William Pawelek

Senior Projects Spring 2024

This project introduces the concept of share strings and how they can be used to figure out maximal cap sizes for different decks of the card game EvenQuads. We prove that all caps must map to a share string with respect to a basis and that if no share strings exist for cap size k in a given dimension d, then the maximal cap size of that dimension M (d) must be less than k. We prove the maximal cap sizes up to dimension 7 and show that there are at most 8 possible share strings for 19-caps of dimension …

Symmetry And Structures Of Apn Functions And Sidon Sets, Darrion Thornburgh

Senior Projects Spring 2024

Let $\mathbb{F}_p^n$ be the $n$-dimensional vector space over $\mathbb{F}_p$. The graph $\mathcal{G}_F = \{ (x, F(x)) : x \in \mathbb{F}_p^n \}$ of a vectorial function $F \colon \mathbb{F}_p^n \to \mathbb{F}_p^m$ can have interesting combinatorial properties depending on varying cryptographic conditions on $F$. A vectorial Boolean function $F \colon \mathbb{F}_2^n \to \mathbb{F}_2^n$ is almost perfect nonlinear (APN) if there are at most $2$ solutions to the equation $F(x+a) + F(x) = b$ for all $a,b \in \mathbb{F}_2^n$ where $a \neq 0$. Equivalently, $F$ is APN if and only if $\mathcal{G}_F$ is a Sidon set, that is, a set in $\mathbb{F}_2^n$ where …

Folding And Embedding Cubical Complexes, Skye Rothstein

Senior Projects Spring 2024

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Science, Mathematics and Computing of Bard College.

In this project we study the folding properties of several special classes of cubical complexes. First, we look at polyominoids, which are arrangements of congruent squares in 3-space, glued edge-to-edge at 90° and 180° angles. We construct and analyze the mechanical configuration space for n-cell polyominoids, which is a graph with vertex set given by all n-cell polyominoids, where two vertices are connected by an edge if you can transform one into the other by one hinge movement. For n = 4, we provide a complete …

Pumping A Transition, Christopher Daniel Hallman

Senior Projects Spring 2024

This thesis is an exploration into the physical mechanism responsible for the acceleration experienced when pumping a ramp on a bicycle, skateboard, or related human-powered vehicle. Pumping is the technique by which one propels oneself on a ramp, which is very similar to the process of pumping a playground swing. It is my hypothesis that the acceleration one experiences when pumping a ramp is primarily due to the conservation of angular momentum, affected by altering ones moment of inertia relative to the focal point of the curve through which one is traveling. This report documents my attempt to accurately describe …

Sedimentary, Claire E. Sullivan

Senior Projects Spring 2024

S E D I M E N T A R Y is a mixed-media exploration of the layers and connections between the synthetic and natural world -- Where do the natural and built environments begin and end? In what ways might natural elements and man-made materials mimic or defy one another? What aesthetic, economic, or sustainable possibilities can be unearthed when nature's laws and patterns are applied to our calculated, built environment? Most importantly, how responsible must we hold ourselves and one other for our particular interactions with and impact on our environment? S E D I M E N …

Consistent Monte Carlo Methods For Non-Linear Applications In Light Transport, Zackary T. Misso

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

The study of light transport focuses on describing the propagation of light from emitters to sensors through accurately describing the interactions light can undergo with everything in between. Physically-based rendering is the process of applying the laws of light transport to formulate practical algorithms which simulate the flow of light for the purpose of synthesizing images of virtual environments.

Unfortunately, there are very few interesting scene configurations which can be computed analytically. Instead, modern solutions predominantly rely on Monte Carlo integration to stochastically estimate the transfer of light since the process is both unbiased and consistent. Meaning, it is expected …

Random Walk Methods For Geometry Representation Agnostic Transport, Dario R. Seyb

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

In computer graphics, we use geometry representations to model a wide range of virtual scenes—from the fantastical worlds shown in animated movies to intricate mechanical parts.
These representations provide the context for transport problems—light transport is used to produce images of virtual scenes and diffusive transport to simulate distributions of quantities like heat.

There are many types of representations each with their own advantages.
For example, explicit ones make it easy to directly manipulate surfaces, while implicit representations allow for intuitive modeling by non-technical users and straightforward integration into machine learning systems.
Unfortunately, many algorithms that work on these digital …