Graduate Research Achievement Day Posters

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  Exploring the Feasibility of Head‐Tracking Data for Cybersickness Prediction in Virtual Reality

  Ananth Ramaseri-Chandra, Hassan Reza, and Prasad Pothana

  Traditional methods for predicting cybersickness rely on self-reported questionnaires or physiological signals from specialized sensors, which have their limitations. This study explores the potential of using real-time, easily acquired head-tracking data (HTD) from standard VR headsets as a scalable alternative for estimating cybersickness. Twenty-eight participants engaged in a VR session using an Oculus Quest 2 headset while their HTD was recorded. Kinematic metrics such as linear and angular velocity, acceleration, and jerk were computed from the HTD, including positional and angular parameters. Participants’ cybersickness levels were assessed using the Virtual Reality Sickness Questionnaire. The Gradient Boosting model demonstrated superior performance, accurately predicting cybersickness scores. Among these, the Gradient Boosting model demonstrated superior performance, accurately predicting cybersickness scores with prediction normalized differences of less than 4.8% on unseen data. This approach offers a scalable and practical solution for real-time cybersickness prediction in VR applications and compliments other techniques that rely on physiological sensors, hardware, or user profiles.

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  Arsenate Removal from North Dakota Well Water: Titanium with MOF (UiO-66) Impregnated Carbon Blocks

  Mousa Almousa, Yeo Howe Lim, Olusegun Stanley Tomomewo, and Mahmut Ersan

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  Cybersecurity Challenges and Solutions in IoT-based Precision Farming System

  Shree Ram Abayankar Balaji, Sriram Prabhakara Rao, and Prakash Ranganathan

  Adaptation of technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), and blockchain in agriculture has revolutionized farming activities, offering several benefits such as increased efficiency, reduced costs, and improved crop yields. However, these advancements also have their fair share of security challenges, opening space for vulnerabilities that adversaries can exploit and compromising agricultural IoT networks, autonomous farming equipment, and vehicles. This may lead to compromised services and devices disrupting farming activities, causing losses to the farmers. This paper captures the state-of-the-art review of IoT-based precision farming systems, including the technological applications, cybersecurity challenges, and mitigation measures to secure the agricultural environment.

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  UAS-Guided Electric and Magnetic Field Data Distribution Across Transmission Lines

  Tanzim Jim Hassan, Jamison Jangula, Akshay Ram Ramchandra, Prashanth Rajagopalan, Prakash Ranganathan, and Ryan Adams

  This poster discusses an electric (E) and magnetic (H) field data gathering process across a series of High Voltage (HV) transmission lines. Data was collected from one DC and four AC Transmission (Tx) lines. Multiple DJI UAV (M2EA, M30, and M300) were used to collect E/H field measurements with an onboard set-up. These measurements included parameters such as E field in V/m, H field in mG, Battery voltage in V, Battery current A, Battery percentage in %, Battery Temperature in F, and latitude and longitude. The preliminary findings indicate that distance and sensor orientation affect E/H field distribution.

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  Low-Temperature Laboratory Instrumentation for Investigating Ice Crystal Aggregate Formation in the Atmosphere

  Victor Ojo, Imteaz Osmani, and Hallie Boyer Chelmo

  This study addresses the challenge of achieving controlled low temperatures to investigate and provide information on the precise conditions that promote homogenous (≤-38oC) and heterogenous (≥ -38oC) atmospheric ice crystal formation and aggregation, which disrupt aerospace industries and military activity. I present a preliminary design of a novel temperature control setup for generating levitated ice crystal aggregates within a Dual Balance Electrodynamic Trap (DBET). This preliminary design is called the replica low temperature electrodynamic balance (R-LTDBET). The design integrates chilled-coolant-conveying copper tubes encircling the hollow-square-shaped DBET’s external wall to precisely control its inner chamber temperature while incorporating real-time temperature sensing, control, and data analysis as the levitated microdroplets are frozen and aggregated within the R-LTDBET. Currently capable of cooling the R-LTDBET’s inner chamber to -9.0oC, this setup will be impl emented on the actual LT-DBET design for further testing and to generate experimental data that can provide valuable insight to aerospace engineers and atmospheric scientists designing hypersonic vehicles and developing precise cloud models which are poorly constrained in global atmospheric models. Future works aim to achieve lower temperatures, which enhances experimental insights into ice crystal structure and sticking potential.

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  Experimental Investigation of Levitated Microdroplets for Understanding Chain Crystal Aggregates Observed in Atmospheric Clouds

  Imteaz Osmani, Victor Ojo, and Hallie Boyer Chelmo

  This study talks about atmospheric ice crystal aggregation in the atmosphere and the process of generating ice crystal aggregate in a research lab using a dual-balance electrodynamic trap.

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  Understanding Nanog’s role in cell differentiation

  Oluwatobiloba Aminu, Junguk Hur, and Bony de Kumar

  Background: Pluripotency and differentiation are crucial cellular states for normal development and disease control. They are regulated by intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Master transcription factors, such as Nanog, Sox2, and Oct4, play a critical role in pluripotency, but their function in differentiation is not entirely clear. This study aims to investigate Nanog's role in differentiation using mouse embryonic stem cells as a model.

  Methods: An integrative analysis was carried out using gene expression and chromatin immunoprecipitation sequencing data to determine the impact of Nanog binding on downstream gene expression. Target genes were identified as those whose expression was altered by Nanog binding, and a GSEA analysis was performed to identify shared biological processes. Additionally, Homer was utilized to conduct motif enrichment analysis at each time point.

  Results: Within 24 hours of retinoic acid treatment, Nanog is recruited to newly identified sites. These sites are primarily located in intergenic regions and the genes associated with them are mainly involved in development and differentiation, specifically mesodermal and mesenchymal development. Furthermore, these recently identified sites possess enriched motifs, such as LHX1 and FLI1, which play a significant role in mesodermal differentiation, in addition to the known pluripotent and developmental transcription factors.

  Conclusion: This study provides insight into the complex regulation of pluripotency and differentiation and highlights the potential role of Nanog in regulating mesodermal differentiation. It also suggests that Nanog may prefer mesodermal differentiation through indirect recruitment by factors involved in mesodermal transcription factors. Further research is needed to understand the exact mechanism of Nanog's involvement in differentiation.

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  Effect of tDCS Stimulation on Conner’s CPT Performance of Young Adult

  Shakila Parvin Bristy

  Conner’s CPT measures attention related performances in adult and children using EEG recordings. This study showed changes in cognitive performance induced by transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). The objective of this study is to prove, if tDCS stimulation compared to sham can improve Conner’s CPT performance by increasing excitability of the visual cortex through anodal stimulation of the occipital lobe. After analyzing the result, we found lower alpha, beta and gamma mean values in sham session and a decrease in theta activity during actual tDCS stimulation session resulting in greater excitability in the visual cortex and improvement of attentional performance. Besides there were no changes in latency data between the two sessions based on stimulation type from baseline EEG to sham, and from sham to tDCS stimulation. By utilizing the result, we will be able to apply tDCS stimulation for children with ADHD to improve their performance.

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  Characterization and treatment of Bakken oilfield produced water

  Mousa Almousa

  Produced water in the unconventional U.S. Bakken oilfield has become a significant concern since oil and gas production growth has been substantial, and operating costs are increasing. Reusing this considerable amount of produced water has become necessary since the treated water can be used for potable supplies, irrigation, deep well injection, maintenance, and fracking, which improves profits and mitigates groundwater pollution. The total dissolved solids (TDS) in the ND Bakken formation are greater than 300g/l, which is much higher than the concentration of salt in seawater; therefore, it is reasonable to propose selective precipitation to treat the salts found in this formation's produced water. Extracted salts are effective coagulants for removing various contaminants from wastewater. We will extract Mg(OH)2, CaCO3, and CaSO4 from the flowback water and water produced in the Bakken oilfield using lime and soda ash at different dosages and pH values during this project. The extracted Mg(OH)2 and CaCO3 will be used for wastewater treatment and establish their efficiency in removing COD and the nutrients phosphorous and nitrogen from ND wastewater.

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  Investigating Liquid Droplets and Ice Crystals in the Atmosphere and Their Potential Damage to Hypersonic Vehicles

  Imteaz Osmani and Hallie Boyer Chelmo

  Ice crystal aggregates found in stratospheric clouds are detrimental to hypersonic flights. This poster demonstrates a method for generating ice crystals in the lab without physical touch using electrodynamic balance and shares a plan in upcoming years for investigating ice crystal interaction with shock waves.

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  How Does Faculty Members Emotions Affect their Research Productivity? An International Faculty Perspective

  Muhammad Salahuddin and Robert Stupnisky

  Faculty success is complex and depends on multiple factors (e.g., demographic characteristics, emotion for research, motivation); particularly complicated are the factors affecting research productivity. Emotions have multi-faceted psychological dimensions that affect international faculty (46% of all US faculty) research success. This study wants to evaluate international faculty research productivity through the lens of Perkun's emotion theory. 759 faculty were selected randomly from ten higher education institutions in the USA. This study used multi-item measurement scales and examined research questions through t-tests, ANOVA, correlation, and path analysis. There were significant differences found among the faculty demographic characteristics and research success. International faculty had higher positive emotions (e.g., pride, enjoyment, satisfaction) while the domestic faculty had higher negative emotions (e.g., anxiety, frustration, disappointment). The control over research and the value of research positively predicted emotions for research. International faculty had more success in research (e.g., securing grants, and publications) than domestic faculty

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  Indicators of Faculty Research Proficiency: A Systematic Literature Review

  Muhammad Salahuddin

  Global formalization of knowledge depends largely upon the research productivity of university faculty; however, the skills that makeup a competent researcher are undefined. The current study aimed to identify the components of faculty research proficiency in the social science domain.

  The research questions are:

  (1) What research competencies are essential for a faculty member?

  (2) How has faculty research proficiency been measured in the past?