The impact of undergraduate research experiences on students' academic development and retention in STEM fields is significant. Students' success in STEM fields is based on developing strong research and critical thinking skills that make it essential for students to engage in research activities throughout their academic programs. This work evaluates the effectiveness of undergraduate research experiences with respect to its influence on student retention and academic development. The cases presented are based on years of experience implementing undergraduate research programs in various STEM fields at Colorado State University Pueblo (CSU Pueblo) funded by HSI STEM Grants. The study seeks to establish a correlation between students' reten

Photonic Crystal Fiber (PCF) based on the Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) effect has been proposed to detect polluted water samples. The sensing characteristics are illustrated using the finite element method. The right hole of the right side of PCF core has been coated with chemically stable gold material to achieve the practical sensing approach. The performance parameter of the proposed sensor is investigated in terms of wavelength sensitivity, amplitude sensitivity, sensor resolution, and linearity of the resonant wavelength with the variation of refractive index of analyte. In the sensing range of 1.33 to 1.3624, maximum sensitivities of 1360.2 nm ∕ RIU and 184 RIU⁻¹ are achieved with the high sensor resolutions of 7

Cryptography is a method used to mask text based on any encryption method, and the authorized user only can decrypt and read this message. An intruder tried to attack in many manners to access the communication channel, like impersonating, non-repudiation, denial of services, modification of data, threatening confidentiality and breaking availability of services. The high electronic communications between people need to ensure that transactions remain confidential. Cryptography methods give the best solution to this problem. This paper proposed a new cryptography method based on Arabic words; this method is done based on two steps. Where the first step is binary encoding generation used t

Authentication is the process of determining whether someone or something is, in fact, who or what it is declared to be. As the dependence upon computers and computer networks grows, the need for user authentication has increased. User’s claimed identity can be verified by one of several methods. One of the most popular of these methods is represented by (something user know), such as password or Personal Identification Number (PIN). Biometrics is the science and technology of authentication by identifying the living individual’s physiological or behavioral attributes. Keystroke authentication is a new behavioral access control system to identify legitimate users via their typing behavior. The objective of this paper is to provide user

Iris research is focused on developing techniques for identifying and locating relevant biometric features, accurate segmentation and efficient computation while lending themselves to compression methods. Most iris segmentation methods are based on complex modelling of traits and characteristics which, in turn, reduce the effectiveness of the system being used as a real time system. This paper introduces a novel parameterized technique for iris segmentation. The method is based on a number of steps starting from converting grayscale eye image to a bit plane representation, selection of the most significant bit planes followed by a parameterization of the iris location resulting in an accurate segmentation of the iris from the origin

The quality of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) networks are considerably influenced by the configuration of the observed baselines. Where, this study aims to find an optimal configuration for GNSS baselines in terms of the number and distribution  of baselines to improve the quality criteria of the GNSS networks. First order design problem (FOD) was applied in this research to optimize GNSS network baselines configuration, and based on sequential adjustment method to solve its objective functions.

FOD for optimum precision (FOD-p) was the proposed model which based on the design criteria of A-optimality and E-optimality. These design criteria were selected as objective functions of precision, whic