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  Introduction to Scriptures Requires an Introduction to Math

  Cathrine Erbacher

  Since the Bible was codified there has been much study conducted to the mysteries of the Scriptures through the lens of mathematics. Many mystics, philosophers, visionaries and mathematicians have attempted to “decode” presumed “inner secrets.” Just search using the terms “Math and Bible” and you can find a multitude of references to hidden mysteries and meanings, prophecies and revelations based on complicated mathematical formulae and algorithms. But what I would like to explore is the importance of math in understanding the Scriptures, not by reading what might be hidden, secretly imbedded, deep between the lines, but the lines themselves, just as they are written; and believe it or not that requires math. I would argue that the type of math required to understand the scriptures is the fundamentals of numeration and counting, addition and subtraction, multiplication and division. When math is part of a culture, the language that develops incorporates terms such as: in addition to, without, twice or thrice as many, half as much, more than, equally, a ton of, lighter than, heaviest, or tiniest. This creates an understanding, at least intuitively, of what is happening to amounts, volumes or weights of things. These expressions creep into our common usage because our society has a foundational understanding of mathematical concepts. As such, many of the concepts of mathematics are learned before they are formally taught allowing for a greater understanding of these terms used in the Bible. But what if a culture has no written language, or concept of math? Identifying these particular circumstances and addressing them is of paramount importance to the sharing of Scripture, and the focus of this poster.

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  IoT-based Smart Home Automation System

  Avinash Bhupathiraju

  This project proposes an Internet of Things (IoT)-based smart home automation system that aims to improve the efficiency and convenience of daily household tasks. The system will consist of various interconnected smart devices such as sensors, actuators, and controllers that will be able to communicate with each other and with the user's mobile device through a wireless network.The proposed system will enable the user to remotely monitor and control various aspects of their home, including lighting, temperature, security, and appliances, from their smartphone or tablet. The system will also be equipped with a voice control feature that allows the user to control their devices using voice commands.The project will use various IoT technologies such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Zigbee to develop a reliable and secure communication network between the devices. The system will also incorporate machine learning algorithms to provide predictive and personalized services based on the user's behavior and preferences.The proposed IoT-based smart home automation system has the potential to significantly improve the quality of life of the users by reducing their energy consumption, enhancing their safety and security, and providing a more convenient and comfortable living environment.

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  IOT Sunrise Sensory Morning Alarm System

  Miles Lockrem

  This project aims to create an automated morning routine that stimulates multiple senses for a more natural and consistent waking. The project will connect to weather tracking applications, and use light sensors, and temperature sensors to simulate nature queues that encourage the user to subconsciously wake up progressively. Some of these nature queues are simulating a sunrise, ambient noise, and temperature control.

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  IoT Thermostat Project

  Ivan Mardovin

  Build a thermostat setup that gets data and shows how your environment has changed throughout the day. The data will be represented in multiple ways and alerts if a drastic change in variables will be shown to the end user. My goal is to understand how my house tries to maintain a temperature with the outside changing throughout the day as our house has very drastic temperature changes.

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  Is there a Connection between Increased Stress Levels among College-Aged Students and Obesity?

  Mara Kapes, Amelia Deerwester, Connor Sweeney, Elizabeth Lovdal, Megan Brown

  As the national rates of obesity continue to increase in all age groups, the prevalence of obesity in college students is especially concerning. The goal of this research project was to better understand the connection between college stress levels and the resulting increased rates of obesity.

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  Is There a Relationship between Food Security and Academic Performance in College Students?

  Nicholas Emling, Andrew Daly, Samuel Martine, Chloe Wilson

  Food insecurity is a term that analyzes the ability for people to be able to financially support their nutritional needs. Due to the financial responsibilities placed on college students, many struggle to reach a stable level of food security, and thus have trouble meeting their nutritional needs. Proper nutrition has been shown to have a positive effect on cognitive performance. Because of this, we decided to analyze the effect of food security on academic performance in college students. By sending out the U.S. Household Food Security Survey and a question on GPA to University of Dayton students, we looked to correlate the two variables to see if there was a relationship.

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  Is urban farming the bee's knees? A socio-ecological study on the effect of pollinator recruitment methods on pollinator communities in urban agriculture

  Samantha Urquidez

  Background/Questions/Methods:Pollinators are essential to agriculture and with the increase in urban farming, there is great concern regarding insect pollinators in urban spaces. While there has been extensive literature looking at bee abundance and biodiversity in urban environments, there has been little research studying the efficacy of currently utilized pollinator recruitment practices in urban agricultural systems. In Dayton, Ohio, and the surrounding area 15 urban agricultural sites will be sampled for insect pollinator activity utilizing timed observations, pan traps, and passive netting. In addition to traditional methods of looking at pollinator activity, an important component of this research includes a sociological study that looks at the farmers themselves and how their efforts may be affecting the pollinator activity observed on their agricultural plots. To examine this relationship, we conducted an electronic survey and one-on-one interviews with each of the farmers in addition to our biological sampling. Results:Our results suggest that the most effective pollinator recruitment methods include ones where resources are stable and pollinators are able to actively rely on resources such as food, water, or shelter at these locations. The pollinator activity level seemed to depend not only on the pollinator recruitment methods utilized but also on the surrounding area with water being the resource that attracts the most pollinator activity. When choosing recruitment methods, farmers who are interested in insect pollinator behavior and put effort into attracting them to their property use science-based methods in addition to methods promoted by anecdotal evidence. These farmers tend to see higher pollinator activity than farmers who are less interested in insect pollinators and put in little effort to attract pollinators utilizing methods that are less effective. By implementing recruitment methods that are effective, insect pollinator activity can be promoted in an urban agricultural setting.

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  i-TRACE RNA interference-based reporter system to distinguish spatiotemporal gene expression in real time versus lineage cells in Drosophila

  Erin Mcgraw

  In all cells, dynamic gene expression along the spatiotemporal axis proves to be vital in any organism’s development. These changes are responsible for cellular responses to stimuli as well as execution of sequential developmental programs. This execution is highly regulated and highly specific. In the development of the Drosophila eye, multiple genes are expressed at various times in order to regulate target genes. The interest of this project is to is to analyze the exact positions of this dynamic expression of certain genes involved in the fruit fly’s eye development. The i- TRACE (RNAi Technique for Real- time And Clonal Expression) system is being used to observe the small yet active changes in expression patterns. The Gal4/UAS, FLP/FRT, RNAi and fluorescent reporters are used in combination with the i-TRACE system to assess gene expression. Real time expression that is Gal4 mediated is observed in the presence of a red fluorescent protein known as RFP. Similarly, any lineage cells are marked by the presence of green fluorescent protein, or GFP, which functions independently of Gal4. Finally, GFP-RNAi expression, which is Gal4 mediated, exists in cells that have either currently or recently expressed the gene. Because of this, observations in minute changes in expression are able to be observed as marked by a loss of GFP. Here, we present the expression data of some of the genes that play an important role during Drosophila eye development.

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  Just War Tradition: Non-Combatant Immunity

  Jinyu Hu, Jack Gorman

  What is just war tradition, in Catholic thought? This poster will introduce the tradition and raise issues about its role and value in our current context.

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  Kinematic Synthesis in the Design of Continuum Robots

  Yucheng Li

  Continuum robots represent a new type of flexible and elastic robot that offers a range of advantages over their rigid-bodied counterparts. Their ability to bend, twist, and stretch similarly to biological organisms makes them ideal for navigating complex and confined environments, adapting to changing shapes and surfaces, and interacting with delicate objects without causing damage. With a diverse range of potential applications, including medical procedures and surgeries, as well as industrial inspection and maintenance, continuum robots are a fascinating area of research and development in robotics. However, the additional complexity introduced by continuum robots has led to a new set of synthesis challenges, specifically regarding their kinematics. Solving the inverse kinematics problem is crucial for enabling precise control and manipulation of these robots, allowing them to achieve the desired location and orientation of the gripper at the end of the robot. To address these challenges, this study seeks to develop advanced models and programming techniques for continuum robots that are capable of matching the near-term designs being considered. Building on the prior research conducted by DIMLab, the research aims to gain a comprehensive understanding of the kinematics of continuum robots, allowing them to be applied in a variety of contexts with greater accuracy and precision.

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  League Structure and Fan Culture in German and American 'Football'

  Logan Brown & Kaleb Geevarghese

  Part of a course project on intercultural communication, which can be expressed and studied in myriad ways. The students of CMM 316.01 investigated various forms of cultural expression by comparing and contrasting the ways a particular form is used by multiple cultural groups. Specifically, each group researched and presented about the ways food, music, festivals, rituals, dance, clothing, and other artifacts communicate cultural identity in at least two different cultures.

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  Lean Theorem Prover: The Lean, Mean, Math-Proving Machine

  Ethan Shade, Sarah Herr, Kailey Peppard, Joseph Kopp

  This is an exploratory project for MTH 342 - Set Theory. Lean Theorem Prover is a computer programming language that allows for the formalization of mathematical proofs and the use of computer-readable logic. We explore the structure and syntax of Lean and show how this can be used to formalize mathematical proofs. We identify classic math proofs that have already been formalized within Lean, as well as discuss how this language can advance the writing of proofs. Finally, we investigate proofs that are still yet to be formalized, and the potential reasons why they have yet to achieve formalization in Lean.

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  Life as a Student Music Therapist

  Valeria Alvarado Berrios

  This presentation will tell the life story of Valeria N. Alvarado Berrios, as a music therapy student at the University of Dayton. The project will result in a hardcopy portfolio which will serve as the artifact. The content will include a compilation of songs and reflections, individually representing each semester of Valeria's undergraduate time as a music therapy major. This presentation will discuss her experience of the world through the lens of her identity, ethics, and leadership.

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  Literature Review on the Effect of Colors on Human Performance: The Integration of Mental Workload Analysis in Human Systems Design in Engineering Management

  Joshua Maltese, Esther Omotola Adeyemi

  Experts have researched how color perception influences the human brain's physiological response when focusing on cognitive tasks. Colors have been linked to a person's subjective alertness and ability to perform well on tasks requiring attention. This suggests that the colors a person is exposed to can impact their mental state and performance in cognitive activities. The color-in-context theory suggests that color meanings and effects are specific to the context, and the same color can have different and even opposite meanings in different contexts. The assessment of mental workload is an essential aspect of measuring workload, and one of the methods used is physiological measurement. The pupil of the eye is known to react to color changes, making it a valuable tool in workload measurement. However, using distinct colors rather than the conventional monochrome display offers a better advantage in monitoring pupil response to changes in color. By utilizing different colors, observing and measuring changes in the pupil's response becomes more accessible, making it a more effective means of monitoring mental workload. The primary aim of this literature review is to gain a comprehensive understanding of the current research on the impact of color on the operators' workload. Based on this understanding, an experiment will be developed using MATB simulation software to test how different colors affect operators' workload. The project aims to advance knowledge in engineering management by understanding the impact of color on operator workload. The results will help develop guidelines for selecting colors in systems and processes involving human operators, leading to optimized performance, reduced errors, and improved safety. Ultimately, the research aims to develop systems better suited to users' needs, improving overall performance and reducing accidents and errors.

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  "Loading Senior Portfolio…Scratch Disks are Full": The class of 2023 BFA in Graphic Design Senior Portfolio Show

  Olivia Marklay, Jason Sullivan, Brandon Hines, Maxwell Benson, Leah Ramspott, Daveauntae Cotton, Matthew Signa, Grace King, Ellise Westerheide, Colleen Glavic, Melina Durham, Claire Pawlecki, Mira Holifield, Jillian Whitson, Brooke Baker, Allen Morales, Peder Harvey, Elliott Gilardi, Macaira Pucci, Megan Emery, Grace Hughes, Ekua Bransah, Tashauniel Nelson, Reilly Waldoch, Yamilet Perez Aragon, Mia Gaskey, Cara Simmons

  This Capstone presentation includes all 26 seniors graduating with a degree in Graphic Design + one minor who will present the culmination of their work within and beyond the Department of Art and Design. Students will present their best work—research, creative process, and outcomes—in the context of a formal presentation of both classroom and real-world projects. Work will be shared simultaneously.

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  Lovecraft, The Uncanny, And The Sublime: A Psychoanalytic Critique Of H.P. Lovecrafts’ Fiction

  Jules Carr-Chellman

  This project will seek to analyze H.P. Lovecraft’s fiction through a critical psychoanalytical lens with particular attention paid to the uncanny and the sublime. H.P Lovecraft’s writing emphasizes horror in the face of a world that cannot be known. The characters’ encounters are thematically consistent in their incomprehensible grandeur: the sprawling metropolis, the arctic plane, the range of mountains – all literary elements that approach a concept of sublimity. In a traditional sense, the sublime is a mental state that swiftly alternates between feelings of pleasure anddispleasure in the face of something incomprehensibly large. Displeasure occurs in the realization that human reason cannot adequately describe or understand the infinite, and pleasure occurs in the ability of human reason to conceive of the infinite as a complete idea despite its transcendence beyond any human faculty of reason. In cadence with presentations of the sublime, Lovecraft imposes literary elements that create a distinct subconscious feeling of familiarity in the face of the utterly unfamiliar. It is precisely this feeling that characterizes Freud’s definition of the uncanny. Freud understands the uncanny as an ambiguous sense of familiarity coming from a person's subconsciously repressed ideas that underlays their perception of uncertainty. The fabric of reality in Lovecraft's fiction is a perpetual phantasmagoria of familiarity and oblivion that contextualizes sublime feelings of awe and grandeur. The direction of my inquiry in this project will be toward the nature of the uncanny as a context for sublime experiences and how the uncanny lends itself to a different interpretation of contemporary conceptions of reality as a product of the human need to build a home in the inhospitable: the human need to survive.

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  Male Coloration Preferences between Females of Sunburst and Rainbow Color Morphs

  William Ogburn, Lindsey Litterer, Noah Jones-Beyene, Destiny Cratsenberg

  Xiphophorus maculatus, or the platy, have several linebred color morphs that have wide ranges of color that differ greatly from the wild type coloration. Brighter coloration in male livebearers has shown to affect mate choice in females (Kodric-Brown & Nicoletto, 2001). The females are shown to be attracted to the males who have the more colorful pigmintaiton. This study examined differences in male mate selection between two female color morphs, the sunset wag morph and the rainbow morph. We hypothesized that males will choose to spend time on the side of the tank of their own morph. This was tested by creating a tank with 3 chambers. A male was placed in the middle and females were placed in the outside chambers. BORIS was used to observe and track the time the male spent on each side and the orientation of the male throughout the assay. Behaviors like what side of the tank the males were on, if there was any orientation on a specific female, and any possible aggression were all recorded into BORIS. We found that males have a preference towards the side of the tank containing the female of the same color morph. The results of this experiment helped to further our understanding of mate selection based on color while also producing potential insights on how human line breeding can alter mate selection.

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  Measuring Mycorrhizal Colonization: Estimating Percent Root Length Colonization on Quercus Macrocarpa Seedlings Following One Growing Season

  Madelaine Gregory

  Industrial agriculture is an increasingly prevalent practice within the Midwest and along with this practice lies the issue of abandonment of these sites. This study takes place at the Great Miami Mitigation bank which was previously used for agriculture for at least 80 years. The primary goal of this study is to investigate the influence of previously established seeding mixes and soil amendments on the microbial community. These treatments were applied with the intention of facilitating succession in a post agricultural field by deducing what treatments most effectively produced optimal conditions for microbes to establish symbiotic relationships with native seedlings. Treatments applied to the study site were incorporated to achieve an intermediate prairie with the long-term goal of establishing a mature oak-hickory forest. EMF colonization will be estimated to deduce what treatments support the establishment of the microbial community. Additionally, from these results, it can be determined if there is a correlation between intensity of colonization and factors such as plant community structure, enzyme activity and biomass of Q. Macrocarpa seedlings. A total of 480 Quercus macrocarpa seedlings were established at our study site in May of 2022. Following this, in Fall of 2022 80 Q. Macrocarpa seedlings were collected after one growing season for the purpose of assessing EMF colonization. While results are preliminary, thus far analysis has shown that percent root length colonization was not significantly different when looking at the seeding mix and soil amendments together and individually. Additionally, there was no difference in percent root length colonization and the biomass of the seedlings as a total unit and the biomass of the root system. Further analysis needs to be done to determine if there is any correlation between root colonization and the structure of the plant community as well as enzyme activity.

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  Media’s Role in a Democratic Society: A Systematic Review of Normative Role

  Zoe Hill, Nick Thompson

  Normative role in a democratic society is an evolving facet of the journalism profession that is rooted in the democratic and philosophic traditions of Western culture. Normative theory simply seeks to define the roles journalism plays in society while analyzing the complexities of the impact those roles have through the lens of philosophical traditions, political systems, and media systems. While seeking to update and expand upon the "Four Theories of the Press" laid out by Siebert et al. (1956), Christians et al. (2009) enunciated four roles of journalism to be scrutinized by these means: the monitorial role, the facilitative role, the radical role, and the collaborative role (p. 133). Analogous to the three branches of government, the four normative roles of journalism help identify and explain how media interacts with the government, audiences, and the society at large. As the landscape of the journalism profession changes over time with the advent of new technologies, government structures, societal values, political motives, and economic trends, the roles of journalism and how scholars analyze them too have shifted and propose new possibilities to answer the question, “what is and what should be the media’s role in a democratic society?” (Christians et al., 2009, p. vii).

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  Methods for Exploiting High Resolution Imagery for Deep Learning Based Diabetic Retinopathy Detection and Grading

  Adam Saunders

  Diabetic retinopathy is a disease that affects the eyes of people with diabetes, and it can cause blindness. To diagnose diabetic retinopathy, ophthalmologists image the back surface of the inside of the eye, a process referred to as fundus photography. Ophthalmologists must then diagnose and grade the severity of diabetic retinopathy by analyzing details in the image, which can be difficult and time-consuming. Alternatively, due to the availability of labeled datasets containing fundus images with diabetic retinopathy, AI methods like deep learning can provide automated detection and grading algorithms. These deep learning algorithms sometimes use images at a much lower resolution than is available from fundus photography. However, we show that the resolution of a image has a large effect on the accuracy of the algorithm. Here, we study several techniques to increase the accuracy of the algorithm by taking advantage of higher-resolution data, including increasing the network input size, introducing a region-of-interest channel, and using a non-uniform downsampling approach.

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  MinLoss-VAE: Min-Loss Parallel Variational Autoencoders with Categorical Latent Space

  Fangshi Zhou

  Recently variational autoencoders (VAE) have become one of the most popular generative models in deep learning. It can be applied to generate images, audio, text, and other data. We propose a novel parallel structure for Gumbel-Softmax VAEs, which combines m ≥ 1 parallel VAEs with different annealing mechanics for softmax temperature τ and adjusts τ at each training epoch based on the minimum loss from these VAEs. Our preliminary experiments demonstrate that our model with m > 1 (e.g., m = 5) outperforms the model with m = 1 in generative processes, adversarial robustness, and denoising.

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  MIS and OPS Senior Capstone Projects

  Krista Schlinger

  MIS and OPS Senior Capstone Projects include small teams of 3 or 4 senior students working weekly with a company/organization to solve a real business problem. These projects extend for the complete undergrad senior year including both Fall and Spring semesters. Students act as Project Cosultants and Managers to guide the project from inception until conclusion by delivering solutions and delivealbes to the client. Students produce project documentation and formal presentations at mulitiple stages of the project and conclude with proesentations to the supporting Client's Leadership Team.

  View a complete list of projects and presenters online.

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  Mitigation of JavaScript-Based Fingerprinting Attacks Reliant on Client Data Generation

  Nathan Joslin

  Although fingerprinting methods are currently used by fraud detection companies as a secondary form of identification, they can just as easily be used maliciously. By nature, fingerprinting reveals software and hardware information that malicious attackers may use to their advantage. Attackers with access to this sensitive information may target users running a software version known to have vulnerabilities, silently track a user’s activity across the web, or even reveal a user’s identity. Additionally, fingerprinting is silent and often done without the user knowing their fingerprint is being collected. As a result, it is nearly impossible for average users to opt out of or block fingerprinting attacks.In this thesis, we leverage the MyWebGuard browser extension developed by Phung et al. to enforce dynamic policies on web pages that engage in device fingerprinting. MyWebGuard implements an Inline Reference Monitor (IRM) to supervise the JavaScript operations carried out on web pages. Three types of JavaScript operations are monitored: method calls, object creation and access, and property access. When these operations are executed the IRM intercepts them, allowing for policy enforcement. As this policy enforcement mechanism monitors JavaScript operations, it is an excellent method to mitigate JavaScript-based fingerprinting. In this work, we will focus on monitoring dynamic fingerprinting methods that rely on generating unique data rather than collecting static attributes. As for the mitigation approach, we chose a randomization method rather than normalization or domain-based blocking. This “moving target” approach is intended to constantly change a given device’s fingerprint over time, making it increasingly difficult for malicious actors to track a device across the web. Further motivation behind this mitigation method is to limit major site breakage, a phenomenon common with current anti-fingerprinting technologies, while protecting user privacy.

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  Modeling the Benefits of Pandemic Interventions

  Nicholas Holden

  According to the CDC since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic the USA has had approximately 103.5 million Covid cases. To find the best way to control the disease, additional mathematical models are useful to predict what would happen in various situations. This project aims to analyze the outcomes of different interventions to determine the most effective strategies for responding to a pandemic. I used an SIR model to model how disease spreads through the population and looked at different intervention methods for controlling outbreaks. Some of these methods include, targeting vaccinations, mass quarantines, and contact tracing. I implemented simulations to keep track of important outcomes such as total infections and most infections on any single day. I examined the targeted vs. untargeted vaccine distribution strategies, the optimal timing for going into mass quarentine, and the impact of contact tracing. From these different methods we can see how to limit the spread or flatten the curve so people can live healthier lives.

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  Modeling the Distribution of Stock Returns

  Rachel Sebastian

  An important topic in finance is the question: What types of statistical models can characterize the distribution of stock returns? Stocks are partial shares of a company, and stock returns are a way to measure price changes and show the value of the company. While previous research considered the normal distribution, many articles have found this distribution does not accurately fit stock return data. In our study we investigate how well normal and alternative distributions fit stock return data from the S&P Index and Russell 2000. The alternative distributions explored were lognormal, Laplace, and Cauchy. Using quantile plots, alternative distributions, and measures of fit, we found that distributions other than the normal provide a better model for the indices tested. In addition, the best parameters for the alternative distributions vary depending on the measure of fit. Which distributions best characterize stock returns is an ongoing subject of study, but our findings suggest that non-normal distributions may provide a better model for the distribution of stock returns.