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- Title
- Computational Genomics of Human-Infecting Microsporidia Species from the Genus Encephalitozoon
- Creator
- Mascarenhas dos Santos, Anne Caroline
- Date
- 2023
- Description
-
Microsporidia are obligate intracellular pathogens classified as category B priority pathogens by the National Institute of Allergy and...
Show moreMicrosporidia are obligate intracellular pathogens classified as category B priority pathogens by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Microsporidian species from the genus Encephalitozoon infect humans and can cause encephalitis, keratoconjunctivitis or enteric diseases in both immunocompromised and immunocompetent individuals. The main treatment for disseminated microsporidiosis available in the United States is albendazole, an anthelmintic benzimidazole that is also used to treat fungal infections, but species from the Encephalitozoonidae have already shown signs of resistance against this drug. The Encephalitozoonidae harbors highly specialized pathogens with the smallest known eukaryote genomes, with Encephalitozoon cuniculi featuring a genome of only 2.9 Mbp and coding for a proteome of roughly 2,000 proteins. Pathogens are in an everlasting race to quicken their adaptation pace against host defenses. This adaptation is often driven by gene duplication, recombination and/or mutation, and due to the potentially disruptive nature of duplication and recombination processes, many of these evolutions in pathogens are taking place outside conserved genomic loci. As such, genes involved in virulence and drug resistance in pathogens are often localized in the (sub)telomeres rather than in chromosome cores. The small and streamlined nature of microsporidian genomes makes them excellent candidates to investigate the adaptation of pathogens to host defenses, the evolution of their virulence, and the development of their resistance to drugs from a genomic perspective. However, microsporidian genomes are highly divergent at the DNA sequence level and the ones that have been sequenced so far are incomplete and are lacking the telomeres. This high level of sequence divergence hinders standard sequence homology-based functional annotations, blurring our understanding of what these organisms are capable of from a metabolic perspective. The gap in our knowledge of what is encoded in the microsporidia telomeres could lead to an underestimation of their pathogenic capabilities. Therefore, deciphering the functions of unknown proteins in microsporidia genomes and unraveling the content of their telomeres is important to fully assess their potential for adaptability to host defenses and predisposition to drug resistance. Likewise, a better understanding of the genetic diversity in microsporidia will help assess the extent by which host-pathogen interactions are shaping the adaptation of these parasites to humans. As observed in the COVID-19 pandemic, genetic diversity can influence the speed at which pathogens adapt to host defenses and thus can pose a big challenge to disease control. The development of strategies for controlling microsporidiosis outbreaks will likely benefit from the work performed in this thesis. As part of my PhD work, I investigated the virulence and host-adaptation capabilities of human-infecting microsporidia species from the genus Encephalitozoon with computational genomic approaches. This work included: 1) using structural homology to infer the functions of unknown proteins from the microsporidia proteome; 2) sequencing the complete genomes from telomere-to-telomere of three distinct Encephalitozoon spp. (E. cuniculi, E. hellem and E. intestinalis) to determine the genetic makeup of their telomeres and better understand the extent of their diversity; and 3) assessing the intraspecies genetic diversity that exists between Encephalitozoon species.
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- Title
- Eating disorder support group utilization: Associations with psychological health and eating disorder psychopathology among support group attendees
- Creator
- Murray, Matthew F.
- Date
- 2023
- Description
-
Individuals with eating disorders (EDs) report psychosocial impairments that may persist beyond ED symptom remission, suggesting a need to...
Show moreIndividuals with eating disorders (EDs) report psychosocial impairments that may persist beyond ED symptom remission, suggesting a need to examine ED treatment-adjunctive services that foster psychosocial health. One promising resource is support groups, as evidence across medical and psychiatric illnesses shows associations between group utilization and wellbeing. However, virtually no literature has examined ED-specific support groups and psychosocial health, and it is also unknown how use of supportive services relates to ED symptoms. The present study examined associations between past-month ED support group attendance and participation frequency, psychosocial health indices, and ED symptoms. A total of 215 participants who attended weekly virtual clinician-moderated ED support groups completed measures of psychosocial health, internalized stigma of mental illness, psychosocial impairment from an ED, specific types of social support elicited in group, and ED psychopathology. Adjusting for past-month ED treatment, Benjamini-Hochberg-corrected partial correlation analyses indicated that more frequent attendance was negatively related to body dissatisfaction, purging, excessive exercise, and negative attitudes toward obesity, and positively related to social support. More frequent verbal and chat participation were positively related to emotional and informational support and social companionship. Chat participation was additionally negatively related to excessive exercise and negative attitudes toward obesity. Results suggest that utilizing and participating in clinician-moderated ED support groups could provide an outlet for ED symptom management and solicitation of social support. Findings highlight areas for further consideration in the delivery of and future research on ED support groups.
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- Title
- Optimization methods and machine learning model for improved projection of energy market dynamics
- Creator
- Saafi, Mohamed Ali
- Date
- 2023
- Description
-
Since signing the legally binding Paris agreement, governments have been striving to fulfill the decarbonization mission. To reduce carbon...
Show moreSince signing the legally binding Paris agreement, governments have been striving to fulfill the decarbonization mission. To reduce carbon emissions from the transportation sector, countries around the world have created a well-defined new energy vehicle development strategy that is further expanding into hydrogen vehicle technologies. In this study, we develop the Transportation Energy Analysis Model (TEAM) to investigate the impact of the CO2 emissions policies on the future of the automotive industries. On the demand side, TEAM models the consumer choice considering the impacts of technology cost, energy cost, refueling/charging availability, consumer travel pattern. On the supply side, the module simulates the technology supply by the auto-industry with the objective of maximizing industry profit under the constraints of government policies. Therefore, we apply different optimization methods to guarantee reaching the optimal automotive industry response each year up to 2050. From developing an upgraded differential evolution algorithm, to applying response surface methodology to simply the objective function, the goal is to enhance the optimization performance and efficiency compared to adopting the standard genetic algorithm. Moreover, we investigate TEAM’s robustness by applying a sensitivity analysis to find the key parameters of the model. Finally based on the key sensitive parameters that drive the automotive industry, we develop a neural network to learn the market penetration model and predict the market shares in a competitive time by bypassing the total cost of ownership analysis and profit optimization. The central motivating hypothesis of this thesis is that modern optimization and modeling methods can be applied to obtain a computationally-efficient, industry-relevant model to predict optimal market sales shares for light-duty vehicle technologies. In fact, developing a robust market penetration model that is optimized using sophisticated methods is a crucial tool to automotive companies, as it quantifies consumer’s behavior and delivers the optimal way to maximize their profits by highlighting the vehicles technologies that they could invest in. In this work, we prove that TEAM reaches the global solution to optimize not only the industry profits but also the alternative fuels optimized blends such as synthetic fuels. The time complexity of the model has been substantially improved to decrease from hours using the genetic algorithm, to minutes using differential evolution, to milliseconds using neural network.
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- Title
- Development of validation guidelines for high pressure processing to inactivate pressure resistant and matrix-adapted Escherichia coli O157:H7, Salmonella spp. and Listeria monocytogenes in treated juices
- Creator
- Rolfe, Catherine
- Date
- 2020
- Description
-
The fruit and vegetable juice industry has shown a growing trend in minimally processed juices. A frequent technology used in the functional...
Show moreThe fruit and vegetable juice industry has shown a growing trend in minimally processed juices. A frequent technology used in the functional juice division is cold pressure, which refers to the application of high pressure processing (HPP) at low temperatures for a mild treatment to inactivate foodborne pathogens instead of thermal pasteurization. HPP juice manufacturers are required to demonstrate a 5-log reduction of the pertinent microorganism to comply with FDA Juice HACCP. The effectiveness of HPP on pathogen inactivation is determinant on processing parameters, juice composition, packaging application, as well as the bacterial strains included for validation studies. Unlike thermal pasteurization, there is currently no consensus on validation study approaches for bacterial strain selection or preparation and no agreement on which HPP process parameters contribute to overall process efficacy.The purpose of this study was to develop validation guidelines for HPP inactivation and post-HPP recovery of pressure resistant and matrix-adapted Escherichia coli O157:H7, Salmonella spp., and Listeria monocytogenes in juice systems. Ten strains of each microorganism were prepared in three growth conditions (neutral, cold-adapted, or acid-adapted) and assessed for barotolerance or sensitivity. Pressure resistant and sensitive strains from each were used to evaluate HPP inactivation with increasing pressure levels (200 – 600 MPa) in two juice matrices (apple and orange). A 75-day shelf-life analysis was conducted on HPP-treated juices inoculated with acid-adapted resistant strains for each pathogen and examined for inactivation and recovery. Individual strains of E. coli O157:H7, Salmonella spp., and L. monocytogenes demonstrated significant (p <0.05) differences in reduction levels in response to pressure treatment in high acid environments. E. coli O157:H7 was the most barotolerant of the three microorganism in multiple matrices. Bacterial screening resulted in identification of pressure resistant strains E. coli O157:H7 TW14359, Salmonella Cubana, and L. monocytogenes MAD328, and pressure sensitive strains E. coli O15:H7 SEA13B88, S. Anatum, and L. monocytogenes CDC. HPP inactivation in juice matrices (apple and orange) confirmed acid adaptation as the most advantageous of the growth conditions. Shelf-life analyses reached the required 5-log reduction in HPP-treated juices immediately following pressure treatment, after 24 h in cold storage, and after 4 days of cold storage for L. monocytogenes MAD328, S. Cubana, and E. coli O157:H7 TW14359, respectively. Recovery of L. monocytogenes in orange juice was observed with prolonged cold storage time. These results suggest the preferred inoculum preparation for HPP validation studies is the use of acid-adapted, pressure resistant strains. At 586 – 600 MPa, critical inactivation (5-log reduction) was achieved during post-HPP cold storage, suggesting sufficient HPP lethality is reached at elevated pressure levels with a subsequent cold holding duration.
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- Title
- Sense of Community and Virtual Community Among People with Autism Spectrum Conditions
- Creator
- Rafajko, Sean I
- Date
- 2020
- Description
-
Individuals with autism spectrum conditions (ASC) face poorer quality of life (QOL) and psychological well-being. Sense of community (SOC) has...
Show moreIndividuals with autism spectrum conditions (ASC) face poorer quality of life (QOL) and psychological well-being. Sense of community (SOC) has been studied in the general population as well as in other disability populations and found to be associated with increased QOL outcomes. However, SOC has never been examined quantitatively in the ASC population. Additionally, a number of communities exist online, and there has been recent research showing that people may feel sense of virtual community (SOVC), which may be particularly important to the ASC population, as internet use is higher in the population, and people with ASC report positive experiences with online communication and relationships. The purpose of this study was to examine SOC and SOVC in the ASC population. A sample of 60 participants with ASC completed an online survey about their communities, SOC, SOVC, QOL, and psychological distress, and their results were compared with a sample of 60 general population participants (N = 120). Results indicated that people with ASC reported participating in a greater number of smaller relational communities compared to the general population sample. There were no significant differences between the ASC and general population samples on levels of SOC or SOVC, suggesting that the differential relationship of the ASC group with their communities does not reduce the experience of SOC. SOC significantly contributed to QOL but not psychological distress. Results indicated that the magnitude of the relationship between SOC and SOVC on QOL was not different between those with ASC and those in the comparisons sample. Findings from this study help frame the different ways in which people with ASC interact with their communities and inform individual and community-level interventions.
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- Title
- LOW-DOSE CARDIAC SPECT USING POST-FILTERING, DEEP LEARNING, AND MOTION CORRECTION
- Creator
- Song, Chao
- Date
- 2019
- Description
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Single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) is an important technique in use today for the detection and evaluation of coronary artery...
Show moreSingle photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) is an important technique in use today for the detection and evaluation of coronary artery diseases. The image quality in cardiac SPECT can be adversely affected by cardiac motion and respiratory motion, both of which can lead to motion blur and non-uniform heart wall. In this thesis, we mainly investigate imaging de-noising algorithms and motion correction methods for improving the image quality in cardiac SPECT on both standard dose and reduced dose.First, we investigate a spatiotemporal post-processing approach based on a non-local means (NLM) filter for suppressing the noise in cardiac-gated SPECT images. Since in recent years low-dose studies have gained increased attention in cardiac SPECT owing to its potential radiation risk, to further improve the image quality on reduced dose, we investigate a novel de-noising method for low-dose cardiac-gated SPECT by using a three dimensional residual convolutional neural network (CNN). Furthermore, to reduce the negative effect of respiratory-binned acquisitions and assess the benefit of this approach in both standard dose and reduced dose using simulated acquisitions. Inspired by the success in respiratory correction, we investigate the potential benefit of cardiac motion correction for improving the detectability of perfusion defects. Finally, to combine the benefit of above two types of motion correction, dual-gated data acquisitions are implemented, wherein the acquired list-mode data are further binned into a number of intervals within cardiac and respiratory cycle according to the electrocardiography (ECG) signal and amplitude of the respiratory motion.
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- Title
- Advertisement for Saturday Morning Children's Club at Chicago School of Design, 1944
- Creator
- Chicago School of Design
- Date
- 1944
- Description
-
Advertisement for Saturday Morning Children's Club, a multidisciplinary children's art workshop offered by the Chicago School of Design,...
Show moreAdvertisement for Saturday Morning Children's Club, a multidisciplinary children's art workshop offered by the Chicago School of Design, featuring artwork by two local children. The date listed is uncertain, but inferred from the pencil notation on recto.
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- Institute of Design records, 1937-ca. 1962
- Title
- Predictive energy efficient control framework for connected and automated vehicles in heterogeneous traffic environments
- Creator
- Vellamattathil Baby, Tinu
- Date
- 2023
- Description
-
Within the automotive industry, there is a significant emphasis on enhancing fuel efficiency and mobility, and reducing emissions. In this...
Show moreWithin the automotive industry, there is a significant emphasis on enhancing fuel efficiency and mobility, and reducing emissions. In this context, connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) represent a significant advancement, as they can optimize their acceleration pattern to improve their fuel efficiency. However, when CAVs coexist with human-driven vehicles (HDVs) on the road, suboptimal conditions arise, which adversely affect the performance of CAVs. This research analyzes the automation capabilities of production vehicles to identify scenarios where their performance is suboptimal, and proposes a merge-aware modification of adaptive cruise control (ACC) method for highway merging situations. The proposed algorithm addresses the issue of sudden gap and velocity changes in relation to the preceding vehicle, thereby reducing substantial braking during merging events, resulting in improved energy efficiency. This research also presents a data-driven model for predicting the velocity and position of the preceding vehicle, as well as a robust model predictive control (MPC) strategy that optimizes fuel consumption while considering prediction inaccuracies. Another focus of this research is a novel suggestion-based control framework in interactive mixed traffic environments leveraging the emerging connectivity between vehicles and with infrastructure. It is based on MPC to optimize the fuel efficiency of CAVs in heterogeneous or mixed traffic environments (i.e., including both CAVs and HDVs). In this suggestion-based control framework, the CAVs are considered to provide non-binding velocity and lane change suggestions to the HDVs to follow to improve the fuel efficiency of both the CAVs and the HDVs. To achieve this, the host CAV must devise its own fuel-efficient control solution and determine the recommendations to convey to its preceding HDV. It is assumed that the CAVs can communicate with the HDVs via Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) communication, while the Signal Phase and Timing (SPaT) information is accessed via Vehicle-to- Infrastructure (V2I) communication. These velocity suggestions remain constant for a predefined period, allowing the driver to adjust their speed accordingly. It is also considered that the suggestions are non binding, i.e., a driver can choose not to follow the suggested velocity. For this control framework to function, we present a velocity prediction model based on experimental data that captures the response of a HDV to different suggested velocities, and a robust approach to ensure collision avoidance. The velocity prediction’s accuracy is also validated with the experimental data (on a table-top drive simulator), and the results are presented. In cases of low CAV penetration, a CAV needs to provide suggestions to multiple surrounding HDVs and incorporating the suggestions to all the HDVs as decision variables to the optimal control problem can be computationally expensive. Hence, a suggestion-based hierarchical energy efficient control framework is also proposed in which a CAV takes into account the interactive nature of the environment by jointly planning its own trajectory and evaluating the suggestions to the surrounding HDVs. Joint planning requires solving the problem in joint state- and action-space, and this research develops a Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS)-based trajectory planning approach for the CAV. Since the joint action- and state-space grows exponentially with the number of agents and can be computationally expensive, an adaptive action-space is proposed through pruning the action-space of each agent so that the actions resulting in unsafe trajectories are eliminated. The trajectory planning approach is followed by a low-level model predictive control (MPC)-based motion controller, which aims at tracking the reference trajectory in an optimal fashion. Simulation studies demonstrate the proposed control strategy’s efficacy compared to existing baseline methods.
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- Title
- Parking Demand Forecasting Using Asymmetric Discrete Choice Models with Applications
- Creator
- Zhang, Ji
- Date
- 2023
- Description
-
Using discrete choice models to forecast travelers parking location choice has been a branch of parking demand research for many years. The...
Show moreUsing discrete choice models to forecast travelers parking location choice has been a branch of parking demand research for many years. The most used discrete choice models have fairly simple mathematical expressions, such as the probit and logit models. The application of simple models helps release the computational burdens brought by parameter estimation tasks in practice, but the cost is the unwanted properties of classic models such as the “symmetry property” that we argue is often undesirable in many fields. To some extent, the symmetry property of related models limits the shape of curves that makes the model fitting less flexible technically. This study addresses the following question: “Can discrete choice models with asymmetry property outperform classic models with symmetry property in forecasting travelers’ parking location choices?” The contributions of this study include: (1) providing a new perspective of using asymmetric discrete choice models to explain and forecast individual’s parking location choice; and (2) completing the travel demand forecasting process from choices of the destination zone centroid to the parking location, enabling parking choice forecasting. This provides a generalized framework to calibrate and validate asymmetric discrete choice models with the field observed parking facility-specific arrival profile data integrated into a large-scale, high-fidelity regional travel demand model. Further, an experimental study is conducted to compare the performance of the proposed asymmetric discrete choice models in the parking demand forecasting framework. The results suggest that asymmetric discrete choice models for individual’s parking choice modeling outperform the symmetric discrete choice models such as the logit models owing largely to their flexibility of parameter fitting and training using the available dataset.
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- Title
- Large-Signal Transient Stability and Control of Inverter-Based Resources
- Creator
- Wang, Duo
- Date
- 2024
- Description
-
Renewable generation, including solar photovoltaic (PV) systems, type 3 and 4 wind turbine generation systems (WTG), battery energy storage...
Show moreRenewable generation, including solar photovoltaic (PV) systems, type 3 and 4 wind turbine generation systems (WTG), battery energy storage systems (BESS), as well as high voltage direct current (HVDC) and flexible alternating current (FACT) transmission system devices with increasing penetration level are being connected to the bulk power systems (BPS) via power electronic (PE) converters as the interface, referred to as the inverter-based resources (IBRs) on the transmission and sub-transmission levels or distributed energy resources (DERs) located on the distribution level. The IBR is almost entirely defined by the control algorithms and found to be more prone to experiencing large disturbances due to the lack of the conventional synchronous machine (SM) intrinsic synchronous characteristics and mechanical inertia, as well as being in smaller capacity sizes. Thus, these reasons motivate this dissertation to study the large-signal transient stability and control of IBRs for reliable grid integration and rapid grid transformation. For large-signal stability analysis methods, Lyapunov-based methods are the fundamental theory used to characterize the stability issues with analytical solutions, although other non-Lyapunov methods could also be very helpful. A main difficulty hindering the widespread adoption of the Lyapunov stability analysis method is the difficulty of finding the proper Lyapunov function candidate for a higher dimensional nonlinear system. The Port-Hamiltonian (PH) nonlinear control theory is explored in this dissertation as a promising theoretical framework solution addressing this challenging issue. A PH-based tracking and robust control method is proposed to facilitate the practical application of the PH framework in IBR controls. In addition, considering the typical grid-forming (GFM) IBR control with a first-order low pass filter (LPF) block is usually involved with control saturation function for protection purposes under abnormal operating conditions with anti-windup issue in practical implementation, a PH-based bounded LPF (PH-BLPF) control is proposed to incorporate this in the large-signal PH interconnection modeling framework while preserving the robust tracking Lyapunov stability with improved transient dynamic performance and stability margin.Moreover, specific real-world transient synchronization stability issues, such as the grid voltage large fault disturbance case, are studied. In addition, to meet the recent emerging IBR grid code requirements, such as the current magnitude limitation, grid support function, and fault recovery capability of GFM-VSCs, a virtual impedance-based current-limiting GFM control with enhanced transient stability and grid support is proposed.
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- Title
- Two Essays on Mergers and Acquisitions
- Creator
- Xu, Yang
- Date
- 2024
- Description
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This dissertation is composed of two self-contained chapters that both relate to mergers and acquisitions (M&A). In the first essay, we...
Show moreThis dissertation is composed of two self-contained chapters that both relate to mergers and acquisitions (M&A). In the first essay, we examine the Delaware (DE) reincorporation effect on firms’ post-IPO behaviors on mergers and acquisitions. We find that firms’ DE reincorporation decisions enhance the likelihood of engaging in M&A as targets. However, as a tradeoff, DE reincorporated firms get lower takeover valuations compared to stay-at-home-state firms, and the acquisition of reincorporated firms is less likely to be successful. Our second essay aims to explore the role of the options market in price discovery for M&A. We find that the predictive power of the changes in implied volatility of the target firm stock for the takeover outcome is statistically and economically significant. The risk arbitrage portfolios incorporating filters derived from the options on stocks of the target firms generate annualized risk-adjusted abnormal returns between 2.6% and 5%, depending on the portfolio weighting method, the threshold of filters for the implied volatility change, and the asset pricing models applied for abnormal returns. The results are robust to different empirical setups and are not explained by traditional factors.
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- Title
- Heterogeneous Workloads Study towards Large-scale Interconnect Network Simulation
- Creator
- Wang, Xin
- Date
- 2023
- Description
-
High-bandwidth, low-latency interconnect networks play a key role in the design of modern high- performance computing (HPC) systems. The ever...
Show moreHigh-bandwidth, low-latency interconnect networks play a key role in the design of modern high- performance computing (HPC) systems. The ever-increasing need for higher bandwidth and higher message rate has driven the design of low-diameter interconnect topologies like variants of dragonfly. As these hierarchical networks become increasingly dominant, interference caused by resource sharing can lead to significant network congestion and performance variability. Meanwhile, with the rapid growth of the machine learning applications, the workloads of future HPC systems are anticipated to be a mix of scientific simulation, big data analytics, and machine learning applications. However, little work has been conducted to understand performance implications of co-running heterogeneous workloads on large-scale dragonfly systems. There is a greater need to study how different interconnect technologies affect workload performance, and how conventional scientific applications interact with emerging big data applications at the underlying interconnect level. In this work, we firstly present a comparative analysis exploring the communication interference for traditional HPC applications by analyzing the trade-off between localizing communication and balancing network traffic. We conduct trace-based simulations for applications with different communication patterns, using multiple job placement policies and routing mechanisms. Then we develop a scalable workload manager that provides an automatic framework to facilitate hybrid workload simulation. We investigate various hybrid workloads and navigate various application-system configurations for a deeper understanding of performance implications of a diverse mix of workloads on current and future supercomputers. Finally, we propose a scalable framework, Union+, that enables simulation of communication and I/O simultaneously. By combining different levels of abstraction, Union+ is able to efficiently co-model the communication and I/O traffic on HPC systems that equipped with flash-based storage. We conduct experiments with different system configurations, showing how Union+ can help system designers to assess the usefulness of future technologies in next-generation HPC machines.
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- Title
- Empowering Visually Impaired Individuals With Holistic Assistance Using Real-Time Spatial Awareness System
- Creator
- Yu, Xinrui
- Date
- 2024
- Description
-
The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into daily life opens unprecedented avenues for enhancing the experiences of visually impaired...
Show moreThe integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into daily life opens unprecedented avenues for enhancing the experiences of visually impaired individuals, offering them greater autonomy and quality of life. This thesis introduces a Visually Impaired Spatial Awareness (VISA) system designed to assist visually impaired individuals holistically through a structured approach. At the foundational level, the VISA system incorporates several key technologies to interpret the surroundings and assist in basic navigation tasks. It utilizes Augmented Reality (AR) markers to facilitate recognition of places and aid in navigation, employs neural network models for advanced object detection and tracking, and leverages depth information for accurate object localization. Progressing to the intermediate level, the VISA system integrates the data obtained from object detection and depth sensing to assist in more complex navigational tasks such as obstacle avoidance and pathfinding toward a desired destination. At the advanced level, the VISA system synthesizes the capabilities developed at the foundational and intermediate levels to enhance the spatial awareness of visually impaired users, allowing them to undertake complex tasks, such as navigating complex environments and locating specific items. The VISA system also emphasizes efficient human-machine interaction, incorporating text-to-speech and speech-to-text technologies to facilitate natural and intuitive communication between the user and the system. The VISA system's performance was evaluated in different environments simulating real-world scenarios. The experimental results show that the user can interact with our system intuitively with minimal effort, and affirm that the VISA system can effectively assist the visually impaired user in locating and reaching for objects, navigating indoors, identifying merchandise, and recognizing both handwritten and printed texts.
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- Title
- Grace Gospel Mission, Chicago, Illinois, ca. 1945
- Creator
- Illinois Institute of Technology
- Date
- 1943-1948
- Description
-
Photograph of the front of Grace Gospel Mission, 3138(?) South State Street. This storefront church was demolished ca. 1950. Date of...
Show morePhotograph of the front of Grace Gospel Mission, 3138(?) South State Street. This storefront church was demolished ca. 1950. Date of photograph is unknown. Date range listed is approximate.
Show less - Collection
- Office of Communications and Marketing photographs, 1905-1999
- Title
- Grand View Blvd...Los Angeles Jan 91
- Creator
- Gordon, Robert Philip
- Date
- 1991-01
- Description
-
Watercolor painting of the intersection of an unknown street with Grand View Boulevard in Los Angeles, California.
- Collection
- Robert Philip Gordon papers, 1963-2010
- Title
- New Object
- Creator
- Zhang, He
- Title
- Ink and Pastel Drawing, undated
- Creator
- Henry, Mary Dill, 1913-2009
- Description
-
Untitled ink and pastel drawing by Mary Henry of a hand, possibly her own. Drawing is undated.
- Collection
- Mary Dill Henry Papers, 1913-2021
- Title
- Bronzeville, Chicago, Illinois, 1961
- Date
- 1961
- Description
-
Color photograph depicting the Bronzeville neighborhood in 1961. Coverage includes the 3400 south blocks of Michigan Avenue, Indiana Avenue,...
Show moreColor photograph depicting the Bronzeville neighborhood in 1961. Coverage includes the 3400 south blocks of Michigan Avenue, Indiana Avenue, Prairie Avenue, and Calumet Avenue in Chicago, Illinois. One newer white commercial building at the left is the former Chicago Defender building. Photographer unknown.
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- Bronzeville photo, 1961
- Title
- Gospel Mission Baptist Church, Chicago, Illinois, ca. 1945
- Creator
- Illinois Institute of Technology
- Date
- 1943-1948
- Description
-
Photograph of the front of the Gospel Mission Baptist Church. Date of photograph is unknown. Date range listed is approximate.
- Collection
- Office of Communications and Marketing photographs, 1905-1999
- Title
- Design on a Hill
- Creator
- Henry, Mary Dill, 1913-2009, Ziegler, William
- Description
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Photograph of Design on a Hill (1940), a stone lithograph by Mary Dill Henry, completed as a part of her studies with Ray Bertrand....
Show morePhotograph of Design on a Hill (1940), a stone lithograph by Mary Dill Henry, completed as a part of her studies with Ray Bertrand. Handwritten inscription on verso: "Lithograph #2, 1940 Federal Art Project, litho pencil on stone. Ray Bertrand, San Francisco Art Project, was my teacher." Typewritten inscription on verso: "Mary Henry: Design on a Hill, 1940. Stone lithograph, 12" x 16". Courtesy of the artist, Freeland, WA. Photo: Wm. Ziegler." Photograph by William Ziegler. Date of photograph unknown.
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- Mary Dill Henry Papers, 1913-2021