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Religious and Spiritual Communities Must Adapt or Die: Surviving and Thriving during Challenging Contemporary Times
Get PDFCurrent trends within both religious and secular communities suggest that contemporary times mean that people spend more time alone than with others. Community engagement in general has been declining, while religious and spiritual community engagement in particular has dropped off significantly in recent decades, and most especially following the COVID-19 global pandemic. Although humans are social beings and benefit from community engagement, we tend to avoid or minimize our affiliations and associations, including our religious and spiritual ones today. Religious and spiritual communities must adapt to changing times or risk becoming irrelevant, diminishing further, and losing their sustainability to continue with their activities and services. Religious communities might wish to consider the best state-of-the-art evidence-based practices to engage their members, as well as appeal to those who might be interested in joining with them. There are many mental and physical health benefits to active engagement with spiritual religious practices and communities. The world could use more rather than less community engagement, including religious and spiritual engagement, during our challenging contemporary times
Design of Sustainable & Affordable Housing for Disadvantaged Communities in Nicaragua
Get PDFAddressing Nicaragua\u27s urgent housing needs, this project transforms a conventional CMU block design into a sustainable and affordable model using local, structural bamboo and adobe plaster. It includes appropriate member size connections, local-code compliant construction drawings, cost estimation and logistics, offering an eco-friendly, affordable housing solution for local communities. The scope of this project can be emphasized with the three words from the project title which are design, sustainable & affordable. The design aspect of this project involved producing detailed architectural and engineering drawings for the housing model, incorporating structural design to ensure the safety, stability and durability of the structure. The sustainability aspect was achieved through the use of sustainable materials to reduce the overall carbon footprint, manufacturing energy and align with sustainable development goals. The construction management aspect involved cost estimation, production planning and logistics that ensure the viability for social housing initiatives. The end goal was to equip Habitat for Humanity with a sustainable and affordable design they can build-upon and serve as a foundational model to promote for future projects
9-Axis Motion Tracking to Aid Therapeutic Recovery via Visualization, Analysis and Progress Monitoring
Get PDFThis paper presents an innovative approach to enhance at-home physical therapy exercises through the development of a wearable motion tracking system. The proposed system utilizes motion tracking bands worn by patients during exercises, specifically focusing on a squat jump for the initial phase of the project. The bands, placed around the ankle and knee, monitor the alignment of the user\u27s motion and transmit data via Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) to a dedicated webpage. This webpage integrates real-time data analysis, offering immediate feedback to users, enabling them to monitor their form and track progress over time. The collected data is stored in a database, facilitating comprehensive recovery progress monitoring. Traditional physical therapy relies heavily on in-clinic sessions, leaving patients to perform exercises independently at home. The developed Internet of Things (IoT) system aims to address this gap by providing patients with continuous insights into their exercises, ensuring correct execution and optimizing the recovery process. The system\u27s live feedback and accessible interface empower users to self-monitor, reducing the risk of incorrect exercise execution and contributing to more effective rehabilitation. The integration of technology into physical therapy not only enhances patient engagement but also revolutionizes the industry\u27s feedback mechanisms, offering instantaneous and detailed insights for more efficient and personalized rehabilitation
Distant Horizon: Exploring Human-AI Interaction through Video Games
Get PDFAs the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) continues to grow and become more and more integrated into our everyday lives, it has begun to raise ethical concerns surrounding authority, autonomy, and responsibility. Researchers and consumers alike have begun to wonder how much trust we are willing to place in a non-human decision maker, especially if an Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) capable of surpassing human cognitive capabilities is ever developed. If we are willing to let an AI write essays for us, are we willing to let it manage a business? A government agency? What about a nuclear reactor?
Our project aims to provide a sandbox experience where users can explore such ethical questions surrounding the presence of AI in positions of power. Through a gamified scenario, the player takes on the role of GAIA, a General Artificial Intelligence Assistant tasked with maintaining a spaceship on a long-distance mission. By guiding the ship’s crew through a series of life-threatening challenges, the player is asked to make difficult decisions that will put simulated human lives at risk, then reflect on how they would feel if those same decisions had been put in the hands of an Artificial Intelligence. We hope that by presenting an unbiased environment for users to explore their own thoughts and perceptions of AI in positions of power, we will be able to foster productive discussions surrounding this topic and open the door for future research to take place
Edge-Connected Microcontroller Security
Get PDFWith a wide range of applications and the rise of cyber attacks, securing microcontrollers has become imperative; however, ensuring microcontroller performance is also crucial given how interconnected today’s systems are. This project examines the security and performance of next-generation microcontroller units leveraging new security solutions for IoT edge applications. By benchmarking these MCUs against key performance metrics, their viability will be assessed to facilitate the widespread adoption of this latest firmware.
Our research focuses on profiling the power consumption and performance of the new STM32H573 and the integrated Secure Manager, a new technology from ST Microelectronics that allows for privileged execution of code and restricting access to services. The STM32H573 supports various cryptography algorithms (like ECDSA) at the hardware level to enable this. Our work profiles the power consumption and performance of these technologies. We found that in some cases the Secure Manager is more energy efficient, and can also o↵er negligible performance overhead. With that said, for the majority of the use cases we evaluated running the application in the Non-Secure mode both increased performance and decreased energy consumption
Stereo Image Super Resolution
No full textStereo image super-resolution extracts features from two stereoscopic images to enhance the quality of both views. The project goal was to develop a state-of-the-art stereo image super-resolution model to compete in the NTIRE 2024 Stereo Image Super-Resolution competition. While single image super-resolution models are prominent, the field of stereo imaging lacks the same advancements.
By taking an existing high-performance model, we aimed to surpass current baselines by implementing up-to-date resolution strategies. This paper proposes a model that builds upon the NAFSSR architecture by implementing BSRN approaches to single image super-resolution. By modifying the NAFBlock contained within the NAFSSR architecture, we developed a model that provided competitive results. We judged our approach using PSNR and SSIM metrics.
Our results did not achieve state-of-the-art performance, indicating that while integrating advanced single image super-resolution techniques into stereo models shows promise, it is insufficient on its own to surpass existing baselines. The constraints on model size and computational complexity imposed by the competition, along with resource and timeline limitations, impacted our ability to fully exploit these techniques. This work provides valuable insights and a foundation for future research to continue advancing stereo image super-resolution technologies
Fairness and Bias of Machine Learning in Search and Ranking
Get PDFRecent advancements in Information Retrieval (IR) and machine learning have significantly improved ranking and search system performance. However, these data-driven approaches often suffer from inherent biases present in training datasets, leading to unfair treatment of certain demographic groups and contributing to systematic discrimination based on race, gender, or geographic location. This research aims to address the fairness and bias issue in ranking and search systems by proposing innovative frameworks that mitigate data bias and ensure equitable representation and exposure across diverse groups.
We introduce two novel frameworks: the Meta-learning based Fair Ranking (MFR) model and the Meta Curriculum-based Fair Ranking (MCFR) framework, both designed to alleviate dataset bias through automatically-weighted loss functions and curriculum learning strategies, respectively. These approaches utilize meta-learning to adjust ranking loss, focusing particularly on improving the fairness metrics for minority groups while maintaining competitive ranking performance. Additionally, we conduct an empirical evaluation of Large Language Models (LLMs) in text-ranking tasks, revealing biases in handling queries and documents related to binary protected attributes. Our analysis offers a benchmark for assessing LLMs’ fairness and highlights the necessity for equitable representation in search outcomes.
Furthermore, we explore the challenge of data selection bias in multi-stage recommendation systems, particularly in online advertising contexts like Pinterest’s multi-cascade ads ranking system. Through comprehensive experiments, we assess various state-of-the-art methods, and our findings demonstrate the effectiveness of a modified version of unsupervised domain adaptation (MUDA) in mitigating selection bias.
Collectively, our work contributes to the development of fairer ranking and search systems. By addressing bias at its source and employing meta-learning and curriculum learning techniques, we pave the way for more equitable and transparent IR systems that serve diverse user bases without discrimination
Small Scale Wave Energy Convertor for Remote Applications
Get PDFThe following thesis showcases the yearlong culmination of a senior design project focused on the development of a small-scale wave energy generator intended to provide consistent and sustainable energy for remote marine environments. This project’s main customers include, but are not limited to, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy, and scuba diving sites worldwide. Based on these identified customers and their needs, a target power output of 50 watts was determined. Beyond this power requirement, the generator is required to resist corrosion, withstand rough marine conditions, and be modular as well as requiring low maintenance. All of these requirements allow for an improved alternative to the current choice of solar panels.
The scope of this project focused on supporting remote research and maritime companies with a more reliable power source than solar and fossil fuel systems. The currently employed solar panels suffer from long downtimes and high maintenance costs. This project serves as a better alternative. The general life cycle of the generator is as follows: deployment, standby, operation, maintenance, and retrieval. At the end of the life cycle, the generator will be recycled.
This senior project aims to deliver a simplistic, low-maintenance, and modular wave energy solution to provide a reliable power source for remote maritime research. Our project was able to theoretically produce a peak energy of 100 Watts via manual testing and modeling but was so far only able to produce 4 Watts in real testing due to constraints of our testing pool and wave size. Arguably, in phase II testing, with the removal of the inefficiencies seen in phase I, we believe that our output will be significantly higher and ideally close to our theoretical outputs. We were able to meet all other requirements outlined by our customers, such as size, cost competitiveness, and continuous uptime
Mission as Life Awakening in Africa and Beyond: Revisiting the Theology of Life of Engelbert Mveng (1930-1995)
No full textThe study aims to reimagine the Christian mission in sub-Saharan Africa through the lens of Engelbert Mveng\u27s theology of life. Faced with deplorable conditions and threats to life in sub-Saharan Africa, the study navigates between critical analysis, comparative theology, constructive theology, and interpretive analyses of Mveng\u27s artistic works to develop a new way of doing mission. lt shapes what could be labeled Mission as Life Awakening, which seeks to break with life-diminishing narratives, structures, and mortal spaces and reconstruct new arenas where life can be nurtured and affirmed spiritually and actively in all dimensions.
The critical analysis begins by examining the impact of the colonial translation model of contextual theology, which contributed to the anthropological impoverishment of Sub-Saharan Africa by stripping Africans of their cultural identities, cosmologies, and meaning-making systems. In contrast, Mveng\u27s theology of life, as expressed in his artworks, draws on traditional symbols, colors, rhythms, and meanings to celebrate the cosmic struggle and ultimate triumph of abundant life over all forms of death.
The work concludes that Mission as Life Awakening is a prophetic endeavor, denouncing all that diminishes or ends life. The thesis represents a humble contribution to the ongoing quest for contextual models of mission that resonate deeply with diverse African cultures, realities, and especially the realm of art, seeking to bridge the realm of traditional African arts and their symbolic meaning system \u27with the reinvention of mission