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Structure Learning Of A Behavior Network For Context Dependent Adaptability, Ou Li Dec 2006

Structure Learning Of A Behavior Network For Context Dependent Adaptability, Ou Li

Computer Science Theses

One mechanism for an intelligent agent to adapt to substantial environmental changes is to change its decision making structure. Pervious work in this area has developed a context-dependent behavior selection architecture that uses structure change, i.e., changing the mutual inhibition structures of a behavior network, as the main mechanism to generate different behavior patterns according to different behavioral contexts. Given the important of network structure, this work investigates how the structure of a behavior network can be learned. We developed a structure learning method based on generic algorithm and applied it to a model crayfish that needs to survive in …


Analyzing The Effects Of Adolescent Risky Behaviors On Suicidal Ideation, Marchelle Elizabeth Sanchez Dec 2006

Analyzing The Effects Of Adolescent Risky Behaviors On Suicidal Ideation, Marchelle Elizabeth Sanchez

Mathematics Theses

This study is an analysis of adolescent risk behaviors contributing to an increased rate of suicidal ideation for 12 to 18 year olds. The Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System Survey (YRBSS) is an epidemiologic survey designed to monitor the prevalence of risky behaviors of adolescents in middle and high school1. The YRBSS is a complex sample survey with a three-stage cluster design. Multiple logistic regression is used to analyze the data, including methods of analysis to address issues in complex survey design. Results of this study indicate several different risk factors that influence the rate of suicidal ideation among adolescents, …


Qos Multimedia Multicast Routing: A Component Based Primal Dual Approach, Faheem Akhtar Hussain Dec 2006

Qos Multimedia Multicast Routing: A Component Based Primal Dual Approach, Faheem Akhtar Hussain

Computer Science Theses

The QoS Steiner Tree Problem asks for the most cost efficient way to multicast multimedia to a heterogeneous collection of users with different data consumption rates. We assume that the cost of using a link is not constant but rather depends on the maximum bandwidth routed through the link. Formally, given a graph with costs on the edges, a source node and a set of terminal nodes, each one with a bandwidth requirement, the goal is to find a Steiner tree containing the source, and the cheapest assignment of bandwidth to each of its edges so that each source-to-terminal path …


Toward A Heuristic Model For Evaluating The Complexity Of Computer Security Visualization Interface, Hsiu-Chung Wang Dec 2006

Toward A Heuristic Model For Evaluating The Complexity Of Computer Security Visualization Interface, Hsiu-Chung Wang

Computer Science Theses

Computer security visualization has gained much attention in the research community in the past few years. However, the advancement in security visualization research has been hampered by the lack of standardization in visualization design, centralized datasets, and evaluation methods. We propose a new heuristic model for evaluating the complexity of computer security visualizations. This complexity evaluation method is designed to evaluate the efficiency of performing visual search in security visualizations in terms of measuring critical memory capacity load needed to perform such tasks. Our method is based on research in cognitive psychology along with characteristics found in a majority of …


Comparison Of Methods Used For Aligning Protein Sequences, Sangeetha Madangopal Dec 2006

Comparison Of Methods Used For Aligning Protein Sequences, Sangeetha Madangopal

Computer Science Theses

Comparing protein sequences is an essential procedure that has many applications in the field of bioinformatics. The recent advances in computational capabilities and algorithm design, simplified the comparison procedure of protein sequences from several databases. Various algorithms have emerged using state of the art approaches to match protein sequences based on structural and functional properties of the amino acids. The matching involves structural alignment, and this alignment may be global; comprising of the whole length of the protein, or local; comprising of the sub-sequences of the proteins. Families of related proteins are found by clustering sequence alignments. The frequency distributions …


Scalable Proxy Architecture For Mobile And Peer-To-Peer Networks, Praveena Jayanthi Dec 2006

Scalable Proxy Architecture For Mobile And Peer-To-Peer Networks, Praveena Jayanthi

Computer Science Theses

The growth of wireless telecommunications has stipulated the interest for anywhere-anytime computing. The synergy between networking and mobility will engender new collaborative applications with mobile devices on heterogeneous platforms. One such middleware is “SYSTEM ON MOBILE DEVICES”, SYD developed by the Yamacraw Embedded Systems research team. This type of middleware is an opening step towards Peer-to-Peer mobile networks. This project envisioned collaborative applications among mobile devices and PDAs were used as servers. This thesis studies various existing architectures in mobile computing and their scalability issues. We also proposed new scalable flexible thick client proxy system FTCPS, an architecture suitable for …


An Agent Based Transaction Manager For Multidatabase Systems, Sugandhi Madiraju Dec 2006

An Agent Based Transaction Manager For Multidatabase Systems, Sugandhi Madiraju

Computer Science Theses

A multidatabase system (MDBMS) is a facility that allows users to access data located in multiple autonomous database management systems (DBMSs) at different sites. To ensure global atomicity for multidatabase transactions, a reliable global atomic commitment protocol is a possible solution. In this protocol a centralized transaction manager (TM) receives global transactions, submits subtransactions to the appropriate sites via AGENTS. An AGENT is a component of MDBS that runs on each site; AGENTS after receiving subtransactions from the transaction manager perform the transaction and send the results back to TM. We have presented a unique proof-of-concept, a JAVA application for …


Estimate The True Pass Probability For Near-Real-Time Monitor Challenge Data Using Bayesian Analysis, Yuqing Xiao Dec 2006

Estimate The True Pass Probability For Near-Real-Time Monitor Challenge Data Using Bayesian Analysis, Yuqing Xiao

Mathematics Theses

The U.S. Army¡¯s Chemical Demilitarization are designed to store, treat and destroy the nation¡¯s aging chemical weapons. It operates Near-Real-Time Monitors and Deport Area Monitoring Systems to detect chemical agent at concentrations before they become dangerous to workers, public health and the environment. CDC recommends that the sampling and analytical methods measure within 25% of the true concentration 95% of the time, and if this criterion is not met the alarm set point or reportable level should be adjusted. Two methods were provided by Army¡¯s Programmatic Laboratory and Monitoring Quality Assurance Plan to evaluate the monitoring systems based on CDC …


Spectrally Arbitrary Tree Sign Pattern Matrices, Krishna Kaphle Dec 2006

Spectrally Arbitrary Tree Sign Pattern Matrices, Krishna Kaphle

Mathematics Theses

A sign pattern (matrix) is a matrix whose entries are from the set {+,–, 0}. A sign pattern matrix A is a spectrally arbitrary pattern if for every monic real polynomial p(x) of degree n there exists a real matrix B whose entries agree in sign with A such that the characteristic polynomial of B is p(x). All 3 × 3 SAP's, as well as tree sign patterns with star graphs that are SAP's, have already been characterized. We investigate tridiagonal sign patterns of order 4. All irreducible tridiagonal SAP's are identified. Necessary and sufficient conditions for an irreducible tridiagonal …


Fuzzy-Granular Based Data Mining For Effective Decision Support In Biomedical Applications, Yuanchen He Dec 2006

Fuzzy-Granular Based Data Mining For Effective Decision Support In Biomedical Applications, Yuanchen He

Computer Science Dissertations

Due to complexity of biomedical problems, adaptive and intelligent knowledge discovery and data mining systems are highly needed to help humans to understand the inherent mechanism of diseases. For biomedical classification problems, typically it is impossible to build a perfect classifier with 100% prediction accuracy. Hence a more realistic target is to build an effective Decision Support System (DSS). In this dissertation, a novel adaptive Fuzzy Association Rules (FARs) mining algorithm, named FARM-DS, is proposed to build such a DSS for binary classification problems in the biomedical domain. Empirical studies show that FARM-DS is competitive to state-of-the-art classifiers in terms …


A Framework For Dynamic Terrain With Application In Off-Road Ground Vehicle Simulations, Anthony Scott Aquilio Dec 2006

A Framework For Dynamic Terrain With Application In Off-Road Ground Vehicle Simulations, Anthony Scott Aquilio

Computer Science Dissertations

The dissertation develops a framework for the visualization of dynamic terrains for use in interactive real-time 3D systems. Terrain visualization techniques may be classified as either static or dynamic. Static terrain solutions simulate rigid surface types exclusively; whereas dynamic solutions can also represent non-rigid surfaces. Systems that employ a static terrain approach lack realism due to their rigid nature. Disregarding the accurate representation of terrain surface interaction is rationalized because of the inherent difficulties associated with providing runtime dynamism. Nonetheless, dynamic terrain systems are a more correct solution because they allow the terrain database to be modified at run-time for …


Cad Tools For Dna Micro-Array Design, Manufacture And Application, Nisar Hundewale Dec 2006

Cad Tools For Dna Micro-Array Design, Manufacture And Application, Nisar Hundewale

Computer Science Dissertations

Motivation: As the human genome project progresses and some microbial and eukaryotic genomes are recognized, numerous biotechnological processes have attracted increasing number of biologists, bioengineers and computer scientists recently. Biotechnological processes profoundly involve production and analysis of highthroughput experimental data. Numerous sequence libraries of DNA and protein structures of a large number of micro-organisms and a variety of other databases related to biology and chemistry are available. For example, microarray technology, a novel biotechnology, promises to monitor the whole genome at once, so that researchers can study the whole genome on the global level and have a better picture of …


A Characterization Of Wireless Network Interface Card Active Scanning Algorithms, Vaibhav Gupta Dec 2006

A Characterization Of Wireless Network Interface Card Active Scanning Algorithms, Vaibhav Gupta

Computer Science Theses

In this thesis, we characterize the proprietary active scanning algorithm of several wireless network interface cards. Our experiments are the first of its kind to observe the complete scanning process as the wireless network interface cards probe all the channels in the 2.4GHz spectrum. We discuss the: 1) correlation of channel popularity during active scanning and access point channel deployment popularity; 2) number of probe request frames statistics on each channel; 3) channel probe order; and 4) dwell time. The knowledge gained from characterizing wireless network interface cards is important for the following reasons: 1) it helps one understand how …


Dct Implementation On Gpu, Serpil Tokdemir Dec 2006

Dct Implementation On Gpu, Serpil Tokdemir

Computer Science Theses

There has been a great progress in the field of graphics processors. Since, there is no rise in the speed of the normal CPU processors; Designers are coming up with multi-core, parallel processors. Because of their popularity in parallel processing, GPUs are becoming more and more attractive for many applications. With the increasing demand in utilizing GPUs, there is a great need to develop operating systems that handle the GPU to full capacity. GPUs offer a very efficient environment for many image processing applications. This thesis explores the processing power of GPUs for digital image compression using Discrete cosine transform.


An Enhanced Algorithm To Find Dominating Set Nodes In Ad Hoc Wireless Networks, Naresh Nanuvala Dec 2006

An Enhanced Algorithm To Find Dominating Set Nodes In Ad Hoc Wireless Networks, Naresh Nanuvala

Computer Science Theses

A wireless ad hoc network is a collection of wireless mobile nodes forming a temporary network without the aid of any established infrastructure or centralized administration. A connection is achieved between two nodes through a single hop transmission if they are directly connected or multi-hop transmission if they are not. The wireless networks face challenges to form an optimal routing protocol. Some approaches are based on a dominating set, which has all the nodes either in the set or within its neighborhood. The proposed algorithm is an enhancement of the distributed algorithm proposed by Wu and Li. The simulation results …


The Association Of Hypertension Diagnosis With Smoking Cessation: Application Of Multiple Logistic Regression Using Biostatistical And Epidemiological Methods, Latonia Clay Dec 2006

The Association Of Hypertension Diagnosis With Smoking Cessation: Application Of Multiple Logistic Regression Using Biostatistical And Epidemiological Methods, Latonia Clay

Mathematics Theses

The Association of Hypertension Diagnosis with Smoking Cessation: Application of Multiple Logistic Regression Using Biostatistical and Epidemiological Methods by LaTonia A. Clay Under the Direction of Yu-Sheng Hsu, PhD. ABSTRACT Hypertension and smoking are two major issues threatening the nation’s health. Previous studies examining their relationship have resulted in conflicting reports. The aim of this study is to determine if a relationship exists between smoking cessation and hypertension diagnosis. Data from the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III) were used in this investigation. Physical examination measurements of blood pressure and self-reported diagnosis and smoking behavior were used …


Characterizations In Domination Theory, Andrew Robert Plummer Dec 2006

Characterizations In Domination Theory, Andrew Robert Plummer

Mathematics Theses

Let G = (V,E) be a graph. A set R is a restrained dominating set (total restrained dominating set, resp.) if every vertex in V − R (V) is adjacent to a vertex in R and (every vertex in V −R) to a vertex in V −R. The restrained domination number of G (total restrained domination number of G), denoted by gamma_r(G) (gamma_tr(G)), is the smallest cardinality of a restrained dominating set (total restrained dominating set) of G. If T is a tree of order n, then gamma_r(T) is greater than or equal to (n+2)/3. We show that gamma_tr(T) is …


Selective Recognition Of Quadruplex Dna By Small Molecules, Elizabeth W. White Dec 2006

Selective Recognition Of Quadruplex Dna By Small Molecules, Elizabeth W. White

Chemistry Dissertations

Structure-specific recognition of nucleic acids is a promising method to reduce the size of the recognition unit required to achieve the necessary selectivity and binding affinity for small molecules. It has been demonstrated recently that G-quadruplex DNA structures can be targeted by organic cations in a structure-specific manner. Structural targets of quadruplexes include the planar end surfaces of the G-tetrad stacked columns as well as four grooves. The significant structural differences between quadruplex DNA and duplex DNA make quadruplex DNA a very attractive target for highly selective, structure-specific drug design. We have used a variety of biophysical techniques including circular …


The X-Ray Variability Of Seyfert Galaxies, Kevin Marshall Dec 2006

The X-Ray Variability Of Seyfert Galaxies, Kevin Marshall

Physics and Astronomy Dissertations

Strong and variable X-ray emission has long been known to be a universal property of active galaxies. However, despite years of study, the exact nature of the variability remains relatively unknown. We present here results of a multi-year monitoring campaign of a sample of Seyfert galaxies (3C 120, Mkn 509, 3C 390.3, and Akn 120), carried out using the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE). For Mkn 509, we also present results of optical monitoring. Mkn 509 shows a strong correlation between X-ray and optical variations, with the optical leading the X-ray by 25 days. We also investigate the rms-flux relationship …


Threshold Extension Of Gallium Arsenide/Aluminum Gallium Arsenide Terahertz Detectors And Switching In Heterostructures, Mohamed Buhary Rinzan Dec 2006

Threshold Extension Of Gallium Arsenide/Aluminum Gallium Arsenide Terahertz Detectors And Switching In Heterostructures, Mohamed Buhary Rinzan

Physics and Astronomy Dissertations

In this work, homojunction interfacial workfunction internal photoemission (HIWIP) detectors based on GaAs, and heterojunction interfacial workfunction internal photoemission (HEIWIP) detectors based mainly on the Gallium Arsenide/Aluminum Gallium Arsenide material system are presented. Design principles of HIWIP and HEIWIP detectors, such as free carrier absorption, photocarrier generation, photoemission, and responsivity, are discussed in detail. Results of p-type HIWIPs based on GaAs material are presented. Homojunction detectors based on p-type GaAs were found to limit their operating wavelength range. This is mainly due to band depletion arising through carrier transitions from the heavy/light hole bands to the split off band. Designing …


Spatial Analysis Of Substantiated Child Maltreatment In Metro Atlanta, Georgia, Yueqin Zhou Dec 2006

Spatial Analysis Of Substantiated Child Maltreatment In Metro Atlanta, Georgia, Yueqin Zhou

Geosciences Theses

Identifying high-risk areas for child maltreatment to ultimately aid public health agencies for interventions is necessary for protecting children at high risk. Rates of substantiated neglect and physical/emotional abuse in 2000-2002 are computed for the census tracts in the urban area of five counties in Metro Atlanta, Georgia, and analyzed using spatial regression to determine their relationships with twelve risk variables computed from the Vital Records births and the 2000 Census data. After accounting for multicollinearity among risk variables and spatial autocorrelation among observations for neighboring locations, it is found that high percentages of (1) births to non-married mothers, (2) …


Insights Into Sulfonated Phthalocyanines; Insights Into Anionic Tetraaryl Porphyrins; Irradiation Of Cationic Metalloporphyrins Bound To Dna, Anila Fiaz Gill Dec 2006

Insights Into Sulfonated Phthalocyanines; Insights Into Anionic Tetraaryl Porphyrins; Irradiation Of Cationic Metalloporphyrins Bound To Dna, Anila Fiaz Gill

Chemistry Dissertations

Sulfonated porphyrins and phthalocyanines have been under consideration as microbicides, compounds which, when used in a topical formulation, can prevent transmission of the human immunodeficiency virus. Our studies have been directed toward the characterization of members of these classes. For the sulfonated phthalocyanines, matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) mass spectrometry was helpful in determining the extent of sulfonation. We present the first report of spectroscopic characterization of a pentasulfonated phthalocyanine. Capillary electrophoresis data were sensitive to the concentration of the compounds (Chapter 1). Mass spectrometry was also very useful for establishing the extent of sulfonation in series of sulfonated porphyrins. Capillary …


Synthesis Of Boronic Acid Based Sensors For Glucose And Sialic Acid And Synthesis Of Novel And Selective Pde4 Enzyme Inhibitors, Gurpreet Kaur Dec 2006

Synthesis Of Boronic Acid Based Sensors For Glucose And Sialic Acid And Synthesis Of Novel And Selective Pde4 Enzyme Inhibitors, Gurpreet Kaur

Chemistry Dissertations

The boronic acid functional group is known to bind compounds with the diol group tightly and reversibly in aqueous environment and has been used as a recognition moiety for the design of carbohydrate sensors. The first chapter of the dissertation studies the synthesis and substitution effect on the affinity and selectivity of a known boronic acid-based glucose sensor. In such a sensor design effort, the availability of a signaling event, whether it is fluorescence or UV, is crucial. The second chapter studies the detailed mechanism on how a well-known fluorescent boronic acid compound changes fluorescent properties upon binding. A new …


Syntheses And Dna Interactions Of Acridine And Phenothiazine Based Photosensitizers, Beth Wilson Dec 2006

Syntheses And Dna Interactions Of Acridine And Phenothiazine Based Photosensitizers, Beth Wilson

Chemistry Dissertations

Photosensitizing molecules and/or metal complexes that interact with DNA via intercalation and groove binding have potential applications as molecular structural probes, as footprinting reagents and in photodynamic therapeutics. To this regard, small molecules that bind to DNA and the energetics involved in these interactions, acridine-based therapeutics, photosensitization, photodynamic therapy, phenothiazine-mediated photosensitization, DNA photocleavage reaction mechanisms and photosensitizing metal complexes are introduced in Chapter I. Next, in Chapter II, the synthesis of a photonuclease consisting of a 3,6-acridinediamine chromophore attached to four metal-coordinating imidazole rings is described. The DNA photocleavage yields, emission quantum yields, and thermal denaturation studies by this acridine-imadazole …


64 X 64 Bit Multiplier Using Pass Logic, Shibi Thankachan Dec 2006

64 X 64 Bit Multiplier Using Pass Logic, Shibi Thankachan

Computer Science Theses

ABSTRACT Due to the rapid progress in the field of VLSI, improvements in speed, power and area are quite evident. Research and development in this field are motivated by growing markets of portable mobile devices such as personal multimedia players, cellular phones, digital camcorders and digital cameras. Among the recently popular logic families, pass transistor logic is promising for low power applications as compared to conventional static CMOS because of lower transistor count. This thesis proposes four novel designs for Booth encoder and selector logic using pass logic principles. These new designs are implemented and used to build a 64 …


A Domain Based Approach To Crawl The Hidden Web, Milan Pandya Dec 2006

A Domain Based Approach To Crawl The Hidden Web, Milan Pandya

Computer Science Theses

There is a lot of research work being performed on indexing the Web. More and more sophisticated Web crawlers are been designed to search and index the Web faster. But all these traditional crawlers crawl only the part of Web we call “Surface Web”. They are unable to crawl the hidden portion of the Web. These traditional crawlers retrieve contents only from surface Web pages which are just a set of Web pages linked by some hyperlinks and ignoring the hidden information. Hence, they ignore tremendous amount of information hidden behind these search forms in Web pages. Most of the …


Changepoint Analysis Of Hiv Marker Responses, Joy Michelle Rogers Nov 2006

Changepoint Analysis Of Hiv Marker Responses, Joy Michelle Rogers

Mathematics Theses

We will propose a random changepoint model for the analysis of longitudinal CD4 and CD8 T-cell counts, as well as viral RNA loads, for HIV infected subjects following highly active antiretroviral treatment. The data was taken from two studies, one of the Aids Clinical Group Trial 398 and one performed by the Terry Beirn Community Programs for Clinical Research on AIDS. Models were created with the changepoint following both exponential and truncated normal distributions. The estimation of the changepoints was performed in a Bayesian analysis, with implementation in the WinBUGS software using Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods. For model selection, …


Algorithms For Computational Genetics Epidemiology, Jingwu He Sep 2006

Algorithms For Computational Genetics Epidemiology, Jingwu He

Computer Science Dissertations

The most intriguing problems in genetics epidemiology are to predict genetic disease susceptibility and to associate single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) with diseases. In such these studies, it is necessary to resolve the ambiguities in genetic data. The primary obstacle for ambiguity resolution is that the physical methods for separating two haplotypes from an individual genotype (phasing) are too expensive. Although computational haplotype inference is a well-explored problem, high error rates continue to deteriorate association accuracy. Secondly, it is essential to use a small subset of informative SNPs (tag SNPs) accurately representing the rest of the SNPs (tagging). Tagging can achieve …


Design Of Novel Molecular Micelles For Capillary Electrophoresis, Syed Asad Ali Rizvi Aug 2006

Design Of Novel Molecular Micelles For Capillary Electrophoresis, Syed Asad Ali Rizvi

Chemistry Dissertations

The research presented in this dissertation involves the synthesis, characterization, and application of novel anionic and cationic chiral molecular micelles in capillary electrophoresis (CE) for the separation of diverse chiral compounds. Chapter 1 presents brief overview of the surfactants, micelle polymer, CE and micellar electrokinetic chromatography (MEKC). Chapter 2 describes the simultaneous enantioseparation of eight single chiral center â-blockers using two novel leucine and isoleucine based polymeric surfactants. The simultaneous enantioseparation of multichiral center bearing â-blockers, nadolol and labetalol is described in chapter 3. A synergistic approach, using a combination of polysodium N-undecenoxycarbonyl-L-isoleucinate (poly-L-SUCIL) and sulfated â-CD showed dramatic enantioseparation …


Fuzzy Mouse Cursor Control System For Computer Users With Spinal Cord Injuries, Tihomir Surdilovic Aug 2006

Fuzzy Mouse Cursor Control System For Computer Users With Spinal Cord Injuries, Tihomir Surdilovic

Computer Science Theses

People with severe motor-impairments due to Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) or Spinal Cord Dysfunction (SCD), often experience difficulty with accurate and efficient control of pointing devices (Keates et al., 02). Usually this leads to their limited integration to society as well as limited unassisted control over the environment. The questions “How can someone with severe motor-impairments perform mouse pointer control as accurately and efficiently as an able-bodied person?” and “How can these interactions be advanced through use of Computational Intelligence (CI)?” are the driving forces behind the research described in this paper. Through this research, a novel fuzzy mouse cursor …