Obesity is a complex multifactorial disease resulting from excessive energy intake compared to energy expenditure. The excess energy is mostly stored as fat in enlarged adipocytes, but some lipids may infiltrate other organs such as the liver to form ectopic fat. Adipose tissue and ectopic fat produce and secrete a...
This dissertation addresses few-shot object segmentation in images. The goal of segmentation is to label every image pixel with a class of the object occupying that pixel, where the class may represent a semantic object category or instance. In few-shot segmentation, training and test datasets have different classes. Every new...
Civil engineers are aware of the impacts of structures on the global environment but the environmental impacts of a fire within these structures remains unknown. Fires present a unique hazard as it is difficult to predict the probability of the occurrence and the intensity. Traditional methods to identify the environmental...
The operation of gas turbine engines depends on the reliable ignition of fuel/air mixtures. Gas turbine engines are commonly used as commercial and military aviation power plants. However, consistent ignition within gas turbine engines is still a problem, especially for more challenging operating conditions such as emergency operations. This work...
Data centers (DCs) have been witnessing unprecedented growth in size, number and complexity in recent years. They consist of tens of thousands of servers interconnected by fast network switches, hosting and enabling numerous applications with various traffic characteristics and requirements. As a result, DC networks have been presented with several...
Deep learning has recently revolutionized robot perception in many canonical robotic applications, such as autonomous driving. However, a similar transformation has yet to occur in more harsh environments including underwater and underground. This is due in part to the difficulty in deploying robots in these environments, which lack large real...
In areas such as spatial analysis and time series analysis, it is essential to understand and quantify spatial or temporal heterogeneity. In this dissertation, we focus on a spatially varying coefficient model, in which spatial heterogeneity is accommodated by allowing the regression coefficients to vary in a given spatial domain....
With growing interest in mass timber, especially mass timber panels (MTP), there has been a need to better understand their structural properties. One of the most versatile uses for MTP are as floor systems. Under new code provisions, these floors can be utilized in new and taller building types, but...
Advanced machine learning algorithms have the potential to be successfully applied to many areas of system modelling. In the present study, the capability of ten machine learning algorithms to predict the structural damage of an 8-storey reinforced concrete frame building subjected to single and successive ground motions is examined. From...
Improving crop cultivars for use on organic farms is pertinent, as current elite germplasm is less resilient within the more variable context of organic farm environments. Although a growing number of studies have focused on organic plant breeding in cereal crops, very few have focused on vegetable crops, especially those...