MD-SOAR Maryland Shared Open Access Repository
Not a member yet
34521 research outputs found
Sort by
WP:THREATENING2MEN: The English Wikipedia's misogynist infopolitics and the hegemony of the asshole consensus
No full texthttps://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-08-19/Op-ed&oldid=119387512
CoRE: Condition-based Reasoning for Identifying Outcome Variance in Complex Events
No full text63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics 2025, Vienna, Austria July 27–August 1st, 2025Knowing which latent conditions lead to a particular outcome is useful for critically examining claims made about complex event outcomes. Identifying implied conditions and examining their influence on an outcome is challenging. We handle this by combining and augmenting annotations from two existing datasets consisting of goals and states, and explore the influence of conditions through our research questions and Condition-based Reasoning tasks. We examine open and closed LLMs of varying sizes and intent-alignment on our reasoning tasks and find that conditions are useful when not all context is available. Models differ widely in their ability to generate and identify outcome-variant conditions which affects their performance on outcome validation when conditions are used to replace missing context. Larger models like GPT-4o, are more cautious in such less constrained situations.We wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments, feedback, and suggestions. We would also like to thank Katrin Erk, Sayontan Ghosh and Niranjan Balasubramian for early discussions and feedback. This material is based in part upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. IIS2024878. Some experiments were conducted on the UMBC HPCF, supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. CNS-1920079. This material is also based on research that is in part supported by the Army Research Laboratory, Grant No. W911NF2120076, and by DARPA for the SciFy program under agreement number HR00112520301. The U.S. Government is authorized to reproduce and distribute reprints for Governmental purposes notwithstanding any copyright notation thereon. The views and conclusions contained herein are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies or endorsements, either express or implied, of ARL, DARPA or the U.S. Government.http://arxiv.org/abs/2506.0125
Machine Learning-based Variance Analysis of Brightness Temperature in Simulated Satellite Footprints
No full textI-GUIDE Forum 2025 Geospatial AI and Innovation for Sustainability Solutions, Chicago, Il, June 17 - 19, 2025This study investigates the variance in brightness temperature (BT) within simulated satellite footprints for Observing System Simulation Experiments (OSSE), focusing specifically on Channels 5 and 11 of the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU-A). High-resolution atmospheric simulations from the DYnamics of the Atmospheric general circulation Modeled On Non-hydrostatic Domains (DYAMOND) dataset were utilized to generate brightness temperature data using the Python interface for the Community Radiative Transfer Model (PyCRTM). A computational design map incorporating Random Forest and Association Rule Mining was employed to identify and validate key atmospheric variables influencing BT variance. This ensemble approach facilitated a deeper understanding of atmospheric variability across the coast of Greenland, the Arctic face, and the East Pacific regions. Results highlighted that surface skin temperature and wind velocities significantly influence BT variance, particularly in lower atmospheric layers (Channel 5), while upper atmospheric temperature variance showed prominence in higher layers (Channel 11). The findings highlight the utility of machine learning methodologies to improve accuracy in radiance simulations. This methodology provides a transferable framework for geospatial variance analysis applicable to diverse environmental monitoring and sustainability applications.https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/iguide/2025/presentations/
Oleic acid rearrangement enables facile transfer of red-emitting quantum dots from hexane into water with enhanced fluorescence
No full textThere is significant demand for the conversion of hydrophobic nanoparticles (NPs) into water-soluble NPs, particularly for the transfer of photoluminescent quantum dots (QDs) synthesized in organic solvents into water-based settings. However, these transfer processes are often inefficient, with only a fraction of the QDs transferred into water, and typically result in decreases in photoluminescence quantum yield (PLQY). Here, we demonstrate a straightforward technique to efficiently transfer oleic acid (OA)-coated CdSe/CdS core–shell QDs into water without the addition of any new reagents. In contrast to the decrease in PLQY that is usually observed when QDs are transferred into water, this process in fact leads to an increase of the PLQY after transfer in basic water (pH 8). The process is highly reproducible and can be applied to other oleic acid-coated NPs. Density-functional-theory (DFT) calculations indicate that the QD transfer into water is enabled by the rearrangement of OA ligands at the surface of the QDs. This discovery allows for widely available, hydrophobic OA-coated QDs to be used in water media without any further modification and with enhanced fluorescence.The authors are grateful to the U.S. National Science Foundation (DMR-1905135) for financial support of the work on magnetite NPs as well as some of the work on QDs. Synthesis and characterization of the QDs was also partially supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center (STC) for Integration of Modern Optoelectronic Materials on Demand (IMOD) under Cooperative Agreement No. DMR-2019444. The computational work used the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE),59 which is supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation grant number ACI-1548562 through allocation ID TG-CHE200108. The authors would like to thank Dr Tagide de Carvalho (Keith R. Porter Imaging Facilities, UMBC) for her help with TEM imaging. Furthermore, they wish to express their gratitude to Dr Marcin Ptaszek and Brandon Busick for performing the PLQY measurements and to Elizabeth Kane for the single-QD PL measurementshttps://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2025/nr/d5nr00246
Sensemaking in Complex Multidata Immersive Analytics Systems
No full textSensemaking is the process through which individuals build meaningful explanations of complex situations. As described in Pirolli and Card’s sensemaking model, it is a cognitively demanding activity characterized by iterative cycles of information foraging, schematization, and hypothesis testing. In today’s data-rich and rapidly evolving world, there is a pressing need for tools that help users synthesize qualitative and quantitative information across multiple sources. When integrated with inquiry-based learning (IBL)—an educational model that emphasizes exploration, question-driven investigation, and active knowledge construction—sensemaking can become a powerful mechanism for deeper learning and understanding.This study investigates how SEEe, an immersive analytics system built in virtual reality (VR), facilitates sensemaking and inquiry-based learning as individuals explore multi-modal data related to systemic issues. Drawing from the Pirolli and Card sensemaking model and the Pedaste et al. IBL framework, the research analyzes user strategies and learning behaviors to determine how participants interact with and make meaning from data in VR. Unlike previous studies that have focused on either qualitative or quantitative data in isolation, this work examines how users simultaneously navigate, integrate, and reason across both data types in an immersive environment. The findings offer new insights into how immersive analytics systems can support holistic analytical thinking, promote question-driven exploration, and enable learners to engage more critically with complex real-world problems
I Hate the News Jun 17
No full textMaryland’s first bond issue following Moody’s downgrade of state debt has surprising results. Former Washington DC councilmember and director of the DC Department of Energy and Environment, gets into the fight to claw back the environmental spending cuts proposed by Mayor Bowser. MCPS has new grading regulations and the Student member of the Board of Education is not happy. And more. Music by Washington Dc art-pop rock band, Catscan!https://open.spotify.com/episode/69QjiJlnRlexWvy3ZMKp7
LiSB: Lightweight Secure Boot and Attestation Scheme for IoT and Edge Devices
No full textWith the increasing popularity of small computing devices and applications of IoT, the need for platform integrity grows both in scale and scope. In particular, the detection of successful attempts to inject a malicious software module or modify an existing one is of utmost importance. This paper promotes LiSB, a novel approach for validating software/firmware integrity and ensuring secure boot-up for resource-constrained embedded devices. LiSB is lightweight, yet very robust. A hardware primitive is used as a Root-of-Trust to support the confidentiality of generated digests and the security of the attestation protocol. Specifically, LiSB employs Physically Unclonable Functions (PUFs) to make the digest device-specific without storing any secrets in the device memory. The performance and robustness of LiSB are validated using a prototype implementation on an FPGA. The results demonstrate that LiSB outperforms recently-published and prominent commercial attestation schemes like TPM, and consumes 25 times less power than SHA-256, which serves as the core component of most existing attestation schemes. The security properties of LiSB are formally analyzed.This work was supported at the University of Maryland Baltimore County by grant #184825 from Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU-APL). The authors thank Noah Reneau from JHU-APL for fruitful discussion on supporting attestation on the ESP-32 platform.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/1109572
UMBC’s CIDER Program Supports New Hilltop Institute-led Medicaid Study, Other Cross-collaborative Projects
No full textPhotographer is Demond, Marlayna. headshots photos courtesy of Chu, Jun and The Hilltop InstituteUMBC researchers are collaborating on a study that takes a closer look at specific diagnosis coding patterns that focus on societal factors that potentially influence the health of Maryland’s Medicaid recipients. Morgan Henderson, director of analytics and research at UMBC’s The Hilltop Institute, and Jun Chu, assistant professor of public health, are among the five cross-collaborative teams selected to receive funding from UMBC’s Center and Institute Departmentally-Engaged Research (CIDER) program. Henderson and Chu’s CIDER-supported project will investigate potential “z code” patterns of the state’s Medicaid recipients. Z codes are a set of diagnosis codes that refer to factors influencing a patient’s health status beyond diseases or injuries, called social determinants of health.https://umbc.edu/stories/cider-program-hilltop-medicaid-study
IDENTIFICATION AND CHARACTERIZATION OF GENES INFLUENCING CHANGES IN IMMUNITY AND SLEEP USING DROSOPHILA
No full textThe innate immune response and sleep are evolutionarily conserved traits observed across all animal species. However, immune and sleep functions begin to decline with age, posing a serious risk to human health; the age-related decline in immune functions is known as immunosenescence. The effect of age on these traits varies greatly among individuals, and has a significant genetic component, though, the genes contributing to this variation are unknown. This dissertation focuses on elucidating the genetic basis of these two traits, separately, with future directions aimed to assess the two together. First, I used the Drosophila melanogaster genetic reference panel (DGRP), a standard bacterial clearance assay, genome wide association (GWA) tests, and post-GWA analyses to assess and identify genes and networks associated with the age-specific ability to clear a bacterial infection. The effect of age on clearance ability varied significantly among genotypes, with clearance ability declining by ~70% with age. The GWA of clearance ability identified several genes associated with each age, many involved in various signaling pathways contributing to variation in immunity. I then validated 15 candidate genes for their role in the age-specific immune response using the GAL4/UAS system and RNA interference (RNAi). Small, but significant differences in clearance ability were observed in two genes, nebu and Rho1. Next, I measured sleep in the Drosophila simulans genetic reference panel (SGRP) and compared the data to sleep data in the DGRP. Results revealed that sleep is significantly variable and sexually dimorphic in Drosophila simulans, like that of Drosophila melanogaster. However, estimates of broad sense heritability (H2) were higher in Drosophila melanogaster compared to Drosophila simulans. A future goal is to perform a GWA of sleep in the SGRP and compare the results to those obtained in the DGRP to assess the degree of conservation in the genetic architecture of sleep. Collectively, the information gained through this dissertation aids in our understanding of immunosenescence and sleep. Future research should focus on elucidating the complex interactions between immunity and sleep. The insights gained from these and future results could lead to treatments that improve or maintain immune and sleep health
NASA Earth Science Division provides key data
No full textIn May, the US administration proposed budget cuts to NASA, including a more than 50% decrease in funding for the agency’s Earth Science Division (ESD) (1), the mission of which is to gather knowledge about Earth through space-based observation and other tools (2). The budget cuts proposed for ESD would cancel crucial satellites that observe Earth and its atmosphere, gut US science and engineering expertise, and potentially lead to the closure of NASA research centers. As former members of the recently dissolved (3) NASA Earth Science Advisory Committee, an all-volunteer, independent body chartered to advise ESD (4), we warn that these actions would come at a profound cost to US society and scientific leadership.The authors have received NASA funding for research as well as panel and proposal reviews.https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.adz610