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Title: Nate Thomas, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL, 1968-1973
Date: 1968-1973
Description: Photograph of Nate Thomas. Thomas worked at Illinois Tech in various positions, first as part of the Computing Center in 1965. Thomas later...
Show morePhotograph of Nate Thomas. Thomas worked at Illinois Tech in various positions, first as part of the Computing Center in 1965. Thomas later served as Assistant Director of Co-Op Education , Director of Admission, head of Minority Affairs, and Vice President for External Affairs. Thomas was instrumental in recruiting students from underserved communities into STEM programs at Illinois Tech, and founded the Early Identification program in 1974 in order to attract and support diverse students interested in STEM, architecture, and other programs at Illinois Tech. 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: Nate Thomas, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL, 1968-1973
Date: 1968-1973
Description: Photograph of Nate Thomas. Thomas worked at Illinois Tech in various positions, first as part of the Computing Center in 1965. Thomas later...
Show morePhotograph of Nate Thomas. Thomas worked at Illinois Tech in various positions, first as part of the Computing Center in 1965. Thomas later served as Assistant Director of Co-Op Education , Director of Admission, head of Minority Affairs, and Vice President for External Affairs. Thomas was instrumental in recruiting students from underserved communities into STEM programs at Illinois Tech, and founded the Early Identification program in 1974 in order to attract and support diverse students interested in STEM, architecture, and other programs at Illinois Tech. 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: Quantification of Vascular Permeability in the Retina Using Fluorescein Videoangiography Data as a Biomarker for Early Diabetic Retinopathy
Creator: Kayaalp Nalbant, Elif
Date: 2023
Description: Diabetic retinopathy, which is the most common reason for blindness in the working-age population, affects over one-third of those who have...
Show moreDiabetic retinopathy, which is the most common reason for blindness in the working-age population, affects over one-third of those who have had diabetes for over ten years. High blood sugar level (hyperglycemia) in the blood damages blood vessels and tight junction at the blood-retinal barrier (BRB). Chronic inflammation leads to changes in vascular health, and over time blood vessels tend to get damaged and exhibit higher “leakage” or permeability. In the late stage of DR, hemorrhages can occur, leading to irreversible damage of neuronal tissue in the retina and vision loss. In the clinic, there are some biomarkers and imaging modalities used to diagnose DR based on some of the more severe products of DR (e.g., hemorrhage), but there is no non-invasive, highly sensitive method to detect diabetic retinopathy before clinical signs occur, when mitigating therapies could be more effective. In this thesis, indicator dilution theory was explored to modeling the temporal dynamics of fluorescein in the retina after intravenous injection, with an aim to quantitatively map subtle changes in retinal blood flow and vascular permeability that could preempt subsequent irreversible damage. Specifically, a simplified version of indicator dilution theory—namely the “adiabatic approximation in tissue homogeneity” (AATH) model—was used to estimate physiological parameters such as the blood flow (F) and the extraction fraction (E: a parameter coupled with vascular permeability) from retinal fluorescein videoangiography data. The AATH fitting protocol was optimized through simulations using a more complex model (the AATH-vascular heterogeneity model, AATH-VH). It was determined that a two-step least square fitting method was more sensitive than a single-step least square fitting of AATH to simulated data to evaluate vascular permeability in early diabetic retinopathy. The optimized data analysis protocol was then evaluated in an initial clinical study comparing healthy control subjects to those with moderate non-proliferative DR. Volumetric blood flow and retinal vascular permeability maps were compared between patient groups with clear increases in extraction fraction observed in the mild NPDR patients compared to control. These promising early data have been the foundation to an ongoing 5 year study tracking 100 Diabetic patients with no DR so see if early changes in vascular permeability can predict which patients are more likely to progress to DR.
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Title: Characterization and Migration of Silver Nanoparticles from Electron-Beam Irradiated Low-Density Polyethylene
Creator: Donovan, Dylan
Date: 2023
Description: Polymer nanocomposites (PNCs) and engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) may find use in a wide range of commercial applications, including food and...
Show morePolymer nanocomposites (PNCs) and engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) may find use in a wide range of commercial applications, including food and medical product packaging. Migration of nanofillers from polymer nanocomposites into food matrices could be a source of human dietary exposure to ENMs. Electron beam (e-beam) irradiation is a processing method used for microbial inactivation as well as for modifying properties of polymer films, such as stretch resistance and shrink tension. Process treatment of nanotechnology-based packaging materials either for sterilization or for strengthening of the polymer films may have a significant effect on the migration of ENMs into food matrices. The primary objective of this study is to investigate the effect of e-beam irradiation treatments of LDPE containing silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) and the subsequent migration of AgNPs into a food simulant under intended use conditions. The study observes a correlation between e-beam irradiation dose quantity and the release of AgNPs into a food simulant.
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Title: Designs and Optimizations of Oblivious Data Access for Mitigating Access Pattern Leakage
Creator: Che, Yuezhi
Date: 2023
Description: In today’s data-driven world, data outsourcing has grown, increasing the importance of data security and privacy. Data encryption, while...
Show moreIn today’s data-driven world, data outsourcing has grown, increasing the importance of data security and privacy. Data encryption, while providing some protection, is insufficient against side-channel attacks such as access pattern leakage. This thesis focuses on designing and optimizing efficient oblivious access methods to enhance data security and privacy. Traditional solutions, like Oblivious RAM (ORAM), often impose significant overheads, limiting their market adoption. Our research proposes novel oblivious data access schemes tailored to specific applications, systems, and contexts. This approach enables us to identify critical vulnerabilities and performance bottlenecks, and balance performance, security, and other relevant parameters. In this thesis, I present four published works in Chapters 3 to 6, demonstrating the effectiveness of my proposed methods: (1) optimizing Ring ORAM for multi-channel memory systems, (2) introducing a multi-range supported ORAM for locality-aware applications, (3) proposing an oblivious data access solution for NVM hybrid memory systems, and (4) developing an oblivious access method for deep neural networks (DNNs), ensuring privacy without sacrificing performance. These contributions address unique challenges across application domains, enhancing data security and privacy in contemporary computing systems. This thesis provides a comprehensive investigation of targeted oblivious access methods, highlighting the benefits of the proposed designs, and contributing to more effective solutions for access pattern leakage mitigation, ultimately improving data security and privacy in contemporary computing systems.
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Title: Transdiagnostic Emotional Factors as Mediators of the Relation between Obsessive-Compulsive Symptoms and Tobacco Use and Dependence in a Large Community Sample of Adolescents
Creator: Chang, Weilynn Christine
Date: 2023
Description: This study investigated the associations between obsessive compulsive disorder symptoms (OCS) and tobacco use and tobacco dependence in a...
Show moreThis study investigated the associations between obsessive compulsive disorder symptoms (OCS) and tobacco use and tobacco dependence in a large community sample of adolescents. Specifically, transdiagnostic emotional vulnerability factors (i.e., anhedonia, distress tolerance and anxiety sensitivity) were explored as potential mediators of the relation between OCS and tobacco use/dependence. Weighted logistic regression models found that OCS was significantly positively associated with likelihood of tobacco use in the past six months (when suppressor variables were excluded). Similarly, zero-inflated negative binomial regression models found a significant positive relation between OCS and tobacco dependence (when suppressor variables were excluded). There was no significant weighted indirect effect via anhedonia for the OCS-Tobacco Use association, which suggests that anhedonia was not a significant mediator in this case. However, the indirect effect via anhedonia for the OCS-Tobacco Dependence association was significant at the p < .05 level, but not the adjusted p < .001 threshold (when suppressor variables were removed). The weighted indirect effect via distress tolerance for the OCS-Tobacco Use association was significant at the p < .05 level, but not the p < .001 threshold (when suppressor variables were removed). There was no significant indirect effect via distress tolerance for the OCS-Tobacco Dependence association. There was a significant weighted indirect effect via anxiety sensitivity for the OCS-Tobacco Use association (when suppressor variables were removed). There were no significant indirect effects via anxiety sensitivity for the OCS-Tobacco Dependence association. When overlapping variance was accounted for by including all three mediators simultaneously, anhedonia was still not a significant mediator of the OCS-Tobacco Use association; there were still significant indirect effects via distress tolerance and anxiety sensitivity, under specific model parameters. Our results also revealed that while Asian adolescents demonstrated lower likelihood of tobacco use compared to those who were Hispanic/Latinae, Asian youth demonstrated more severe tobacco dependence symptoms.
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Title: Applications of Optimal Contract Theory in Brokerage
Creator: Alonso Alvarez, Guillermo
Date: 2023
Description: In this thesis we study optimal brokerage problems in different scenarios. The thesisis structured in two parts:...
Show moreIn this thesis we study optimal brokerage problems in different scenarios. The thesisis structured in two parts: In the first part of this thesis, corresponding to Chapter 2 and 3, we construct optimal brokerage contracts for multiple (heterogeneous) clients trading a single asset whose price follows the Almgren-Chriss model. The distinctive features of this work are as follows: (i) the reservation values of the clients are determined endogenously, and (ii) the broker is allowed to not offer a contract to some of the potential clients, thus choosing her portfolio of clients strategically. We find a computationally tractable characterization of the optimal portfolios of clients (up to a digital optimization problem, which can be solved efficiently if the number of potential clients is small) and conduct numerical experiments which illustrate how these portfolios, as well as the equilibrium profits of all market participants, depend on the price impact coefficients. In the second part of this thesis, corresponding to Chapter 4, we establish existence of a solution to the optimal contract problem in models where the state process is given by a multidimensional diffusion with linearly controlled drift. Then, under certain concavity assumptions, we show that the optimal contracts in the relaxed formulation also solve the associated strong optimal contract problem. The main advantages of this approach, relative to the existing methods, are due to the fact that it allows (i) to obtain the existence of an optimal contract (as a limit point of epsilon-optimal ones), and (ii) to include various additional constraints on the associated control problems (e.g., state constraints, difference in filtrations of the agent and of the principal, etc.). Finally, we apply our results to the problem of brokerage fees when the agent has access to a larger filtration.
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Title: Critical Understanding of Multi-Mode Luminescence Properties of Eu3+ Doped LaAlO3
Creator: Alolayan, Abdulelah Abdulaziz H
Date: 2023
Description: Fluorescent anti-counterfeit materials with multi-luminescent modes under different external excitation sources are always advantageous over...
Show moreFluorescent anti-counterfeit materials with multi-luminescent modes under different external excitation sources are always advantageous over the conventional anti-counterfeit techniques. In the present thesis, our aim is to develop efficient Eu3+ doped LaAlO3 phosphor materials with different modes of luminescence properties such as down conversion-luminescence (DCL), persistent-luminescence (PersL), and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL), Thermo-luminescence (TL), radioluminescence (RL) Although, there are many reports on persistent-luminescence and optically stimulated luminescence based on Eu3+ doped matrices but the red persistent luminescence of Eu3+ ion on those matrices is not very long and the OSL intensities are also low. Herein, we report a long red persistent luminescence which lasted for 17 hrs. and the OSL intensity is very high. Furthermore, we have observed that the OSL property can be achieved even after 35 days of UV excitation and indicating its potential application for optical storage phosphor. From carrying out TSL studies we have found that three different types of traps namely Trap 1, Trap 2 and Trap 3 with trap depth 0.63 eV, 0.82 eV, 1.02 eV respectively are responsible for the persistent and OSL properties. It has been concluded that Trap 1 is mostly responsible for the persistent luminescence in short term while Trap 2 and Trap 3 are responsible for intermediate and long persistent luminescence. Further, Trap 2 and Trap 3 were also found to be present even after 35 days and responsible for the OSL properties. Anti-counterfeiting PersL composite has been developed in which AC real-life application is demonstrated.
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Title: Towards Utility-Driven Data Analytics with Differential Privacy
Creator: Wang, Han
Date: 2023
Description: The widespread use of personal devices and dedicated recording facilities has led to the generation of massive amounts of personal information...
Show moreThe widespread use of personal devices and dedicated recording facilities has led to the generation of massive amounts of personal information or data. Some of them are high-dimensional and unstructured data, such as video and location data. Analyzing these data can provide significant benefits in real-world scenarios, such as videos for monitoring and location data for traffic analysis. However, while providing benefits, these complicated data always raise serious privacy concerns since all of them involve personal information. To address privacy issues, existing privacy protection methods often fail to provide adequate utility in practical applications due to the complexity of high-dimensional and unstructured data. For example, most video sanitization techniques merely obscure the video by detecting and blurring sensitive regions, such as faces, vehicle plates, locations, and timestamps. Unfortunately, privacy breaches in blurred videos cannot be effectively contained, especially against unknown background knowledge. In this thesis, we propose three different differentially private frameworks to preserve the utility of video and location data (both are high-dimensional and unstructured data) while meeting the privacy requirements, under different well-known privacy settings. Specifically, to our best knowledge, wepropose the first differentially private video analytics platform (VideoDP) which flexibly supports different video queries or query-based analyze with a rigorous privacy guarantee. Given the input video, VideoDP randomly generates a utility-driven private video in which adding or removing any sensitive visual element (e.g., human, and object) does not significantly affect the output video. Then, different video analyses requested by untrusted video analysts can be flexibly performed over the sanitized video with differential privacy. Secondly, we define a novel privacy notion ϵ-Object Indistinguishability for all the predefined sensitive objects (e.g., humans, vehicles) in the video, and then propose a video sanitization technique VERRO that randomly generates utility-driven synthetic videos with indistinguishable objects. Therefore, all the objects can be well protected in the generated utility-driven synthetic videos which can be disclosed to any untrusted video recipient. Third, we propose the first strict local differential privacy (LDP) framework for location-based service (LBS) (“L-SRR”) to privately collect and analyze user locations or trajectories with ε-LDP guarantees. Specifically, we design a novel LDP mechanism “staircase randomized response” (SRR) and extend the empirical estimation to further boost the utility for a diverse set of LBS Apps (e.g., traffic density estimation, k nearest neighbors search, origin-destination analysis, and traffic-aware GPS navigation). Finally, we conduct experiments on real videos and location dataset, and the experimental results demonstrate all frameworks can have good performance.
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Title: Latent Price Model for Market Microstructure: Estimation and Simulation
Creator: Yin, Yuan
Date: 2023
Description: This thesis focuses on exploring and solving several problems based on partiallyobserved diffusion models. The thesis has two parts....
Show moreThis thesis focuses on exploring and solving several problems based on partiallyobserved diffusion models. The thesis has two parts. In the first part we present a tractable sufficient condition for the consistency of maximum likelihood estimators (MLEs) in partially observed diffusion models, stated in terms of stationary distributions of the associated test processes, under the assumption that the set of unknown parameter values is finite. We illustrate the tractability of this sufficient condition by verifying it in the context of a latent price model of market microstructure. Finally, we describe an algorithm for computing MLEs in partially observed diffusion models and test it on historical data to estimate the parameters of the latent price model. In the second part we provide a thorough analysis of the particle filtering algorithm for estimating the conditional distribution in partially observed diffusion models. Specifically, we focus on estimating the distribution of unobserved processes using observed data. The algorithm involves several steps and assumptions, which are described in detail. We also examine the convergence of the algorithm and identify the sufficient conditions under which it converges. Finally, we derive an explicit upper bound of the convergence rate of the algorithm, which depends on the set of parameters and the choice of time frequency. This bound provides a measure of the algorithm’s performance and can be used to optimize its parameters to achieve faster convergence.
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Title: Electric Machine Windings with Reduced Space Harmonic Content
Creator: Tang, Nanjun
Date: 2023
Description: The reduction of magnetomotive force (MMF) space harmonic content in electric machine windings can significantly improve the machine's...
Show moreThe reduction of magnetomotive force (MMF) space harmonic content in electric machine windings can significantly improve the machine's electromagnetic performance. Potential benefits include a reduction of torque ripple, a more sinusoidal back EMF, and reduced power losses. With the proposal of a uniform mathematical representation that applies to both distributed windings and fractional-slot concentrated windings (FSCWs), closed-form expressions can be derived for harmonic magnitudes, winding factors, etc. These expressions can then be used to formulate the MMF space harmonic suppression problem for windings, which looks for improved windings with certain harmonic orders reduced or even eliminated, by varying the slot distribution and coil turns. Different solution techniques are explored to gain additional insights about the solution space. The underlying mathematical relations between different harmonic orders are mathematically proved to establish the family phenomenon, which presents clear pictures of the higher order part of the harmonic spectrum and is the foundation for exact calculation of the total harmonic distortion (THD) of windings. The exact THD calculation further indicates how the minimal THD can be achieved for a winding. Windings can also be analyzed and designed from the view of subsets to incorporate distribution and excitation phase shift effects. With reduced or the minimal space harmonic content, new winding designs can help significantly improve the Pareto front when combined with motor geometry optimization. Design examples including a 12-slot 2-pole mixed-layer distributed winding, a 18-slot 2-pole mixed-layer distributed winding, and a four-layer 24-slot 22-pole FSCW with excitation phase shift are presented with finite element analysis (FEA) results to verify the performance improvements.
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Title: High Frequency Trading and the Impact of Volume-Duration on Market Quality in the U.S. Futures Markets
Creator: Xu, Xiaoruo
Date: 2023
Description: This paper examines the impact of High Frequency Trading (HFT) on market quality in the U.S. futures market through the lens of Adjusted...
Show moreThis paper examines the impact of High Frequency Trading (HFT) on market quality in the U.S. futures market through the lens of Adjusted Volume-Durations (AVD). By using the unique nanosecond level TAQ CME datasets of commodities futures in 2018, which include Crude Oil, E-mini S&P 500, Eurodollar, Gold, Corn and Soybean, I create the AVDs of each dataset, then conduct the regression analysis on market quality variables with the independent variables including AVDs and other key variables, and the results show that as AVD decreases, the market quality deteriorates, thus HFT positively affects market quality in the U.S. futures market. In order to explore the main driver of AVD on market quality in the futures market, I use the Autoregressive Conditional Duration Model to decompose AVDs into expected AVDs (AEVD), which is the component of AVD that is influenced by past AVDs and unexpected AVDs (AUVD), which is the component of AVD that is not captured by past AVDs but by unanticipated events, and then conduct the regression analysis on market quality variables with the independent variables including AEVD, AUVD and other key variables. The result shows that AEVD has a higher impact on liquidity than AUVD, but the impact of AEVD and AUVD on volatility is mixed in the U.S. futures market. However, except for the conclusions get from the based multivariate regression results, I also explain why there are some outliers for the Eurodollar, soybean and gold, and why HFT has more explicit impact on agricultural futures market.
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Title: Neuropsychological Pattern of Verbal and Nonverbal Processing Speed Discrepancy in Veterans with Co-Occurring mTBI and PTSD
Creator: VanLandingham, Hannah B.
Date: 2023
Description: Rates of traumatic brain injury (TBI) exposure have increased over time (CDC, 2022). This pattern of increased TBI risk is additionally...
Show moreRates of traumatic brain injury (TBI) exposure have increased over time (CDC, 2022). This pattern of increased TBI risk is additionally associated with risk for development of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD; APA, 2013). Ongoing PTSD symptomology can lead to neuropsychological profiles in which deficits are more pronounced for verbally constrained performances when compared to nonverbal performances. However, less is known about this performance discrepancy in patients with a history of head injury with comorbid PTSD. Moreover, the little existing research focuses on the domains of executive functioning, learning, and memory, with little to no research on processing speed discrepancies. These findings could have significant implications for healthcare and cognitive intervention pre- and post-mTBI and/or trauma exposure because this discrepancy may impact clinical assessment and subsequent diagnosis. The analysis will include 1) determination of statistically and clinically significant differences for those with co-occurring PTSD and mTBI, and 2) examine within-subjects differences with and without the inclusion of covariates. The present research found that there are no differences between those with co-occurring PTSD and head injury compared to individuals without a co-occurring diagnosis, in addition to no significant discrepancies notes within the PTSD and mTBI group alone
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Title: Research through Provocation: A Structured Process to Design New Information Technologies
Creator: Rivera Gomez, Jaime Alejandro
Date: 2023
Description: This doctoral research presents a structured way to generate provocative prototypes, called provotypes, to design new information technologies...
Show moreThis doctoral research presents a structured way to generate provocative prototypes, called provotypes, to design new information technologies. Emphasizing the exploration of alternative interaction models beyond the current archetypes, this study considers emerging complexities about our relationship with technology in the long term to incorporate knowledge from science models in the early stages of the project when cross-disciplinary consensus is required. Thus, avoiding personal biases that are not aligned with how people use technology.The methodology analyzes six case studies using provotypes in multiple contexts, including academic research explorations, corporate innovation projects, and students applying the approach in educational settings. The research also involved a controlled experiment studying how different interactive configurations influence one's motivation to engage in positive behavior change. The results can be summarized in three main contributions: A provocation model to influence the shared meaning inside cross-functional teams, a tool to create provocations exploring alternative interaction models, and finally, the heuristics of provotyping to guide researchers and designers to generate early low fidelity prototyping.
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Title: Melt Growth of Indium-Iodide on Earth and in Microgravity
Creator: Riabov, Vladimir
Date: 2023
Description: Indium Iodide is a heavy metal halide and a wide band-gap semiconductor which has a potential for application in room temperature γ- and X-ray...
Show moreIndium Iodide is a heavy metal halide and a wide band-gap semiconductor which has a potential for application in room temperature γ- and X-ray detectors. Its physical properties are similar to those of other materials used as room temperature radiation detectors. Over the years the technology of purification and crystal growth of InI was developed. Significant advances were made to improve purity, crystal structure and resulting electronic properties of the material. Nevertheless, the desired detector performance has not been achieved yet. Stress-induced crystal lattice defects resulting from solidification in contact with crucible are suspected to be responsible for the limited performance. Microgravity environment was previously used to study its effects on the process of crystal growth from the melt applied to semiconductors. It was observed that unlike on Earth materials can solidify without contact with the wall, when the sample is confined by the crucible. It was also shown that such detached solidification can drastically reduce stress-induced defects of the crystal lattice and improve electronic properties of the material. In this study crystal growth of InI was studied in microgravity, attempting to achieve detached solidification, and observe it in a transparent zone of a furnace. Partially detached solidification (a large free surface) has occurred in one of the samples. The resulting crystals were characterized by measuring their electronic properties and estimating the radiation detector performance of the devices manufactured using the crystals.
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Title: Design and Fabrication of Battery-Operated Radiator Control (BORC) Utilizing 3D Printing Strategies
Creator: Riley, Christopher W.
Date: 2023
Description: The scope of this work aims to serve as a continuation of prior research focused on the “development and evaluation of an automatic steam...
Show moreThe scope of this work aims to serve as a continuation of prior research focused on the “development and evaluation of an automatic steam radiator control system or retrofitting legacy heating systems in existing buildings” (Syed Ali et al., 2020) by describing and testing the mechanical components of the developed controller in full detail. Other aspects of radiator efficiency are also explored. Primarily, this work aims to elaborate on the importance of material selection and mechanical properties of the design process. It also proposes initiative-taking solutions for the building’s energy recovery by monitoring the initial set up and focusing on certain details such as cardinal direction, thermal breaks, etc. These legacy systems are generally problematic when attempting to calculate energy efficiency, as a majority of radiator controls tend to be manual. Though there are comparable products within the European market, they cater to hot water systems and not steam, and in some instances require an internet bridge for operation (Tahersima et al., 2010). Since this is an extension of our earlier project, I will refer to it as Battery Operated Radiator Control (BORC) and the previous version as BERG’s Automated Radiator Control (ARC).
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Title: The Effect of Time Step on HSPF Model Performance
Creator: Rubinstein, Benjamin J.
Date: 2023
Description: Hydrological modeling is a mature and well researched field; however, because most climate data are collected on hour or greater time...
Show moreHydrological modeling is a mature and well researched field; however, because most climate data are collected on hour or greater time intervals there is very little research on the effect of using high resolution data as inputs for the models. A Python tool for downloading high resolution five minute interval data from the Oklahoma Mesonet was created and the PyHSPF Python package was used to generate, calibrate, and validate HSPF models using five minute, one hour, and daily time steps. Flow errors, R², and Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency for simulated outflows, and resource usage were compared for each model. The hourly and five minute models performed similarly well, and the daily model performed significantly worse. The results of this work could prove useful for policy makers and researchers looking to update or create new climate data collection protocols, and the tools used can be applied to many different kinds of future research.
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Title: Understanding Location Bias in Fake News Datasets of Twitter
Creator: Patil, Kayenat Kailas
Date: 2023
Description: Fake news tends to spread faster and wider than real news. It has a greater impact and can lead to negative and dangerous outcomes. With the...
Show moreFake news tends to spread faster and wider than real news. It has a greater impact and can lead to negative and dangerous outcomes. With the world spending an increasing amount of time on their mobile devices, people tend to get more of their news from their desired social media platform. It has become part of our daily lives, whether it is to keep in touch with friends and family, to getting gossip on celebrities or even shopping. In 2022, the average time a person spends per day on the internet on a social media platform has been accounted to be about 147 minutes,[1] indicating an increase in time spent scrolling through information online.It has become a widespread phenomenon in recent years, thanks in part to the rapid spread of information through social media and other online channels. It is increasingly important to explore and understand fake news and its impact on society, as well as to develop effective tools and methods for detecting and combating it. There are several factors that can tamper with the successful detection of fake news. Machine learning models often fall to such biases that result in inaccurate predictions. There are several biases that have been identified like age, gender, sex and many more. In this thesis, we are exploring location as a form of a bias and if it hinders prediction. We have looked at location from two perspectives. One, taking location as co-ordinates in the form of latitude and longitude and analyzing the likelihood of a tweet coming from a location to be fake or not. The second method we have used is that we have considered location as an entity and used natural language processing model to see if its able to predict if the given tweet is fake or not, along with masking the location mentioned in the tweet and analyzing how the performance of the model changes. Machine learning models can play an important role in fake news detection models, by analyzing large amounts of data and identifying patterns and indicators that suggest a piece of information may be false or misleading, but they are often susceptible to some form of biases. By studying biases on machine learning models on fake news datasets, we can develop more effective tools for identifying fake news and taking steps towards mitigating it, ultimately helping to protect the integrity of information and promote informed decision-making in society.
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Title: Online Satire in Iran: Social Critique, Counter-Publicity and Public Opinion
Creator: Mirghaderi, Leilasadat
Date: 2023
Description: This dissertation examines and investigates the recontextualization of theories of satire, public sphere, and communicative action in the...
Show moreThis dissertation examines and investigates the recontextualization of theories of satire, public sphere, and communicative action in the context of Iranian Instagram satirists. The importance of this investigation is two-fold. First, since the advent of social media sites, several theoretical concepts have gone through paradigm shifts. In this regard, theories of satire, public sphere, and communicative action are no exceptions. Second, these theoretical concepts were primarily developed and analyzed in Western democratic nations and need to be revisited in the context of Iran. To this end, by looking through the lenses of these theories and taking into account the context of Iran, this dissertation identifies the major topics that Iranian Instagram satirists address and criticize. Therefore, the first goal of this dissertation is to provide insights with regards to how Iranian Instagram satirists are using humor to criticize different aspects of social, cultural, and political matters that are more salient in the context of Iran and to investigate how they are trying to transfer their knowledge and raise awareness about topics that are less publicly discussed.Furthermore, by analyzing the topics that are the main focus of Iranian Instagram satirists, accompanied by observations from my netnography study, and considering the current atmosphere and historical background of Iran, this dissertation argues the extent to which Iranian satirical content on Instagram facilitates the democratic exchange of ideas as a requirement for transformation from a public space to public sphere(s). This dissertation also examines the communicative action strategies that Iranian Instagram satirists employ to reach an understanding with the state as well as their followers. Finally, the dimensions and attributes of satire as well as the features of Instagram that facilitate the formation of public discourse and public opinion formation in Iran are identified. Methodologically, this dissertation utilized a combination of qualitative research methods including but not limited to netnography, thematic and content analysis, transcription of publicly available trade publication interviews, and critical discourse analysis. While themes and topics were extracted from the collected media from the Instagram pages of the Iranian Instagram satirists, the transcription of the publicly available trade publication interviews as well as critical discourse analysis were used to describe why some topics were more salient and to provide answers to the developed research questions. From the analysis of the posts and stories, ten themes that fall into two broad categories of inward and outward criticism were extracted. In the context of this research, the inward criticism category refers to the topics that unravel the social and cultural dimensions of relationships and interactions, while the outward criticism category refers to the topics that criticize the state and its established institutions. Taking a closer look at the results, we can see that in the context of Iran, it can be concluded that the online world accompanied by satire facilitates the democratic exchange of ideas as a requirement for transformation from a public space to public sphere(s). However, as Iranian Instagram influencers are expressing their opposing thoughts against the established hegemony and are also challenging what matters belong to the private or public domains, it can be said that they are forming subaltern counterpublics in the online world.
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Title: Understanding the Impact of Age and Gender Demographic Similarity in Assessment Center and Individual Assessment Ratings
Creator: Levin, Kelly
Date: 2023
Description: Organizations have become increasingly reliant on the use of assessment centers and individual assessments when making hiring decisions....
Show moreOrganizations have become increasingly reliant on the use of assessment centers and individual assessments when making hiring decisions. However, there has been relatively limited research on the prevalence of subgroup differences with the use of these tools. As such, this study investigated the individual characteristics of gender and age in both assessment centers and individual assessments. Specifically, the study examined how candidate gender and age, as well as the dyadic “match” between assessor-assessee gender and age impacted assessors’ hiring recommendations. Results from this research partially supported the hypothesized outcomes. Both female and younger candidates were rated more favorably on the overall assessment center recommendation. However, neither candidate gender or age had a significant impact on individual assessment recommendations. Further, demographic similarity had little effect on overall recommendations in both ACs and individual assessments. Implications and avenues for future research are discussed.
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