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Efficient And Reliable Simulation, Memory Protection, And Driver Generation In Embedded Network Systems, Jiannan Zhai
Efficient And Reliable Simulation, Memory Protection, And Driver Generation In Embedded Network Systems, Jiannan Zhai
All Dissertations
Embedded systems are widely used, from consumer electronics, to industrial equipment, to spacecraft. With embedded systems becoming more complex, new challenges are presented to application developers. In this dissertation, we focus on three of the most important: (i) Network simulation tools are widely used for sensor network testing and evaluation. Simulation performance affects the efficiency of the application developers who use these tools. The performance of a single host system represents a performance bottleneck for large-scale network simulation. A distributed simulator offering higher performance is needed to support fast, large-scale network simulation. (ii) Single event upsets (SEUs), which occur when …
Design With Emotion: Improving Web Search Experience For Older Adults, Tamirat Abegaz
Design With Emotion: Improving Web Search Experience For Older Adults, Tamirat Abegaz
All Dissertations
Research indicates that older adults search for information all together about 15% less than younger adults prior to making decisions. Prior research findings associated such behavior mainly with age-related cognitive difficulties. However, recent studies indicate that emotion is linked to influence search decision quality. This research approaches questions about why older adults search less and how this search behavior could be improved. The research is motivated by the broader issues of older users' search behavior, while focusing on the emotional usability of search engine user interfaces. Therefore, this research attempts to accomplish the following three objectives: a) to explore the …
An Approximation Algorithm For The Stable Marriagae Problem With Ties And Incomplete Lists, Rommel Jalasutram
An Approximation Algorithm For The Stable Marriagae Problem With Ties And Incomplete Lists, Rommel Jalasutram
All Dissertations
Consider the bipartite matching problem with two sets of participants: men (L) and women (R). Each person participating has a strict and complete preference list over participants from the other set. The goal is to pair men and women such that no one can improve their partner by breaking away from the centralized matching scheme. Problems that exhibit this flavor are commonly classified as ordinal matchings. Gale and Shapley showed how to obtain such a matching (otherwise known as a “stable” matching). Generalizations of this model have found relevance in several centralized matching schemes such as the National Residency Matching …
Building Information Modeling: Beyond Design, Commissioning And Construction, Timothy Brooks
Building Information Modeling: Beyond Design, Commissioning And Construction, Timothy Brooks
All Theses
Building Information Modeling (BIM) is continuing to grow in popularity among contractors and more recently among owners as the complexity and usefulness of models are improved. Many construction firms have used BIM or adopted it in their practices to some degree. However, while it is growing in popularity, its use in facility management by the owner is still lagging. This research examines how construction processes can be better organized to supply the owner a BIM that would be useful for facility management activities. The research was conducted to identify successful post-construction BIM implementation practices and the ways in which contractors …
Gender And Ethnicity Classification Using Partial Face In Biometric Applications, Jamie Lyle
Gender And Ethnicity Classification Using Partial Face In Biometric Applications, Jamie Lyle
All Dissertations
As the number of biometric applications increases, the use of non-ideal information such as images which are not strictly controlled, images taken covertly, or images where the main interest is partially occluded, also increases. Face images are a specific example of this. In these non-ideal instances, other information, such as gender and ethnicity, can be determined to narrow the search space and/or improve the recognition results. Some research exists for gender classification using partial-face images, but there is little research involving ethnic classifications on such images. Few datasets have had the ethnic diversity needed and sufficient subjects for each ethnicity …
Computational Exploration Of Chaotic Dynamics With An Associated Biological System, Akshay Galande
Computational Exploration Of Chaotic Dynamics With An Associated Biological System, Akshay Galande
All Theses
Study of microbial populations has always been topic of interest for researchers. This is because microorganisms have been of instrumental use in the various studies related to population dynamics, artificial bio-fuels etc. Comparatively short lifespan and availability are two big advantages they have which make them suitable for aforementioned studies. Their population dynamic helps us understand evolution. A lot can be revealed about resource consumption of a system by comparing it to the similar system where bacteria play the role of different factors in the system. Also, study of population dynamics of bacteria can reveal necessary initial conditions for the …
Scientific Application Acceleration Utilizing Heterogeneous Architectures, Edwin Weill
Scientific Application Acceleration Utilizing Heterogeneous Architectures, Edwin Weill
All Theses
Within the past decade, there have been substantial leaps in computer architectures to exploit the parallelism that is inherently present in many applications. The scientific community has benefited from the emergence of not only multi-core processors, but also other, less traditional architectures including general purpose graphical processing units (GPGPUs), field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), and Intel's many integrated cores (MICs) architecture (i.e. Xeon Phi). The popularity of the GPGPU has increased rapidly because of their ability to perform massive amounts of parallel computation quickly and at low cost with an ease of programmability. Also, with the addition of high-level programming …
Serious Toys: Teaching Computer Science Concepts To Pre-Collegiate Students, Yvon Feaster
Serious Toys: Teaching Computer Science Concepts To Pre-Collegiate Students, Yvon Feaster
All Dissertations
Advancements in science and engineering have driven innovation in the United States for more than two centuries. The last several decades have brought to the forefront the importance of such innovation to our domestic and global economies. To continue to succeed in this information-based, technologically advanced society, we must ensure that the next generation of students are developing computational thinking skills beyond what was acceptable in past years. Computational thinking represents a collection of structured problem solving skills that cross-cut educational disciplines. There is significant future value in introducing these skills as early as practical in students' academic careers. Over …
Underwater God Rays From A Custom Volume Renderer, Gowthaman Ilango
Underwater God Rays From A Custom Volume Renderer, Gowthaman Ilango
All Theses
Peanut Butter Jelly, directed by Alexander Beaty, is a 51 second computer-animated short film produced by Digital Production Arts. The plot focuses on a fight sequence between a pirate jelly fish and a flyboy jelly fish over a peanut butter jar. The production demanded a photo-realistic computer generated underwater environment, which lead to the need for a custom built volume renderer to render high quality god rays. This thesis illustrates the requirement for a customized volume renderer for the production, the algorithm, and the implementation of the renderer. It also describes a tool created for Maya 2012 which gives the …
Peanut Butter Jelly: An Animated Short Film, Alexander Beaty
Peanut Butter Jelly: An Animated Short Film, Alexander Beaty
All Theses
Peanut Butter Jelly is an animated short film based on the concept of two species of Jellyfish clashing over a jar of peanut butter. The production spanned a year and involved the artistic effort of 12 Digital Production Arts graduate students as well as a support team of 10 students from various programs within the University.
Integrating Visual Mnemonics And Input Feedback With Passphrases To Improve The Usability And Security Of Digital Authentication, Kevin Juang
All Dissertations
The need for both usable and secure authentication is more pronounced than ever before. Security researchers and professionals will need to have a deep understanding of human factors to address these issues. Due to their ubiquity, recoverability, and low barrier of entry, passwords remain the most common means of digital authentication. However, fundamental human nature dictates that it is exceedingly difficult for people to generate secure passwords on their own. System-generated random passwords can be secure but are often unusable, which is why most passwords are still created by humans. We developed a simple system for automatically generating mnemonic phrases …
Designing For Understanding: Helping Older Adults Understand Over-The-Counter Medication Information, Aqueasha Martin
Designing For Understanding: Helping Older Adults Understand Over-The-Counter Medication Information, Aqueasha Martin
All Dissertations
This research is motivated by some of the challenges faced by the healthcare community in communicating health information to the public and the potential for user-centered technology design to address some of these limitations. Each year, thousands die or are injured due to adverse-drug events due to both prescription and over-the-counter medications. The integration of technology has improved the incidence rate for adverse-drug events due to prescription medications. Similarly, personal health records and other consumer-based health applications have been shown to be beneficial for helping individuals manage their health. Despite this growing body of research, little to no research has …
Developing A Predictive Model Of Heart Wall Motion In Fluoroscopic Images, Christopher Hawkins
Developing A Predictive Model Of Heart Wall Motion In Fluoroscopic Images, Christopher Hawkins
All Theses
Image guided surgery (IGS) is an integral part of minimally invasive surgery. IGS combines pre- and perioperative images acquired from different imaging modalities to give the surgeon a more complete view of the internal organs. These modalities include computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, and fluoroscopy, to name a few. Fluoroscopy is also known as video x-ray and is becoming increasingly popular in procedures around the heart. Unfortunately, this increase in fluoroscopy use also brings an increase in exposure to ionizing radiation for the patient and the surgeon. This radiation can lead to increased cancer risk and a number of other …
Getting Sandy: Creating Collapsing Sand Effects For An Ode To Love, Pisut Wisessing
Getting Sandy: Creating Collapsing Sand Effects For An Ode To Love, Pisut Wisessing
All Theses
This thesis presents an artistic approach of creating collapsing sand effects in Brown Bag Films' animated short, An Ode To Love, directed by Matthew Darragh. A combination of rigid body simulation and fluid simulation tools, which are available in Houdini 3D animation software version 13, was used to successfully complete the task. A detailed design and implementation process to achieve the effects is documented in this work.
Protein Nano-Object Integrator: Generating Atomic-Style Objects For Use In Molecular Biophysics, Nicholas Smith
Protein Nano-Object Integrator: Generating Atomic-Style Objects For Use In Molecular Biophysics, Nicholas Smith
All Theses
As researchers obtain access to greater and greater amounts of computational power, focus has shifted towards modeling macroscopic objects while still maintaining atomic-level details. The Protein Nano-Object Integrator (ProNOI) presented here has been designed to provide a streamlined solution for creating and designing macro-scale objects with atomic-level details to be used in molecular simulations and tools. To accomplish this, two different interfaces were developed: a Protein Data Bank (PDB), PDB-focused interface for generating regularly-shaped three-dimensional atomic objects and a 2D image-based interface for tracing images with irregularly shaped objects and then extracting three-dimensional models from these images. Each interface is …
Convergence Of A Reinforcement Learning Algorithm In Continuous Domains, Stephen Carden
Convergence Of A Reinforcement Learning Algorithm In Continuous Domains, Stephen Carden
All Dissertations
In the field of Reinforcement Learning, Markov Decision Processes with a finite number of states and actions have been well studied, and there exist algorithms capable of producing a sequence of policies which converge to an optimal policy with probability one. Convergence guarantees for problems with continuous states also exist. Until recently, no online algorithm for continuous states and continuous actions has been proven to produce optimal policies. This Dissertation contains the results of research into reinforcement learning algorithms for problems in which both the state and action spaces are continuous. The problems to be solved are introduced formally as …
The Design And Implementation Of An Over-The-Top Cloud-Based Vertical Handover Decision Service For Heterogeneous Wireless Networks, Adam Hodges
All Theses
The widespread availability of heterogeneous wireless networks (hetnets) presents a resource allocation challenge to network operators and administrators. Overlapping network coverage should be utilized to its fullest extent, providing users with a fair share of bandwidth while maximizing the efficient use of the operator's resources. Currently, network selection occurs locally at the mobile device and does not take into account factors such as the state of other networks that might be available in the device's location. The local decision made by the device can often result in underutilization of network resources and a degraded user experience. This type of selfish …
A Computational Model Of Memetic Evolution: Optimizing Collective Intelligence, Noah Welsh
A Computational Model Of Memetic Evolution: Optimizing Collective Intelligence, Noah Welsh
All Dissertations
The purpose of this study was to create an adaptive agent based simulation modeling the processes of creative collaboration. This model aided in the development of a new evolutionary based framework through which education scholars, academics, and professionals in all disciplines and industries can work to optimize their collective ability to find creative solutions to complex problems. The basic premise follows that the process of idea exchange, parallels the role sexual reproduction in biological evolution and is essential to society's collective ability to solve complex problems. The study outlined a set of assumptions used to develop a new theory of …
Efficient Control Of Assets In A Modern Production Pipeline, Timothy Curtis
Efficient Control Of Assets In A Modern Production Pipeline, Timothy Curtis
All Theses
Managing large collections of assets created in today's CG productions is no easy task. This thesis examines basic production hierarchies and identifies problems that arise without proper workflow and asset control. The possibility of hundreds of assets being created in several workflows each week creates the potential for extraordinary time waste and user error without a system to track and manage the files being produced. It is becoming increasingly necessary to utilize methods during production that enforce naming and storage standards to prevent catastrophic data loss. This thesis presents an implementation of a customized database used to track all of …
A Memento Of Complexity: The Rhetorics Of Memory, Ambience, And Emergence, Glen Southergill
A Memento Of Complexity: The Rhetorics Of Memory, Ambience, And Emergence, Glen Southergill
All Dissertations
Drawing from complexity theory, this dissertation develops a schema of rhetorical memory that exhibits extended characteristics. Scholars traditionally conceptualize memory, the fourth canon in classical rhetoric, as place (loci) or image (phantasm). However, memory rhetoric resists the traditional loci-phantasm framework and instead emerges from enmeshments of interiority, collectivity, and technology. Emergence considers the dynamics of fundamental parts that generate complex systems and offers a methodological lens to theorizing memory. The resulting construct informs everyday life, which includes interfacing with pervasive computing or sensing familiarity. Further, congruently with a neurological turn that contradicts simplification, this dissertation resituates rhetorical memory as generative …
Meshpotato: A C++/Python Api For Production Volumetric Rendering, Kevin Coley
Meshpotato: A C++/Python Api For Production Volumetric Rendering, Kevin Coley
All Theses
MeshPotato is a production volume rendering API written in C++. Its purpose is to simplify the creation of high quality volumetric effects such as fire, smoke, clouds and explosions. MeshPotato has been designed to be extensible and flexible for quick changes. Python bindings have been implemented with this library to allow for tools that are scripted and integrated within popular 3D modeling applications such as Maya and Houdini. The design of MeshPotato is discussed along with its plugin system, volume rendering API and some results from using the tool.
An Automated Build System For Articulated Characters, James Sledge
An Automated Build System For Articulated Characters, James Sledge
All Theses
Rigging is the process of designing and implementing the manipulation architecture for an animated three-dimensional character. Rigs that give the animator the most control tend to be the most difficult to set up and maintain. Due to the linear nature of some elements of rigging, the more complicated a rig, the more time-intensive--and therefore more expensive--to achieve a high quality rig. A solution to complex rig iterability is to automate as much of the process as possible. The topic of this thesis is a framework for modular rigging automation, with a focus on quick and efficient rig iteration. A rigger …
The Rusterizer: An Art-Directable And Semi-Procedural Tool For Generating Rust Surfaces, Karen Stritzinger
The Rusterizer: An Art-Directable And Semi-Procedural Tool For Generating Rust Surfaces, Karen Stritzinger
All Theses
The Rusterizer is an art-directable tool designed to facilitate the creation of rust on the surfaces of 3d models. Cellular automata are combined with a procedural shader to create an animated growth effect. A workflow for using the tool is provided. The result is demonstrated with a time-lapse animation of a robot in an alley as it rusts. Future extensions and improvements to the tool are suggested.
Ear Contour Detection And Modeling Using Statistical Shape Models, Satish Ravindran
Ear Contour Detection And Modeling Using Statistical Shape Models, Satish Ravindran
All Theses
Ear detection is an actively growing area of research because of its applications in human head tracking and biometric recognition. In head tracking, it is used to augment face detectors and to perform pose estimation. In biometric systems, it is used both as an independent modality and in multi-modal biometric recognition. The ear shape is the preferred feature used to perform detection because of its unique structure in both 2D color images and 3D range images. Ear shape models have also been used in literature to perform ear detection, but at a cost of a loss in information about the …
Real-Time Particle Simulation And Motion Capture Interaction, Amanda Morland
Real-Time Particle Simulation And Motion Capture Interaction, Amanda Morland
All Theses
This thesis presents the design and development of a program that allows artists to explore and create visual effects from the interaction between a particle system and motion captured data. A spatial subdivision scheme was developed to ensure fast and efficient particle-mesh collisions, allowing the user to interact with the system as it runs. Motion captured data was applied to create different animation routines which include a tango electronica dance and a tribal magician choreography. The particle system was created to work in conjunction with these animations and developed to be as versatile as possible, allowing for a multitude of …
Lighting And Compositing For Project Hero, Brooke Buckley
Lighting And Compositing For Project Hero, Brooke Buckley
All Theses
With tragedies such as the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary on the rise in the last few years, brainstorming ideas that would prevent that type of violence in schools has become necessary. One such scenario involves a teleoperated robot, manned by local police, which would track down and subdue an intruder until police could arrive at the location. This thesis follows the process of creating a computer-generated robot and compositing it seamlessly into a real environment for the production, Project Hero. This project is a short film that shows a scenario in which a robot would be used to subdue …
Volumetric Cloud Rendering: An Animation Of Clouds, Zhaoxin Ye
Volumetric Cloud Rendering: An Animation Of Clouds, Zhaoxin Ye
All Theses
This paper demonstrates a production workflow for a volumetric-rendering-based short animation about clouds. The animation is based on the concept of a giant fish swimming in the sky from Zhuangzi's philosophical story. The algorithm and implementation for the modeling and rendering of clouds are also presented. A renderer was developed that uses the OpenVDB library for data storage, fast retrieving and grid manipulation. A user-friendly pipeline was also developed for cloud modeling and rendering, which used Python and XML for adjusting rendering parameters. The pipeline includes Maya to build the rough cloud model and Houdini to calculate the interior light …
Long-Term Multi-Dimensional Interactive Time-Lapse Photography Using Microsoft Kinect, Daniel Mccoy
Long-Term Multi-Dimensional Interactive Time-Lapse Photography Using Microsoft Kinect, Daniel Mccoy
All Theses
In this thesis, a method is presented for the capture and interactive presentation of long-term multi-dimensional time-lapse photography. Time-lapse capture is commonly used for the observation based study of relatively long term phenomena such as plant growth and weather patterns. In terms of filmic devices, the visual time compression effect is complementary to slow motion and is nearly as prevalent. In this project, commonly available camera and computer equipment is used to capture images autonomously with minimal system supervision. A set of images is established, using long term, short interval continuous capture at a fixed position. Results are presented demonstrating …
Design Of A Custom Software Application To Monitor And Communicate Cnc Machining Process Information To Aid In Chatter Identification, Valerie Pezzullo
Design Of A Custom Software Application To Monitor And Communicate Cnc Machining Process Information To Aid In Chatter Identification, Valerie Pezzullo
All Theses
In any manufacturing environment, it is important to be able to monitor the Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machining process so that high quality parts can be produced in the least amount of time in order to be profitable. This involves acquiring the proper parameters needed from the machine's controller, which can prove to be difficult with proprietary machine tools that tend to limit access to the internal data collected by the controller. This closed approach to controller design also means that many technological advances that have recently become prevalent in society are not being adopted in the manufacturing industry, preventing …
White Noise And Newer Media: The Prophetic Impact Of Jack's Avatars, Caleb Milligan
White Noise And Newer Media: The Prophetic Impact Of Jack's Avatars, Caleb Milligan
All Theses
In this paper, I analyze Don DeLillo's White Noise through a contemporary techno-literate approach that utilizes Internet and game studies to better understand its protagonist, Jack Gladney, and to reevaluate the novel's critical legacy. Jack is not a modernist living in a postmodern world, as critics like Tom LeClair, John Duvall, and Leonard Wilcox have claimed for the many years since the publication of this novel. Lacking the authentic consistency for such a title, he is instead a postmodern human simulacrum sampling different character types to avoid his lack of discernable self. In each role he plays, however, he is …