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Investigating the Ballistics IQ Triage
Full text linkBallistics IQ (BIQ) is one of several instruments used to assist forensic practitioners in making comparisons about cartridge cases along with indicating the possible number of firearms used on scene. BIQ came to fruition in 2019; however, there are very few published articles discussing its triage capabilities or performance at comparing cartridge cases. With that, this study focused on evaluating the performance of the BIQ Crime Scene Analysis (CSA) Triage Report by using three hundred (300) cartridge cases, ten (10) firearms, and six (6) brands of 9mm ammunition. Each firearm was shot thirty (30) times using five (5) shots each of six (6) ammunition brands. This study started off by conducting several tests on the metadata information that users enter when imaging cartridge cases. After evaluating the metadata effects, the CSA Triage algorithm was tested. A CSA Triage report was conducted for all three hundred (300) cartridge cases used throughout this study and the BIQ Triage concluded that all cartridge cases originated from seven (7) firearms; however, the ground truth was that there were ten (10) firearms. This output caused further analysis to take place which resulted in ten (10) additional CSA Triage reports being conducted. Each CSA Triage report contained thirty (30) cartridge cases from each firearm. Interpretation of these CSA Triage reports concluded that the BIQ Triage had difficulty with three (3) firearms (Ruger LC9, Ruger P89, and Springfield XD9) which resulted in another breakdown. Furthermore, it was concluded that the BIQ Triage had difficulty with cartridge cases of Remington and Winchester ammunition. These results indicate that forensic practitioners should use caution when using BIQ to analyze their cartridge cases as the algorithm had difficulty analyzing ten (10) commonly available firearms, as well as two (2) commonly available ammunition brands, meaning the triage algorithm may provide misleading information
DATA-DRIVEN CLUSTERING AND SUPERVISED LEARNING APPROACHES FOR DRILLING DYNAMICS FEATURES IDENTIFICATION IN DRILLING OPERATIONS
No full textAbstractDrilling operations in the oil and gas industry face significant challenges, including the failure of the Bottom Hole Assembly (BHA) and the wear of drilling bits, which lead to increased Non-Productive Time (NPT) and considerable costs. These challenges primarily arise from the harsh environments present in the rocks that the bit and the drill string encounter during the drilling process. To improve drilling efficiency and cost saving, a comprehensive understanding of drill bit dynamics and its governing parameters is key. Drilling vibrations are generated due to the contact between rock formations and the drill string. These are classified into three modes: axial, lateral, and torsional. This study presents an approach to classify and predict drilling vibrations through a combination of an experimental setup and machine-learning approaches modeling. To achieve this, an experimental setup was created to simulate the drilling operation, and rocks such as chalk, sandstone, and granite were drilled. The research focuses on key surface parameters that drillers can manipulate, such as revolutions per minute (RPM) and weight on bit (WOB), to mitigate downhole problems. A 2” PDC drill bit utilized in this project makes the research interesting because it allows for studying real bit behavior with actual bits and rocks. Complementing this, a gyro data sensor placed on the bit helps to record real data supported by DasyLab, a software that records information from a Data Acquisition System (DAQ), which is a group of sensors responsible for measuring and acquiring physical parameters that are later processed by the computer. The experimental setup consists of a mechanical drilling apparatus integrated with both the earlier-named gyro data sensor and DaisyLab software. This set allows for real-time monitoring and analysis of drill bit behavior under varying conditions. The test was conducted using different rock types and two ranges of parameters for RPM (above 166 and below 100) and BHA weights (69 kg and 54 kg). These values allow us to simulate drilling scenarios. Following the physical experiments, a machine-learning model has been developed to emulate and predict drill bit dynamics. This virtual representation enables exploration of a range of operational conditions and parameters beyond the limitations of physical testing. The possibility of using machine-learning facilitates the integration of historical drilling data, improving the model’s predictive capabilities. The results of this study provide valuable insights into the complex relationship between surface parameters, downhole tools, and wellbore conditions. For instance, optimizing drilling parameters, predicting and mitigating potential failures, reducing wear on drilling equipment, NPT, and costs, and enhancing overall drilling efficiency and safety
"I beg my president to care" : examining intersectionality and substance use in the LGBTQ+ community and the impact of drug policy on minoritized communities
No full textThis thesis examines the historical significance of drug policy in the United States from 1875 to 2022. Specifically, this thesis will explore drug policy’s impact on minoritized communities, particularly the LGBTQ+ community and its intersections with communities of color. At the center of this research, however, my goal is to discuss substance use in the LGBTQ+ community and explore why the rates of substance use remain so high today. This research is important and relevant because the LGBTQ+ community is largely ignored throughout historical narratives despite the deep historical trauma endured by this community. I will make relevant contributions to this discussion using analysis, oral history interviews, and the archives available to me through The Women’s Research and BGLTQ+ Student Center at the University of Central Oklahoma. This thesis will utilize a multidisciplinary approach of both History and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality studies methodologies and pedagogies. In addition, this thesis will utilize approaches from other academic fields such as Political Science, Law, and Sociology. Although several scholars across a variety of fields discuss the impacts of drug policy on minoritized communities and substance use in the LGBTQ+ community, very few historians present their voices in the parameters of these discussions. It is my goal to introduce these issues to the historical field and call attention towards reforming these policies. In this thesis, I argue that drug policy is indeed a tool of the government to control and police bodies that do not fit the status quo, specifically those within the LGBTQ+ community. Additionally, I will argue that the LGBTQ+ community has been ignored in historical narratives related to substance use and drug policy, leading to further demonization and isolation of this community
The Future Orientations and Well-being of Children Involved in the Child Welfare System
No full textThis dissertation focuses on the well-being and future orientations of youth involved in the child welfare system. To conduct this research, I draw on the life course framework to examine how interpersonal relationships, structural constraints, and individual agency pattern the relationship between child welfare involvement and multiple domains of child well-being. This analysis incorporates causal inference techniques in nationally representative data as well as a participatory method to emphasize the lived experience of local teens living in group homes. Chapter 2 uses propensity score matching to analyze the impact of kinship care on child well-being compared to non-relative foster care on emotional and behavioral well-being while accounting for unobserved differences inherent in child placement decisions. My co-authors and I find that behavioral differences affect the placement decision, not the placement type affecting the behavioral differences. Chapter 3 explores the relationship between experiencing a placement change and developing internalizing and externalizing behaviors. My co-authors and I find that placement disruptions did not significantly contribute to behavioral concerns in our sample, suggesting that other factors may have more salient effects, such as experiencing trauma and peer relationships. Chapter 4 examines how having a foreshortened future orientation mediates the relationship between self-esteem and expectations of two traditional milestones: graduating high school and getting a good job. I find that having a foreshortened orientation fully mediates the relationship between negative self-esteem and expecting to graduate high school but not expecting to get a good job. Chapter 5 then unpacks future orientations among teens living in Oklahoma group homes using the participatory method Photovoice. Findings from this chapter demonstrate the importance of sustained sibling relationships and the participants’ appreciation of good connections and influences in their lives. I conclude by discussing potential avenues and implications for research and programming
THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF JODIE BLACKSHAW, JENNIFER JOLLEY, AND ERIKA SVANOE TO THE WIND BAND REPERTOIRE—COMPOSITIONAL STYLE, ANALYSIS OF SELECTED WORKS, AND IMPACT AS UNDERREPRESENTED COMPOSERS
No full textThis document presents biographical sketches, outlines compositional styles, and analyzes a major work written for advanced ensembles by Jodie Blackshaw, Jennifer Jolley, and Erika Svanoe, highlighting their impact in the wind band as underrepresented contemporary composers. The principal focus of this research is to examine each composer and their contributions to the repertoire. A comprehensive biographical portrait is made of each to include formative experiences, educational backgrounds, career trajectories, personal beliefs, and philosophies. Through analysis of their music, this research provides a thorough examination of how each composer’s unique compositional influences manifest in their individual works. The second purpose of this study is to investigate the role of gender biases in music, with special attention given to how women composers have been viewed and treated throughout music’s history. A brief history of women in music is presented to contextualize each composer’s experience within a broader narrative of the marginalization of women in music. The final purpose of this document is to provide musicians, educators, and conductors with a resource for studying each composer's music. A detailed analytical guide—outlining form, harmony, melodic and rhythmic content, orchestration decisions of tone color and timbre, and stylistic choices—is provided for Jodie Blackshaw’s Soulström, Jennifer Jolley’s MARCH!, and Erika Svanoe’s Symphony in Blue and Gold. This work serves to amplify and promote the voices of each composer and to inspire a more inclusive, equitable, and representative future in music
From Bach to Bebop: Exploring the Saxophone in Three Concert Works by William Bolcom
No full textWilliam Bolcom (b. 1938) is an award-winning American composer, pianist, and arrangerwith a massive compositional catalog for solo instruments. A major figure in the revival of ragtime music in the 1970s, Bolcom has been awarded a Pulitzer Prize, a National Medal of Arts, and a Grammy award for his work. This document examines three of William Bolcom’s concert works for saxophone: Concert Suite, Concerto for Soprano Saxophone, and Concerto Grosso for Saxophone Quartet. Through an analysis of these compositions’ formal structure, harmony, rhythm, and techniques idiomatic to the saxophone, I identify and discuss Bolcom’s unique blend of traditional compositional techniques with stylistic elements of American popular genres such as blues, jazz, ragtime, and dance. This is done by examining Bolcom’s treatment of traditional forms such as the instrumental suite, classical solo concerto, and the Baroque concerto grosso and identifying the ways in which Bolcom honors tradition while also defying expectation using his unique compositional voice. By examining Bolcom’s works for saxophone and how they illustrate his overall compositional style, this study adds to the existing body of research on Bolcom’s works for piano, violin, and other solo instruments. A comprehensive biography that tracks Bolcom’s compositional and stylistic development is also provided. I conclude that Bolcom’s works for saxophone display a masterful fusion of classical and American music traditions that function as a tour of his eclectic compositional styles
ENLIGHTENMENT IN THE SHADOWS: CALIFORNIOS ON THE BORDERLANDS OF EXPERIENCE, 1697-1821
No full textThis dissertation focuses on two subjects. Firstly, I examine the development of the Californio identity under Spanish imperial rule in Baja and Alta California. This occurred through repeated encounters, conflicts, reversals, resistance and negotiation between Native Americans in California and Hispanic colonists, some born in Mexico, “creoles” and some in Europe, “peninsulares.” I argue that this identity was at its essence a borderland identity: specifically, California was not New Spain, and after the coming of the Spanish, it was no longer “Indian country” either. Both Native and Hispanic Californios contributed to the development of Californio identity. This identity was derived from the ambiguous and syncretic nature of the borderlands: when neither Hispanic nor Native Californios fully recognized their land as the ordered home of their society’s worldview. The tumult of frontier life created a borderlands society that informed all members’ identities.Secondly, I offer a method of interpreting life on the frontier and engaging in the conversation of borderlands historiography. What I term “the experiential borderlands” is an approach that emphasizes the individual routines and events unique to those residents of the borderlands society in question. While the attitudes, commands, funding, and social engineering attempts of the metropolitan authorities were critical to the geopolitical advance of empires, it was the individual members living on and fighting over the frontier that gave the borderlands their social character. When the Jesuits, Franciscans, soldiers and rancheros came to the Californias, they did so with the intention of saving souls, taming the wild, and converting the uncivilized. When they encountered the Native tribes and harsh realities of California, their designs were challenged, rebuked, or even thwarted. With their California entrada, the Spaniards conceived of a civilizing mission to create little Spaniards. Instead, their baptism by fire on the experiential borderlands made them Californios
ADDRESSING ANOMALY DETECTION CHALLENGES IN AI-ENABLED MOBILE AND SMART NETWORKS
No full textUbiquitous connectivity, powered by mobile networks and smart digital technologies, istransforming critical sectors such as public health, industrial automation, and smart cities. However, the increasing complexity and interdependence of these connected sys- tems present unprecedented challenges in maintaining performance, security, and reliabil- ity, particularly for mission-critical applications that demand ultra-reliable, low-latency communication. Traditional anomaly detection systems, which rely on reactive fault re- porting, are no longer sufficient, as they often identify issues only after service degradation has occurred. This dissertation addresses these limitations through four novel AI-driven anomaly de- tection frameworks that enable proactive, scalable, and context-aware intelligence by integrating emerging mobile networks, user mobility traces, and secure pervasive connec- tivity facilitated by smart devices. First, a hybridHealth AI framework is introduced as a smartphone-based screening tool that combines on-device acoustic analysis for rapid de- tection with deep learning-based detailed diagnostics in cloud environments, optimizing resource efficiency and ensuring high diagnostic accuracy and fairness, while addressing challenges such as data inconsistencies, label scarcity, and demographic biases. To ad- vance screening beyond the individual level and enable population-scale epidemic hotspot prediction, EpiTrack is proposed as a novel outbreakprediction framework that leverages real-time user mobility traces from mobile networks to enable accurate and proactive public health interventions. This data-driven machine learning model offers unprece- dented forecasting precision, helping prevent outbreaks from escalating into widespread epidemics. In addition, smart-device-based screening tools and mobility-driven analytics rely heavily on continuous mobile network connectivity; any disruption directly undermines real-time anomaly detection and predictive intelligence. To maintain system reliability in antici- pation of such disruptions, we propose a proactive anomaly management framework that models network reliability, predicts faults in advance, optimizes resource allocation, and supports zero-touch automation in 6G and beyond networks. An additional barrier to achieving resilient, autonomous AI-driven systems lies in the vulnerabilities introduced by compromised or untrustworthy data collected through mobile networks and smart dig- ital technologies. To address this challenge, we propose MRIF, a multimodule AI-based security framework that identifies and mitigates data-driven attacks, ensures accurate mobility insights, safeguards optimization processes, and reinforces trust in network in- telligence. By addressing the key challenges of fairness, proactivity, reliability, and security, this dissertation establish a unified, end-to-end ecosystem for AI-driven anomaly detection. Through this convergence of intelligent modeling and real-world integration, the work paves the way for next-generation autonomous systems that are resilient, secure, and significantly impact the public health outcomes worldwide
EXAMINING LINKS BETWEEN NATURE, SOCIETY AND MODES OF SANITATION IN KAMPALA
No full textThis research is motivated by calls for further analysis of the concept of infrastructural heterogeneity by focusing on environment-society relations and urban sanitation. The study aims to determine how communities make use of sanitation technologies to respond to environmental risks and describes the socio-spatial configurations that result from interventions to reduce that risk. To achieve this, the study set three research questions which are answered in the three core chapters of this dissertation. These chapters focus on i) how community practices and narratives around environmental risks are conveyed in relation to sanitation technologies, ii) how community practices and narratives around sanitation technologies align with changing urban environments and iii) what socio-spatial configurations are created by differential provision and access to toilets. By employing a qualitative research approach with methods including semi-structured interviews, key informant interviews and focus group discussions, the study engaged fifty participants to answer these questions. These methods were used to collect and analyze data on the lived experiences of individuals and groups; the social, cultural, and institutional context within which their experiences are shaped at two study sites in the city. Data was analyzed through Content and Spatial analyses, generating themes and spatial visualization of areas prone to safe and unsafe sanitation. Findings showed major risk factors like water outages, vectors, and odors that impacted respondents’ use of the toilet and their general environment. There were individual and collective actions of adapting to and mitigating risks although some groups of people and particular spaces were more vulnerable to the risks. Analyzing practices and narratives helped to place sanitation infrastructure within layers of power, relationship dynamics and socio-economic status that impact mitigation of risks. The dissertation, therefore, expands the analysis of heterogeneous infrastructure configurations by focusing on how they shape and are shaped by human-environment interactions. It concludes that despite the presence of some modern infrastructure, there remain highly interconnected links between humans, the environment and modes of sanitation in Kampala
"Can’t I have a dream" : race, repression, and resistance in women’s prisons, 1877-1980
No full textThis thesis traces the experiences of incarcerated women from the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, focusing on the ways that the prison operated as a microcosm of larger society in the molding of social norms regarding gender, race, and sexuality. It seeks to document a lesser studied aspect of carceral history while focusing on the role the penal system plays in enforcing societal norms. Women convict laborers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were subjected to public opinion that was harshly divided along racial lines, representing Jim Crow ideals of womanhood, especially white womanhood. Into the twentieth century, incarcerated women faced more public scrutiny, particularly as a result of Cold War anxieties surrounding gender and sexuality. In the mid-twentieth century, incarcerated women publicized their experiences through zines and garnered significant public attention as they explored the meanings of gender, race, and incarceration in America. This research explores the ways in which the prison system makes, refashions, and enforces societal norms regarding race, gender, and sexuality. This thesis holds contemporary significance in the conversation regarding the mass incarceration of women, specifically women of color, and the failure of the prison system and society as a whole in accounting for the impact of gender and race on experiences of incarcerated women