For a certain class of Z²-actions, we provide a proof of a conjecture that the ratio of the Perron eigenvalues of the transfer matrices of the free boundary restrictions converge to the entropy of that action. Also, a novel method for computing the entropy of Z²-actions is conjectured.
Multi-relation aggregation queries process the join operator before computing the aggregation function. This join is arguably the most costly operation since traditional join algorithms spend majority of their time trying to join the parts of the relations that do not generate any output tuples. This causes slow response times with...
Pardoxes in voting has been an interest of voting theorists since the 1800's when Condorcet demonstrated the key example of a voting paradox: voters with individually transitive rankings produce an election outcome which is not transitive. With Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, the hope of finding a fair voting method which accurately...
Social media platforms use many techniques to engage users' attention with their platforms, including notifications, popups, and gamification elements. The impact of social media on physical and mental health has been studied, but limited publicly available research exists on how social media users can be helped to disengage from these...
This thesis examines the mixing times for one-dimensional interacting particle systems. We use the coupling method to study the mixing rates for particle systems on the circle which move according to specific permutations e.g., transpositions and 3-cycles.
Significance: Movement intent decoding algorithms can interpret human bioelectrical signals to control prosthetic limbs with many degrees of freedom (DOFs). This work involves decoding volitional movement intent from surface electromyogram (sEMG) signals to control prosthetic arms. To train these algorithms, patients flex their muscles to “follow” a movement prompt, and...
We explore the application of deep learning to the disparate fields of natural language processing and computational biology. Both the sentences uttered by humans as well as the RNA and protein sequences found within the cells of their bodies can be considered formal languages in computer science, as sets of...
As bipedal robots move ever closer to being integrated into all manner of real world envi-ronments there is a necessity to push their dynamic capabilities to meet or exceed those of humans and animals. Advancements must be made to address ordinary challenges that arise everyday in the same environments that...
The thesis focuses on activity recognition from sensor data, which has spurred a great deal of interest due to its impact on health care and security. Previous work on activity recognition from multivariate time series data has mainly applied supervised learning techniques which require a high degree of annotation effort...
A large number of sequential decision-making problems in uncertain environments
can be modeled as Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). In such settings, an agent
can observe at each time step the state of the environment and then executes an
action, causing a stochastic transition to a new state of the environment...