Theses and Dissertations
This collection includes both ASU Theses and Dissertations, submitted by graduate students, and the Barrett, Honors College theses submitted by undergraduate students.
Displaying 281 - 289 of 289
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- Creators: Historical, Philosophical & Religious Studies, Sch
- Creators: Turaga, Pavan
Description
This thesis details a Python-based software designed to calculate the Jones polynomial,
a vital mathematical tool from Knot Theory used for characterizing the topological and
geometrical complexity of curves in 3-space, which is essential in understanding physical
systems of filaments, including the behavior of polymers and biopolymers. The Jones
polynomial serves as a topological invariant capable of distinguishing between different
knot structures. This capability is fundamental to characterizing the architecture of
molecular chains, such as proteins and DNA. Traditional computational methods for
deriving the Jones polynomial have been limited by closure-schemes and high execu-
tion costs, which can be impractical for complex structures like those that appear in
real life. This software implements methods that significantly reduce calculation times,
allowing for more efficient and practical applications in the study of biological poly-
mers. It utilizes a divide-and-conquer approach combined with parallel computing and
applies recursive Reidemeister moves to optimize the computation, transitioning from
an exponential to a near-linear runtime for specific configurations. This thesis provides
an overview of the software’s functions, detailed performance evaluations using protein
structures as test cases, and a discussion of the implications for future research and
potential algorithmic improvements.
ContributorsMusfeldt, Caleb (Author) / Panagiotou, Eleni (Thesis director) / Richa, Andrea (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Historical, Philosophical & Religious Studies, Sch (Contributor)
Created2024-05
Description
Out of all of the participants in World War I, the most curious, in my opinion, is Great Britain. With the English Channel guaranteeing a navally superior Britain could guarantee its independence indefinitely, joining a world war does not seem like the obvious move to make. Despite this, on August 4th, 1914 Britain was at war with Germany. In my paper, I will argue that the invasion of Belgium provided the catalyst for a great power conflict due to the institutional, material, and personal realities that set the two nations on a collision course.
ContributorsKlein, Julian (Author) / Harper, Tobias (Thesis director) / Ripley, Charles (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Historical, Philosophical & Religious Studies, Sch (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor)
Created2024-05
Description
Panpsychism is the view that consciousness is an intrinsic state of the world. While early forms were advanced by Spinoza and Russell, only recently has panpsychism gained widespread academic consideration. In this paper, I will argue for panpsychism, based on a similarity of the nature of our consciousness with the nature of the parts of our consciousness. This argument will be motivated by an anti-strong emergentist viewpoint, while allowing for complex consciousness to arise from a form of weak emergence between fundamental parts. Ultimately, this argument demonstrates that an identity theorist would collapse to panpsychism or strong emergentism, the former being preferred. From this, I argue that panpsychists can gain some intuitive benefits of dualism and materialism, without inheriting their issues. This positions the panpsychist well to respond to issues like Jackson’s (1982) Mary-argument. I will then discuss possible objections to panpsychism, focusing primarily on the combination problem. I conclude that the co-consciousness strategy is the optimal solution to this problem and can account for the inverse issue of the decombination problem that cosmopsychism faces. Overall, panpsychism’s explanatory power and compatibility with other disciplines makes it a favorable theory within the philosophy of mind.
ContributorsKing, Liam (Author) / Watson, Jeffrey (Thesis director) / Botham, Thad (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Molecular Sciences (Contributor) / Historical, Philosophical & Religious Studies, Sch (Contributor)
Created2024-05
Description
In the rapidly evolving field of computer vision, propelled by advancements in deeplearning, the integration of hardware-software co-design has become crucial to overcome
the limitations of traditional imaging systems. This dissertation explores the integration
of hardware-software co-design in computational imaging, particularly in light transport
acquisition and Non-Line-of-Sight (NLOS) imaging. By leveraging projector-camera
systems and computational techniques, this thesis address critical challenges in imaging
complex environments, such as adverse weather conditions, low-light scenarios, and the
imaging of reflective or transparent objects.
The first contribution in this thesis is the theory, design, and implementation of a slope
disparity gating system, which is a vertically aligned configuration of a synchronized
raster scanning projector and rolling-shutter camera, facilitating selective imaging through
disparity-based triangulation. This system introduces a novel, hardware-oriented approach
to selective imaging, circumventing the limitations of post-capture processing.
The second contribution of this thesis is the realization of two innovative approaches
for spotlight optimization to improve localization and tracking for NLOS imaging. The
first approach utilizes radiosity-based optimization to improve 3D localization and object
identification for small-scale laboratory settings. The second approach introduces a learningbased
illumination network along with a differentiable renderer and NLOS estimation
network to optimize human 2D localization and activity recognition. This approach is
validated on a large, room-scale scene with complex line-of-sight geometries and occluders.
The third contribution of this thesis is an attention-based neural network for passive
NLOS settings where there is no controllable illumination. The thesis demonstrates realtime,
dynamic NLOS human tracking where the camera is moving on a mobile robotic platform. In addition, this thesis contains an appendix featuring temporally consistent
relighting for portrait videos with applications in computer graphics and vision.
ContributorsChandran, Sreenithy (Author) / Jayasuriya, Suren (Thesis advisor) / Turaga, Pavan (Committee member) / Dasarathy, Gautam (Committee member) / Kubo, Hiroyuki (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2024
Description
This thesis will explore the causality and link between Child Crisis Arizona (or “CCA'') and the applicability of the life-course framework. Child Crisis Arizona operates an emergency children’s shelter in Maricopa County, AZ, under the broader Arizona Department of Child Safety (or “DCS”) mission of providing safe and effective interventions for children at risk of being displaced from their homes. Utilizing a framework initially designed under a sociologist’s purview, the life-course perspective has evolved into a multidisciplinary approach to illuminate the complex nature of criminal behaviors, especially early in life in childhood. As such, the first section will detail the current issues regarding Arizona’s child safety system, the background of CCA, and the fundamental principles of the life-course framework to address how CCA provides beneficial results to a child’s life-course. The thesis will then discuss the policy measures provided by CCA that positively intervene in a child’s educational, medical, and other holistic developments. This is followed by examining the applications of CCA and course while incorporating various scholarly literature to link the two. The thesis will conclude with a brief discussion of this paper’s research limitations, future implications, and concluding remarks. Ultimately, this thesis highlights how children who go into Child Crisis Arizona’s emergency children’s shelter present significant potential of utilizing the event as a turning point to lead conventional lives through an early positive life experience.
ContributorsMensay, Hudson (Author) / Sweeten, Gary (Thesis director) / Hughes, EJ (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Criminology and Criminal Justice (Contributor) / Historical, Philosophical & Religious Studies, Sch (Contributor)
Created2024-05
Description
In the age of artificial intelligence, Machine Learning (ML) has become a pervasive force, impacting countless aspects of our lives. As ML’s influence expands, concerns about its reliability and trustworthiness have intensified, with security and robustness emerging as significant challenges. For instance, it has been demonstrated that slight perturbations to a stop sign can cause ML classifiers to misidentify it as a speed limit sign, raising concerns about whether ML algorithms are suitable for real-world deployments. To tackle these issues, Responsible Machine Learning (Responsible ML) has emerged with a clear mission: to develop secure and robust ML algorithms. This dissertation aims to develop Responsible Machine Learning algorithms under real-world constraints. Specifically, recognizing the role of adversarial attacks in exposing security vulnerabilities and robustifying the ML methods, it lays down the foundation of Responsible ML by outlining a novel taxonomy of adversarial attacks within real-world settings, categorizing them into black-box target-specific, and target-agnostic attacks. Subsequently, it proposes potent adversarial attacks in each category, aiming to obtain effectiveness and efficiency. Transcending conventional boundaries, it then introduces the notion of causality into Responsible ML (a.k.a., Causal Responsible ML), presenting the causal adversarial attack. This represents the first principled framework to explain the transferability of adversarial attacks to unknown models by identifying their common source of vulnerabilities, thereby exposing the pinnacle of threat and vulnerability: conducting successful attacks on any model with no prior knowledge.
Finally, acknowledging the surge of Generative AI, this dissertation explores Responsible ML for Generative AI. It introduces a novel adversarial attack that unveils their adversarial vulnerabilities and devises a strong defense mechanism to bolster the models’ robustness against potential attacks.
ContributorsMoraffah, Raha (Author) / Liu, Huan (Thesis advisor) / Yang, Yezhou (Committee member) / Xiao, Chaowei (Committee member) / Turaga, Pavan (Committee member) / Carley, Kathleen (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2024
Description
This qualitative research study aimed to discover whether climbers attribute religious or spiritual elements to rock climbing. After conducting twenty interviews with climbers in the Phoenix area, responses were coded into major themes: nature, flow state and risk, and community. Ultimately, this thesis evaluates each of these major themes and corresponding similarities with spirituality, concluding that outdoor rock climbing can function as spiritual activity for its participants.
ContributorsSchisler, Jacqueline (Author) / Shoemaker, Terry (Thesis director) / Jackson, Victoria (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Historical, Philosophical & Religious Studies, Sch (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor)
Created2024-05
Description
This qualitative study explores how women, nonbinary, and trans individuals define their identities in relation to contemporary fashion. To gather insights about the connection between fashion choices and the expression of complex identity categories, four 45-minute long interviews were conducted and transcribed using Otter.ai software. A two-stage coding approach was used to analyze the data, and the findings suggest that people intentionally use their clothing to communicate aspects of their identities to others. In particular, the study found that clothing helps individuals learn, perform, and embody their gender. Intersectional feminist theory argues that oppressed identity categories combine to create unique experiences for people who belong to marginalized groups, including those related to gender, race, and sexual orientation. The results of this study contribute to the discussion of intersectionality by highlighting the ways in which people are empowered by fashion to both express and celebrate their identities, as well as to challenge oppressive societal norms. The unique combination of traits to make a different lived experience creates a new and improved understanding of who the person is and the different ways they express their activities.
ContributorsMatthews, Megan (Author) / Woodbury, Alicia (Thesis director) / Stephenson, Megan (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Historical, Philosophical & Religious Studies, Sch (Contributor) / School of Art (Contributor)
Created2024-05
Description
A historical analysis of tort law spanning from ancient civilizations to modern day. How legal terms like negligence and liability has evolved over time to complement social customs, traditions, and legal principles. The limitations in which legal standards in tort law affect businesses. How tort law may continue to evolve with new technology and the affects on businesses and individuals alike.
ContributorsFredrickson, Emma (Author) / Koretz, Lora (Thesis director) / Moore, James (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Dean, W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Historical, Philosophical & Religious Studies, Sch (Contributor)
Created2024-05