Geometric measure theory could be described as differential geometry, generalized through measure theory to deal with maps and surfaces that are not necessarily smooth, and applied to the calculus of variations. Geometric measure theory is important because it studies sets, their variation and their boundaries (from the measure theoretic sense). In particular, a very interesting branch in Geometric measure theory, is the sets of locally finite perimeter. Just as their name actually shows, these sets are essentially sets whose perimeter is (locally) finite. In this thesis we start by giving a ...

Exoplanets are planets orbiting stars other than our Sun. During their motion around their star, due to gravitational effects, and due to the planet’s thermal and reflective radiation, small variations in the lightcurve could be detected (Esteves et al. 2015). Phasecurves are small-scale variations in planetary flux that arise from an exoplanet’s motion around its host star. If detected, the phasecurve can lead to determining the planet’s mass, its albedo, and it can give us an idea about its atmosphere. In this work we aim to detect these variations in the data from the K2 mission. To do this we ...

With the rise of the Internet, recommender systems are becoming a used solution to solve the information overload problem. These systems are like any other system, subject to noise: malicious noise that is caused by attacks and natural noise that is due to the human error. Many detection algorithms solve the noise problem. However, since natural noise and serendipity overlap in their definition, removing noise results in removing serendipity. Serendipity that is the happy surprise of finding something relevant unexpectedly is important for the issue of over personalization caused by the recommender ...

The aim of this thesis is to study the impact of a three-year-study of computer science at Notre Dame University on the students’ academic performances. For this reason, the GPAs of the students after their first year of study were compared with their GPAs upon graduation. To perform this, a Decision Tree, as well as Neural Networks were used. These algorithms helped us to predict the final GPA based on the first two semesters’ GPA. In addition, the most decisive courses on the student GPA were identified. For this reason, Relief algorithm was used to identify the three most important courses ...

From ages to ages there had been expectation of individuals on a specific predictions and future occurrences. So also in a game, different participant that involves in those specified game have their various expectations of the results or the output of the game they are involved in. That is why we need a mathematical theory that helps in prediction of the future expectations in our day to day activities. Therefore the Martingale Theory is a very good theory that explains and dissects the expectation of a gamer in a given game of chance. So in this thesis, we shall talk about the Martin-gale ...

The aim of this thesis is to study the qualitative behavior of a specific non-linear Volterra integro-differential equation with finite delays by using Lyapunov's second method. The non-linear Volterra integro-differential equation is: $x'(t)=b(t)x(t-r_1)-\int_{t-r_2}^{t}a(t,s)g(x(s))ds,$ where $r_1$, $r_2$ are positive constants representing 2 finite delays, $t \geq 0$ and $a : \ [0,\infty) \times [-\tau, \infty) \rightarrow \R, \qquad \text{and} \qquad b : \ [0, \infty ) \rightarrow \R$ are two continuous functions. In the first part, we study the qualitative behavior of the constant ...

The knowledge of whether a time series contains a unit root or not provides guidance to determine whether the series is stationary or not. This topic is one that covers vast amount of research given to its importance in the analysis of economic and other time series data. To understand the behavior, the properties of the series and the influence of any shock that occur to the series, stationary and unit root tests were constructed. In this thesis, we first present the Box and Jenkins ARMA models, discuss the conditions for station-arity. Then, we display different method to test autocorrelation. ...

Existing smart contract development languages are unique to their related block chain platforms. Thus, multiple versions of the same smart contract must be developed for different block chains. This thesis presents a model-driven approach to smart contract development with automatic code generation. This approach encompasses a new XML-based programming language to develop smart contracts and a code generator that transforms those contracts to a platform-specific programming language. The XML-based language was discussed, and all supported constructs were illustrated. The code generation tool ...

In this study, gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) were synthesized in water and characterized using ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy (UV-Vis), dynamic light scattering (DLS) and Zeta potential analysis. AuNPs were coated with thiol functionalized polyethylene glycol (PEG-SH) and scFvD2B (antibody fragment of D2B mAb) well known to recognize the extracellular epitope of the human prostate specific membrane antigen (hPSMA). In fact, scFvD2B binds PSMA and induces its endocytosis, thereby marking PSMA as a docking site for the delivery of therapeutic agents. AuNPs successful coating was confirmed by DLS ...

Cement is one of the most fundamentally used material all over the world. Among the many different properties of cement, compressive strength conventionally determined at the age of 28 days remains the most important parameter to assess cement quality. Waiting for 28 days to obtain a test result urges cement manufacturers to set quality parameters higher than the minimum accepted by norms, which means higher unnecessary manufacturing costs. The aim of this study is to assess the performance of cement mortar when nano silica (Nano-SiO2) is used as supplementary cementitious material (SCMs) and ...