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Title: IMPROVING DEEP LEARNING BASED SEMANTIC SEGMENTATION USING CONTEXT INFORMATION
Creator: Xia, Zhengyu
Date: 2021
Description: Semantic segmentation is an important but challenging task in computer vision because it aims to assign each pixel a category label accurately...
Show moreSemantic segmentation is an important but challenging task in computer vision because it aims to assign each pixel a category label accurately. Nowadays, applications such as autonomous driving, path navigation, image search engine, or augmented reality require accurate semantic analysis and efficient segmentation mechanisms. In this thesis, we propose multiple models to improve the performance of semantic segmentation. In the first part, we focus on the single-task network, which aims to improve the performance of semantic segmentation. Our research includes exploiting context information using mixed spatial pyramid pooling to extract dense context-embedded features in FCN-based semantic segmentation. We also propose a GAF module to generate a global context-based attention map to guide the shallow-layer feature maps for better pixel localization. In the second part, we focus on a multi-task network that incorporates semantic segmentation to improve other computer vision tasks such as object detection. Specifically, a multi-task network, along with a learning strategy is designed to let semantic segmentation and object detection assist each other since they are highly correlated. Also, we include weakly-supervised multi-label semantic segmentation learning to deal with the shortage of high-quality training examples and to improve the performance of cross-domain object detection. In the third part, we focus on improving the performance of video panoptic segmentation, which is a unified network that incorporates semantic segmentation and instance segmentation using video streams. We design a new ConvLSTM pyramid to transmit spatio-temporal contextual information in our video panoptic segmentation network. Specifically, we propose a modified ConvLSTM to generate temporal contextual information. Also, we design an MSTPP module to obtain mixed spatio-temporal context-embedded feature maps. Experimental results on different datasets show that our proposed method achieves better performance compared with the state-of-the-art methods.
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Title: ANALYTIC STUDY OF THE CELLULAR FUNCTIONS OF UBL4A
Creator: Zhang, Huaiyuan
Date: 2021
Description: Ubiquitin-like protein 4A (Ubl4A) is a small protein encoded by a “housekeeping” gene that locates on the X chromosome. As a multi-functional...
Show moreUbiquitin-like protein 4A (Ubl4A) is a small protein encoded by a “housekeeping” gene that locates on the X chromosome. As a multi-functional protein, it has roles in a variety of cellular events including anti-tumorigenesis, response to DNA damage, inhibiting the fusion between autophagosome and lysosome, and docking of the tail-anchored proteins to the endoplasmic reticulum. We have previously reported that the newborns from Ubl4A-deficient mice had a high rate of mortality due to defect of AKT-dependent glucose metabolism. At the molecular level, Ubl4A directly binds with the actin related protein (Arp) 2/3 complex to accelerate the building up of the actin branching network, which further promotes the translocation and activation of the Akt, a key kinase for multiple cellular processes, from the cytosol to the plasma membrane.In further exploration of the molecular basis of Ubl4A in cell survival, here, we demonstrated that Ubl4A is critical for mitochondrial fusion and cell survival under nutrient depletion. In WT (wild-type) cells, the association of Ubl4A and the Arp2/3 complex serves as a primed “pool” of the actin branching network near mitochondria and enables mitochondria to fuse quickly for energy conservation upon starvation insult. However, such a “ready-to-go pool” of mitochondria was significantly decreased in the Ubl4A-deficient cells. As the result, the mitochondria became fragmentated, exhibited decreased trans-membrane potential, and accumulated ROS (reactive oxygen species), consequently, initiated mitochondria-mediated apoptosis. In this study, we also observed that Ubl4A-deficient mice displayed type II diabetic phenotype under a high-fat diet feeding. The preliminary results showed that these Ubl4A-deficient mice were more sensitive to glucose intolerance than their WT littermates, most likely owing to a delay in glucose uptake, and/or insulin secretion, both of which require the Arp2/3-actin branching network. We speculated that Ubl4A might be involved in cellular vesicle formation and/or secretion, but further investigation is needed to approve this hypothesis. Taken together, these findings provide a novel function of Ubl4A and further insight into the multi-functional roles of Ubl4A in mammalian cells, as well as the molecular basis for understanding the clinical relevance of Ubl4A in related human diseases.
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Title: Fate of Listeria Monocytogenes on Hard-cooked Eggs Treated With Citric Acid
Creator: Zeng, Hui
Date: 2021
Description: Commercially-prepared hard-cooked eggs are available for foodservice and to the public in retail grocers. Potential contamination with...
Show moreCommercially-prepared hard-cooked eggs are available for foodservice and to the public in retail grocers. Potential contamination with Listeria monocytogenes during or after the cooking and peeling steps is of concern since this pathogen can proliferate at refrigeration temperatures. Citric acid is a common preservative used in the food industry to treat hard-boiled eggs (HBEs). The purpose of this project was to evaluate the efficacy of citric acid treatment of HBEs to reduce the population levels of L. monocytogenes during 24 h (treatment trials) and 28 d storage (storage trials) at 5 or 25°C. Fresh eggs were boiled for 12 min, cooled to 4°C, peeled, and stored at 5°C for 24 h prior to experiments. In treatment trials, HBEs were dip inoculated with a 4-strain cocktail of rifampicin-resistant L. monocytogenes resulting in either 4 (low) or 7 (high) log CFU/egg. Eggs were air-dried 10 min, followed by treatment with pH 2.5 citric acid (PHCA) or 0.2 M citric acid (calculated as the molarity resulting in pH 2.5: MCA) at 5 or 25°C for 24 h. In treatment-storage trials, citric acid treatment of HBEs occurred before or after inoculation, followed by 28-d storage at 5 or 25°C. L. monocytogenes populations were enumerated by homogenization of eggs with BLEB and cultivation on BHI/rifampicin agar. Enrichment in BLEB was conducted if the pathogen was below the level of enumeration. Significant differences in the populations of L. monocytogenes due to temperature of the acid treatment (5 or 25°C) or the two citric acids (MCA and PHCA) were determined using Student’s T-test and ANOVA with Tukey’s post-test, p ≤ 0.05. Overall, the largest L. monocytogenes reduction occurred after 6 h treatment of HBEs with PHCA at 25°C (1.59 ± 0.00 log CFU/egg) and after 24 h with MCA at 5°C (1.23 ± 0.54 log CFU/egg) when the pathogen was inoculated at the low and high levels, respectively. In treatment-storage trials, citric acid treatment after HBE contamination resulted in a fewer number of samples where the pathogen was detected compared to when treatment occurred before contamination. Citric acid treatment for 24 h also resulted in a greater number of samples where L. monocytogenes was not detected than the 1 h treatment. The results of this study determined that L. monocytogenes could survive on HBEs treated with citric acid, regardless of treatment or storage temperature and acid concentration (PHCA or MCA).
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Title: Using population-level data to examine between-group health differences among transgender and cisgender United States military veterans
Creator: Woodward, Honor
Date: 2021
Description: Some subgroups of military veterans, including those with marginalized identities, may be especially vulnerable to poor health. This...
Show moreSome subgroups of military veterans, including those with marginalized identities, may be especially vulnerable to poor health. This hypothesis is supported by the Minority Stress Theory framework, which posits that disparities in health can be attributed to the stress that minority individuals experience as a result of discrimination, prejudice, and oppression (Meyer, 1995; Meyer, 2003). A specific, potentially marginalized group of veterans that is under-explored regarding health is transgender veterans. Using data from the 2019 U.S. Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), the current study hypothesized that transgender U.S. military veterans will report worse health than cisgender U.S. military veterans. Using case control matching, groups of transgender veterans (n = 124) and cisgender veterans (n = 104) were compared on several population-relevant health outcome measures. Chi-square tests of independence were conducted to test for significant differences between transgender and cisgender military veterans on the likelihood of experiencing certain health conditions, engaging in certain health behaviors, and utilizing health care services. Independent samples t-tests were used to test continuous health outcomes, such as self-reported mental health, physical health, and access to health care services. Gender identity was significantly associated with only one health outcome variable, with transgender veterans being more likely than cisgender veterans to have received a formal depression diagnosis (p = .01, phi = .17). No significant differences emerged between transgender and cisgender veterans on continuous health outcome variables. This suggests that previous literature on health disparities between transgender and cisgender individuals may not be generalizable to transgender veterans.
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Title: MACHINE VISION NAVIGATION SYSTEM FOR VISUALLY IMPAIRED PEOPLE
Creator: Yang, Guojun
Date: 2021
Description: Visually impaired people are often challenged in the efficient navigation of complex environments. Moreover, helping them navigate intuitively...
Show moreVisually impaired people are often challenged in the efficient navigation of complex environments. Moreover, helping them navigate intuitively is not a trivial task. Cognitive maps derived from visual cues play a pivotal role in navigation. In this dissertation, we present a sight-to-sound human–machine interface (STS-HMI), a novel machine vision guidance system that enables visually impaired people to navigate with instantaneous and intuitive responses. This proposed system extracts visual context from scenes and converts them into binaural acoustic cues for users to establish cognitive maps. The development of the proposed STS-HMI system encompasses four major components: (i) a machine vision–based indoor localization system that uses augmented reality (AR) markers to locate the user in GPS-denied environments (e.g., indoor); (ii) a feature-based object detection and localization system called the simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) algorithm, which tracks the mobility of users when AR markers are not visible; (iii) a path-planning system that creates a course towards a destination while avoiding obstacles; and (iv) an acoustic human–machine interface to navigate users in complex navigation courses. Throughout the research and development of this dissertation, each component is analyzed for optimal performance. The navigation algorithms are used to evaluate the performance of the STS-HMI system in a complicated environment with difficult navigation paths. The experimental results confirm that the STS-HMI system advances the mobility of visually impaired people with minimal effort and high accuracy.
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Title: Frictional behavior of bronze-graphite composite as sliding element in the base isolation system
Creator: You, Da
Date: 2021
Description: There are many calamities around the world, one of the most dangerous disasters is earthquake which threatens the safety of people and the...
Show moreThere are many calamities around the world, one of the most dangerous disasters is earthquake which threatens the safety of people and the structures. Almost every year, there are a lot of property losses and casualties caused by earthquakes. To mitigate the bad effect of the earthquake, the base isolation system was proposed by previous researchers. With the contribution of many researchers, several seismic isolations have been developed. Until now, many structures have installed seismic isolations to resist seismic energy and vibration. The seismic isolation system works well during the earthquake period, and it does help reduce the casualty and property loss induced by earthquakes. There are two main types of bearings used in the seismic isolation system. One is the elastomeric bearings and the other is the sliding bearings. The mechanics of the seismic isolation system preventing the influence of the earthquake and reducing the horizontal acceleration of the structure is to elongate the natural frequency of structure. As for the sliding bearings, the simplest way to increase the period is to reduce the friction coefficient of the two sliding elements. In conventional, two stainless steel plates are commonly used in the pure flat sliding bearing. This study tries to use bronze-graphite composite in the sliding bearing to decrease the friction coefficient.Consequently, the testing results suggest that the bronze-graphite composite has a lower friction coefficient, especially the graphite acting as a lubricant. The friction coefficient of the bronze-graphite plate is in the range of 0.12 to 0.23 under the load of 160 kg - 800kg. With a higher ratio of graphite to bronze at the sliding surface, the effect of reducing the friction coefficient more obviously. And the friction coefficient changes during the increasing loads period. It decreases at the beginning, and starts to increase at a certain load applied on it. Finally, it is reasonable to bronze-graphite composite in a low rise structure which has a relatively low weight. Because the load applied in the test is not high enough, the consequence may not work for high or heavy structure. Taken together, the use of new material with similar properties in the seismic isolation system can help improve the performance of resisting the earthquake. It should be accounted for further research in this field.
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Title: EVENT-BASED NONINTRUSIVE LOAD MONITORING
Creator: Yan, Lei
Date: 2021
Description: Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring (NILM) is an important application to monitor household appliance activities and provide related information to...
Show moreNon-Intrusive Load Monitoring (NILM) is an important application to monitor household appliance activities and provide related information to house owner or/and utility company via a single sensor installed at the electrical entry of the house. With this information, utilities can perform many tasks such as energy conservation, planning gen-eration more wisely, and demand response (DR) study. For house owners, they can un-derstand their bill more clearly and make better budget plan. For researchers, NILM sys-tem is a good foundation for energy management in buildings and can provide valuable power information for smart homes design. This dissertation aims to develop and demon-strate a complete and accurate event-based NILM system, which includes (1) an edge-cloud framework for event-based NILM, (2) an adaptive event detection method, (3) a two-stage event-based load disaggregation method; and (4) a high-resolution (50Hz) NILM dataset. Event detection is the first step in event-based NILM and it can provide deter-ministic transient information to identify appliances. However, existing methods with fixed parameters suffer from unpredictable and complicated changes in smart meter data such as long transition, high fluctuation and near-simultaneous events in both power and time domains. This dissertation presents an adaptive method to detect events based on home appliance load data with high sampling rate (>1Hz) by flexibly tuning the parame-ters according to the data being processed. The proposed method runs fast over the data stream and captures the transient process by multi-timescales searching as well. The mi-cro-timescale and macro-timescale window could deal with near-simultaneous events and long-transition events, respectively. Transient load signatures are extracted from detected events and stored in a sequential tree struct that can be used for NILM and load recon-struction, etc. Case studies on a 20Hz dataset, the LIFTED dataset of 50Hz, and the BLUED dataset of 60Hz demonstrate that the proposed method is able to work on data of different sampling rates and outperforms other methods in event detection. The ex-tracted load signatures could also improve the efficiency of NILM and help develop oth-er applications. This dissertation presents an online transient-based electrical appliance state track-ing method for NILM. The proposed Factorial Particle based Hidden Markov Model (FPHMM) method takes advantage of transient features in high-resolution data to infer states in the transient process and conducts steady state verification to rectify falsely identified appliances. The FPHMM method can overcome the common feature similarity problem in NILM by combining particle filter method and Markov Chain Monte Carlo sampling method, and by mining the intra-relationship of states inside a single appliance and the inter-relationship of states among multiple appliances. The FPHMM method is tested on the LIFTED dataset with appliance-level details and high sampling rates. Test-ing results demonstrate that the FPHMM method is effective in resolving the feature similarity issue. A modified mean shift algorithm with different levels of bandwidth is proposed as well to cluster the extracted features from event detection. Based on the clustered fea-tures, another solution is proposed to decode the states of appliance in two stages. The first stage uses Bayesian Inference Factorial HMM (BI-FHMM) solver to accelerate com-putational speed and improve accuracy by integrating the load signatures and statistical inference. The second stage then verifies and rectifies the results obtained from the first stage. Test results demonstrate that the proposed approach achieves good performance and can be applied to existing smart meters.
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Title: Farr Hall, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, Illinois, ca. 1948
Creator: Lucas, Joseph J., Jr.
Date: 1948
Description: From attached caption: "Farr Hall, four-story residence hall, on the [campus] of Illinois Institute of Technology. Located on the ...
Show moreFrom attached caption: "Farr Hall, four-story residence hall, on the [campus] of Illinois Institute of Technology. Located on the [southwestern] corner of 33rd and Michigan." Date of photograph is unknown. Date range listed is approximate.
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Collection: Office of Communications and Marketing photographs, 1905-1999

Title: Unidentified building (possibly part of the Institute of Gas Technology), Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, Illinois, 1948
Date: 1948
Description: Photograph pf an unidentified brick building, possible adjacent to or part of the Institute of Gas Technology. Photographer unknown....
Show morePhotograph pf an unidentified brick building, possible adjacent to or part of the Institute of Gas Technology. Photographer unknown. Photograph is possibly dated April 13, 1948.
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Collection: Office of Communications and Marketing photographs, 1905-1999

Title: Groundbreaking for Engineering building, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, Illinois, August 29, 1966
Date: 1966-08-29
Description: Photograph of the groundbreaking ceremony for the Engineering building known as Engineering 1 from its construction until 2015, now known as...
Show morePhotograph of the groundbreaking ceremony for the Engineering building known as Engineering 1 from its construction until 2015, now known as John T. Rettaliata Engineering Center. Pictured are Dr. John T. Rettaliata, Maynard P. Venema, Dr. Ralph G. Owens, and Axel A. Hofgren. Photographer unknown.
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Collection: Office of Communications and Marketing photographs, 1905-1999

Title: Carman Hall under construction, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, Illinois, ca. 1951
Creator: Lucas, Joseph J., Jr.
Date: 1951
Description: Photograph of Carman Hall under construction. Date of photograph is unknown. Date range listed is approximate.
Collection: Office of Communications and Marketing photographs, 1905-1999

Title: Lobby of Cunningham Hall, Illinois Institute of Technology, ca. 1960s
Creator: Illinois Institute of Technology
Date: 1960-1969
Description: Photograph of the lobby of Cunningham Hall. Photographer unknown. Date of photograph is unknown. Date range listed is approximate.
Collection: Office of Communications and Marketing photographs, 1905-1999

Title: Armour Research Foundation Chemistry Research Building under construction, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, Illinois, 1959-1960
Date: 1959-1960
Description: Photograph of the Armour Research Foundation Chemistry Research Building (now Technology Business Center) during construction. Date of...
Show morePhotograph of the Armour Research Foundation Chemistry Research Building (now Technology Business Center) during construction. Date of photograph is unknown. Date range listed is approximate. Photographer unknown.
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Collection: Office of Communications and Marketing photographs, 1905-1999

Title: Armour Research Foundation Chemistry Research Building, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, Illinois, ca. 1960
Date: 1960
Description: Photograph of the Armour Research Foundation Chemistry Research Building (now Technology Business Center). Date of photograph is unknown. Date...
Show morePhotograph of the Armour Research Foundation Chemistry Research Building (now Technology Business Center). Date of photograph is unknown. Date range listed is approximate. Photographer unknown.
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Collection: Office of Communications and Marketing photographs, 1905-1999

Title: Bailey Hall, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, Illinois, ca. 1966-1979
Date: 1966-1979
Description: Photograph of Bailey Hall (now George J. Kacek Hall), likely photographed from Cunningham Hall, with Keating Hall and the baseball field...
Show morePhotograph of Bailey Hall (now George J. Kacek Hall), likely photographed from Cunningham Hall, with Keating Hall and the baseball field visible to the north. Photographer unknown. Date of photograph is unknown. Date range listed is approximate.
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Collection: Office of Communications and Marketing photographs, 1905-1999

Title: Walter Groupius: Architect Teacher program, 1953
Date: 1953
Description: Program for Walter Gropius: Architect Teacher, a retrospective exhibit of Gropius' work in honor of his 70th birthday. A birthday luncheon was...
Show moreProgram for Walter Gropius: Architect Teacher, a retrospective exhibit of Gropius' work in honor of his 70th birthday. A birthday luncheon was held on May 18, 1953 at the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago. The exhibit, organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, in conjunction with the Busch-Reisinger Museum of Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, opened on May 18, 1953 in the Metallurgy and Chemical Engineering building on IIT's campus, and ran until June 15. Creator unknown, probably Illinois Institute of Technology.
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Collection: Institute of Design records, 1937-ca. 1962

Title: Construction of S.R. Crown Hall, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, Illinois, 1955-1956
Creator: Illinois Institute of Technology. Office of Public Relations
Date: 1955-1956
Description: Photograph of S.R. Crown Hall under construction. Photographer was possibly Dan Ryan.
Collection: Dan Ryan collection, 1954-1980

Title: Alumni Memorial Hall groundbreaking, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, Illinois, 1945
Date: 1945
Description: Photograph of the groundbreaking ceremony for Alumni Memorial Hall (then called Navy Building), with students from IIT's Navy V-12 unit...
Show morePhotograph of the groundbreaking ceremony for Alumni Memorial Hall (then called Navy Building), with students from IIT's Navy V-12 unit breaking the first ground. Henry Heald is at the far left. Photographer unknown.
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Collection: Office of Communications and Marketing photographs, 1905-1999

Title: Crerar Library during construction, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, Illinois, 1962
Creator: Illinois Institute of Technology
Date: 1962
Description: Photograph of the John Crerar Library during construction. The building was designed by Walter Netsch of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. The...
Show morePhotograph of the John Crerar Library during construction. The building was designed by Walter Netsch of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. The building is located at 35 West 33rd Street. The John Crerar Library moved to the University of Chicago in 1985, prompting the renaming and renovation of the building, now the Paul V. Galvin Library. Previously, the independent Crerar Library had housed IIT's James S. Kemper Library.
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Collection: Office of Communications and Marketing photographs, 1905-1999

Title: Machinery Hall, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, Illinois, ca. 1962-1979
Date: 1961-1979
Description: Photograph of the Machinery Hall entrance on 33rd Street. Photographer unknown. Date of photograph unknown. Date range listed is approximate.
Collection: Office of Communications and Marketing photographs, 1905-1999

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