Innovation Skills for the Self-Transformation of Underrepresented Engineering Students

Underrepresented engineering students typically face multiple challenges, for example, the lack of role models and familiar guidance during their studies. Successful students have specific characteristics (i.e. skills) that allow them to thrive. In this paper the authors explore the necessary skills that may allow students to self-transform and innovate into successful engineering students.Cockrell School of Engineerin

Plant Algae Ecosystems

This poster for the Natural Sciences Poster Session at Parkland College reports on the student\u27s experiment with algae found in a terrarium and the different effects that light can have on it

Wittgenstein and the Concept of Learning in Artificial Intelligence

The object of this investigation is to analyze the application of the concept of learning to machines and software as displayed in Artificial Intelligence (AI). This field has been approached from different philosophical perspectives. AI, however, has not yet received enough attention from a Wittgensteinian angle, a gap this thesis aims to help bridge. First we describe the use of the concept of learning in natural language by means of a familiar and of a less familiar case of human learning. This is done to give us a general idea about the meaning of this concept. By building two basic machine learning algorithms, we introduce one of the technical meanings of learning in computer science, i.e. the use of this concept in machine learning. Based on a study and comparison between both uses, the one in ordinary language and the one in machine learning, we conclude that both usages exemplify one and the same family resemblance concept of learning. We apply this insight further in a critical discussion of two specific philosophical positions about the applicability of psychological or mental concepts to software and hardware, especially in AI. One of the contributions of this investigation is that the use of mental concepts concerning machines does not imply the ascription of a mind.Philosophy - Master's ThesisMAHF-FILOFILO35

The Structural Information Filtered Features Potential for Machine Learning calculations of energies and forces of atomic systems.

In the last ten years, machine learning potentials have been successfully applied to the study of crystals, and molecules. However, more complex materials like clusters, macro-molecules, and glasses are out reach of current methods. The input of any machine learning system is a tensor of features (the most universal type are rank 1 tensors or vectors of features), the quality of any machine learning system is directly related to how well the feature space describes the original physical system. So far, the feature engineering process for machine learning potentials can not describe complex material. The current methods are highly inefficient transforming the information of the physical structure into the feature vector, the losses of information constraint the accuracy of machine learning potentials. This work introduces the Structural Information Filtered Features (SIFF), the SIFF is a feature engineering method, based on maximizing the transfer of information from the physical structure to the feature space. The SIFF are thought as a universal feature, universal in two senses. First is able to describe complex systems, as well as molecules, and crystals. Second it can be easily used as input for any machine learning algorithm. When applied to crystals the SIFF does as well as the best feature engineering methods for this materials (SOAP, CGNN). When applied to molecules the SIFF performs better than the Bag of Bonds method, especially when the number of structures is reduced to less than 10000, in this conditions the SIFF shows a superior performance, due to its superior information transference. Whit respect to complex system, the SIFF is compared to the Behler and Parrinello approach, here the SIFF method reach an error of 0.083 eV/structure in 18110 second, in contrast the Behler and Parrinello method achieved and error of 0.109 eV/structure in 61969 seconds. The main disadvantage of the SIFF method is that the conventionality of the feature space grows exponentially with the number of chemical species in the system

Ecology of Mosquito Vectors in Relation to Avian Malaria in Zoological Gardens in the United Kingdom

Avian malaria is one of the most serious diseases in penguins under human care and could become a severe threat to the conservation of vulnerable wild populations. It is caused by the Haemosporidia parasites of the genus Plasmodium and needs a mosquito vector for its transmission. We captured mosquitoes during two years in Chester Zoo (Cheshire) and one year in Flamingo Land (Yorkshire); both zoos house Humboldt penguins (Spheniscus humboldti). The mosquito temporal and spatial abundance across the seasons and sites were analysed. It was found that Culex pipiens, the principal avian malaria vector in Europe, was the most abundant species. There was a peak in the mosquito abundance during the summer as expected, but it was at different months between sites and years. The abundance of mosquitoes also varied among sampling areas; one area in Chester Zoo captured a greater proportion of mosquitoes than the others in both years, and in Flamingo Land, we also found an area with consistent high catches. Blood-fed mosquitoes were captured and analysed to identify the host on which they had fed. Different proportions of blood-fed mosquitoes were captured by areas and months; more were collected during the summer and in certain areas that not in all cases were related to a high abundance of un-fed mosquitoes. Most of these mosquitoes were Culex pipiens and Culiseta annulata; it was confirmed that the first one prefers to feed on birds and the second one on non-human mammals. However, many Culex pipiens fed on humans, which alert us about the possible nuisance for visitors and the potential transmission risk of zoonotic diseases. A partially identified Culicinae mosquito, likely to be Culex pipiens, and an Anopheles maculipennis s. l. fed on penguins; so, they could be involved in avian malaria transmission. It was found that mosquitoes travel variable distance after feeding and therefore, the control measures against mosquitoes should cover more than the areas of immediate concern. The environmental variables were analysed to understand the drivers of the diverse mosquito captures. The temperature was the most important variable related to mosquito abundance, and the dense vegetation, proximity to mosquito oviposition sites and closeness to animal exhibits were also significant. Therefore, the temperature could guide actions for mosquito control and avian malaria prevention and avoiding those surrounding features near the penguin exhibits could prevent high densities of mosquitoes. Many aspects of avian malaria epidemiology are uncertain so, through an online survey, the knowledge of the staff in zoos and wildlife parks about the disease was gathered. It was found that avian malaria had affected penguins in more than half of the answering institutions, involving mainly Humboldt and African penguins (Spheniscus demersus) with high lethality rates; therefore, efforts on preventive actions are encouraged. Avian malaria parasites were found in Culex pipiens mosquitoes and their saliva, wild birds and penguins, suggesting that the transmission process happens locally. Mosquito populations are dynamic, and the biosurveillance of their populations is needed to better understand their role as disease vectors and to implement effective control measures at the right time, assisting in this way the prevention of avian malaria in captive penguins

Cryptanalysis of the RSA-CEGD protocol

Recently, Nenadi\'c et al. (2004) proposed the RSA-CEGD protocol for certified delivery of e-goods. This is a relatively complex scheme based on verifiable and recoverable encrypted signatures (VRES) to guarantee properties such as strong fairness and non-repudiation, among others. In this paper, we demonstrate how this protocol cannot achieve fairness by presenting a severe attack and also pointing out some other weaknesses.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figur