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This podcast considers the history of online courses in higher education and research into them, focusing on how well they serve a diverse student population. It considers how online learning developed, and how studies into the practices and effectiveness of online courses find inequality in academic outcomes and access. The

This podcast considers the history of online courses in higher education and research into them, focusing on how well they serve a diverse student population. It considers how online learning developed, and how studies into the practices and effectiveness of online courses find inequality in academic outcomes and access. The podcast explores how research approaches bring to light these inequalities or fail to consider them. The future of online learning is also considered.

ContributorsWare, Rachel (Author) / Schmidt, Peter (Thesis director) / Nkrumah, Tara (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor, Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05
Description

Robots are often used in long-duration scenarios, such as on the surface of Mars,where they may need to adapt to environmental changes. Typically, robots have been built specifically for single tasks, such as moving boxes in a warehouse

Robots are often used in long-duration scenarios, such as on the surface of Mars,where they may need to adapt to environmental changes. Typically, robots have been built specifically for single tasks, such as moving boxes in a warehouse or surveying construction sites. However, there is a modern trend away from human hand-engineering and toward robot learning. To this end, the ideal robot is not engineered,but automatically designed for a specific task. This thesis focuses on robots which learn path-planning algorithms for specific environments. Learning is accomplished via genetic programming. Path-planners are represented as Python code, which is optimized via Pareto evolution. These planners are encouraged to explore curiously and efficiently. This research asks the questions: “How can robots exhibit life-long learning where they adapt to changing environments in a robust way?”, and “How can robots learn to be curious?”.

ContributorsSaldyt, Lucas P (Author) / Ben Amor, Heni (Thesis director) / Pavlic, Theodore (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor, Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05
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Description

This paper is centered on the use of generative adversarial networks (GANs) to convert or generate RGB images from grayscale ones. The primary goal is to create sensible and colorful versions of a set of grayscale images by training a discriminator to recognize failed or generated images and training a

This paper is centered on the use of generative adversarial networks (GANs) to convert or generate RGB images from grayscale ones. The primary goal is to create sensible and colorful versions of a set of grayscale images by training a discriminator to recognize failed or generated images and training a generator to attempt to satisfy the discriminator. The network design is described in further detail below; however there are several potential issues that arise including the averaging of a color for certain images such that small details in an image are not assigned unique colors leading to a neutral blend. We attempt to mitigate this issue as much as possible.

ContributorsLobo, Ian (Co-author) / Koleber, Keith (Co-author) / Markabawi, Jah (Co-author) / Masud, Abdullah (Co-author) / Yang, Yingzhen (Thesis director) / Wang, Yancheng (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor, Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05
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Description
Biological organisms are made up of cells containing numerous interconnected biochemical processes. Diseases occur when normal functionality of these processes is disrupted, manifesting as disease symptoms. Thus, understanding these biochemical processes and their interrelationships is a primary task in biomedical research and a prerequisite for activities including diagnosing diseases and

Biological organisms are made up of cells containing numerous interconnected biochemical processes. Diseases occur when normal functionality of these processes is disrupted, manifesting as disease symptoms. Thus, understanding these biochemical processes and their interrelationships is a primary task in biomedical research and a prerequisite for activities including diagnosing diseases and drug development. Scientists studying these interconnected processes have identified various pathways involved in drug metabolism, diseases, and signal transduction, etc. High-throughput technologies, new algorithms and speed improvements over the last decade have resulted in deeper knowledge about biological systems, leading to more refined pathways. Such pathways tend to be large and complex, making it difficult for an individual to remember all aspects. Thus, computer models are needed to represent and analyze them. The refinement activity itself requires reasoning with a pathway model by posing queries against it and comparing the results against the real biological system. Many existing models focus on structural and/or factoid questions, relying on surface-level information. These are generally not the kind of questions that a biologist may ask someone to test their understanding of biological processes. Examples of questions requiring understanding of biological processes are available in introductory college level biology text books. Such questions serve as a model for the question answering system developed in this thesis. Thus, the main goal of this thesis is to develop a system that allows the encoding of knowledge about biological pathways to answer questions demonstrating understanding of the pathways. To that end, a language is developed to specify a pathway and pose questions against it. Some existing tools are modified and used to accomplish this goal. The utility of the framework developed in this thesis is illustrated with applications in the biological domain. Finally, the question answering system is used in real world applications by extracting pathway knowledge from text and answering questions related to drug development.
ContributorsAnwar, Saadat (Author) / Baral, Chitta (Thesis advisor) / Inoue, Katsumi (Committee member) / Chen, Yi (Committee member) / Davulcu, Hasan (Committee member) / Lee, Joohyung (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
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Description
The objective of this research is to determine an approach for automating the learning of the initial lexicon used in translating natural language sentences to their formal knowledge representations based on lambda-calculus expressions. Using a universal knowledge representation and its associated parser, this research attempts to use word alignment techniques

The objective of this research is to determine an approach for automating the learning of the initial lexicon used in translating natural language sentences to their formal knowledge representations based on lambda-calculus expressions. Using a universal knowledge representation and its associated parser, this research attempts to use word alignment techniques to align natural language sentences to the linearized parses of their associated knowledge representations in order to learn the meanings of individual words. The work includes proposing and analyzing an approach that can be used to learn some of the initial lexicon.
ContributorsBaldwin, Amy Lynn (Author) / Baral, Chitta (Thesis director) / Vo, Nguyen (Committee member) / Industrial, Systems (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor)
Created2015-05
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Description
This paper presents work that was done to create a system capable of facial expression recognition (FER) using deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and test multiple configurations and methods. CNNs are able to extract powerful information about an image using multiple layers of generic feature detectors. The extracted information can

This paper presents work that was done to create a system capable of facial expression recognition (FER) using deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and test multiple configurations and methods. CNNs are able to extract powerful information about an image using multiple layers of generic feature detectors. The extracted information can be used to understand the image better through recognizing different features present within the image. Deep CNNs, however, require training sets that can be larger than a million pictures in order to fine tune their feature detectors. For the case of facial expression datasets, none of these large datasets are available. Due to this limited availability of data required to train a new CNN, the idea of using naïve domain adaptation is explored. Instead of creating and using a new CNN trained specifically to extract features related to FER, a previously trained CNN originally trained for another computer vision task is used. Work for this research involved creating a system that can run a CNN, can extract feature vectors from the CNN, and can classify these extracted features. Once this system was built, different aspects of the system were tested and tuned. These aspects include the pre-trained CNN that was used, the layer from which features were extracted, normalization used on input images, and training data for the classifier. Once properly tuned, the created system returned results more accurate than previous attempts on facial expression recognition. Based on these positive results, naïve domain adaptation is shown to successfully leverage advantages of deep CNNs for facial expression recognition.
ContributorsEusebio, Jose Miguel Ang (Author) / Panchanathan, Sethuraman (Thesis director) / McDaniel, Troy (Committee member) / Venkateswara, Hemanth (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
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Description
Food safety is vital to the well-being of society; therefore, it is important to inspect food products to ensure minimal health risks are present. A crucial phase of food inspection is the identification of foreign particles found in the sample, such as insect body parts. The presence of certain species

Food safety is vital to the well-being of society; therefore, it is important to inspect food products to ensure minimal health risks are present. A crucial phase of food inspection is the identification of foreign particles found in the sample, such as insect body parts. The presence of certain species of insects, especially storage beetles, is a reliable indicator of possible contamination during storage and food processing. However, the current approach to identifying species is visual examination by human analysts; this method is rather subjective and time-consuming. Furthermore, confident identification requires extensive experience and training. To aid this inspection process, we have developed in collaboration with FDA analysts some image analysis-based machine intelligence to achieve species identification with up to 90% accuracy. The current project is a continuation of this development effort. Here we present an image analysis environment that allows practical deployment of the machine intelligence on computers with limited processing power and memory. Using this environment, users can prepare input sets by selecting images for analysis, and inspect these images through the integrated pan, zoom, and color analysis capabilities. After species analysis, the results panel allows the user to compare the analyzed images with referenced images of the proposed species. Further additions to this environment should include a log of previously analyzed images, and eventually extend to interaction with a central cloud repository of images through a web-based interface. Additional issues to address include standardization of image layout, extension of the feature-extraction algorithm, and utilizing image classification to build a central search engine for widespread usage.
ContributorsMartin, Daniel Luis (Author) / Ahn, Gail-Joon (Thesis director) / Doupé, Adam (Committee member) / Xu, Joshua (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
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Description
Instead of providing the illusion of agency to a reader via a tree or network of prewritten, branching paths, an interactive story should treat the reader as a player who has meaningful influence on the story. An interactive story can accomplish this task by giving the player a large toolset

Instead of providing the illusion of agency to a reader via a tree or network of prewritten, branching paths, an interactive story should treat the reader as a player who has meaningful influence on the story. An interactive story can accomplish this task by giving the player a large toolset for expression in the plot. LudoNarrare, an engine for interactive storytelling, puts "verbs" in this toolset. Verbs are contextual choices of action given to agents in a story that result in narrative events. This paper begins with an analysis and statement of the problem of creating interactive stories. From here, various attempts to solve this problem, ranging from commercial video games to academic research, are given a brief overview to give context to what paths have already been forged. With the background set, the model of interactive storytelling that the research behind LudoNarrare led to is exposed in detail. The section exploring this model contains explanations on what storyworlds are and how they are structured. It then discusses the way these storyworlds can be brought to life. The exposition on the LudoNarrare model finally wraps up by considering the way storyworlds created around this model can be designed. After the concepts of LudoNarrare are explored in the abstract, the story of the engine's research and development and the specifics of its software implementation are given. With LudoNarrare fully explained, the focus then turns to plans for evaluation of its quality in terms of entertainment value, robustness, and performance. To conclude, possible further paths of investigation for LudoNarrare and its model of interactive storytelling are proposed to inspire those who wish to continue in the spirit of the project.
ContributorsStark, Joshua Matthew (Author) / VanLehn, Kurt (Thesis director) / Wetzel, Jon (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2015-12
Description

This podcast discusses three nonconformists from throughout history and analyzes what made them successful, as well as how we can apply lessons learned from them to our own lives.

ContributorsSmalley, Zachary (Author) / Schmidt, Peter (Thesis director) / Foy, Joseph (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05
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Description

Health and Wealthness is a podcast where your hosts, Emily Weigel and Hanaa Khan discuss pressing and trending topics about health and wealth that everyone should know about. Our first four episodes focus on the opioid crisis. Both the science and healthcare sides. We then go on to talk about

Health and Wealthness is a podcast where your hosts, Emily Weigel and Hanaa Khan discuss pressing and trending topics about health and wealth that everyone should know about. Our first four episodes focus on the opioid crisis. Both the science and healthcare sides. We then go on to talk about burnout and mental health in a conversational episode.

ContributorsKhan, Hanaa S (Co-author) / Weigel, Emily (Co-author) / Olive, Foster (Thesis director) / Bonfiglio, Thomas (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05