Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Subject Analysis Ex Machina: Developing A Subject Heading Recommendation Service For Jmu Libraries, Steven W. Holloway

Libraries

Results of a 2022 evaluation of ANNIF, open-source software designed to generate controlled vocabulary subject headings, using James Madison University Libraries resources.

A Gentle Introduction To Chatgpt, Steven W. Holloway

Libraries

A guest lecture on the state of commercial generative transformer technology, mid-2023, to a general audience at Staunton Public Library.

An Analysis And Examination Of Consensus Attacks In Blockchain Networks, Thomas R. Clark

Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current

This paper examines consensus attacks as they relate to blockchain networks. Consensus attacks are a significant threat to the security and integrity of blockchain networks, and understanding these attacks is crucial for developers and stakeholders. The primary contribution of the paper is to present blockchain and consensus attacks in a clear and accessible manner, with the aim of making these complex concepts easily understandable for a general audience. Using literature review, the paper identifies various methods to prevent consensus attacks, including multi-chain networks, proof-of-work consensus algorithms, and network auditing and monitoring. An analysis revealed that these methods for preventing consensus …

Analyzing Motivation And Sense Of Belonging Belonging In Cs1 Review Sessions, Cory Longenecker

Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current

The Computer Science Department at James Madison University has a Teaching Assistant program which aims to help students succeed in early-level Computer Science courses. Part of this program is a review session, the Fourth Hour, which provides students extra help on the concepts taught each week in class. Historically, attendance at this review session has been low. Because of this, the study aimed to increase attendance by motivating students through interventions, primarily offering quiz retakes to students who attended. Additionally, this study looked at the reported sense of belonging for participants who attended.

We made three conclusions from survey data …

Dynamic Return Relationships In The Market For Cryptocurrency: A Var Approach, Julian Gouffray

James Madison Undergraduate Research Journal (JMURJ)

This paper examines how the Bitcoin-altcoin return relationship has evolved in periods between 2015 and 2020. To understand this relation, we observe data on the cryptocurrency Bitcoin and prominent altcoins Ethereum, Litecoin, Ripple, Stellar, and Monero, which collectively represent over 90% of the market throughout the observed period. We employ a vector autoregressive model (VAR) to produce forecast error variance decompositions, orthogonal impulse response functions, and Granger-causality tests. We find evidence that Bitcoin return variation has increasingly explained altcoin returns and that market inefficiency increased between 2017 and 2020, as shown by increased Granger causality between Bitcoin and altcoins. These …

Deep Fakes: The Algorithms That Create And Detect Them And The National Security Risks They Pose, Nick Dunard

James Madison Undergraduate Research Journal (JMURJ)

The dissemination of deep fakes for nefarious purposes poses significant national security risks to the United States, requiring an urgent development of technologies to detect their use and strategies to mitigate their effects. Deep fakes are images and videos created by or with the assistance of AI algorithms in which a person’s likeness, actions, or words have been replaced by someone else’s to deceive an audience. Often created with the help of generative adversarial networks, deep fakes can be used to blackmail, harass, exploit, and intimidate individuals and businesses; in large-scale disinformation campaigns, they can incite political tensions around the …

Heuristically Secure Threshold Lattice-Based Cryptography Schemes, James D. Dalton

Masters Theses, 2020-current

In public-key encryption, a long-term private key can be an easy target for hacking and deserves extra protection. One way to enhance its security is to share the long-term private key among multiple (say n) distributed servers; any threshold number (t, t ≤ n) of these servers are needed to collectively use the shared private key without reconstructing it. As a result, an attacker who has compromised less than t servers will still not be able to reconstruct the shared private key.

In this thesis, we studied threshold decryption schemes for lattice-based public-key en- cryption, which is one of the …

Google Books, Jody Condit Fagan

Libraries

Google Books’ (GB) full-text search of more than 40 million books offers significant value for libraries and their patrons. However, Google’s refusal to disclose information about the coverage of GB, as well as observed gaps and inaccuracies in the collection and its metadata, makes it difficult to recommend with confidence for a given research need. While most search and retrieval functions work well, glitches aren’t hard to find, which suggests GB development is focused on user experiences that relate to monetization. Privacy and equity concerns surrounding GB mirror those of other big technology platforms. Still, every librarian should familiarize themselves …

Improving A Wireless Localization System Via Machine Learning Techniques And Security Protocols, Zachary Yorio

Masters Theses, 2020-current

The recent advancements made in Internet of Things (IoT) devices have brought forth new opportunities for technologies and systems to be integrated into our everyday life. In this work, we investigate how edge nodes can effectively utilize 802.11 wireless beacon frames being broadcast from pre-existing access points in a building to achieve room-level localization. We explain the needed hardware and software for this system and demonstrate a proof of concept with experimental data analysis. Improvements to localization accuracy are shown via machine learning by implementing the random forest algorithm. Using this algorithm, historical data can train the model and make …

An Analysis Of Technological Components In Relation To Privacy In A Smart City, Kayla Rutherford, Ben Lands, A. J. Stiles

James Madison Undergraduate Research Journal (JMURJ)

A smart city is an interconnection of technological components that store, process, and wirelessly transmit information to enhance the efficiency of applications and the individuals who use those applications. Over the course of the 21st century, it is expected that an overwhelming majority of the world’s population will live in urban areas and that the number of wireless devices will increase. The resulting increase in wireless data transmission means that the privacy of data will be increasingly at risk. This paper uses a holistic problem-solving approach to evaluate the security challenges posed by the technological components that make up a …

A Pilot Study On The Impact Of Teaching Assistant Led Cs1 Study Sessions Using Peer Instruction, Megan E. Gilbert

Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current

James Madison University’s Computer Science program strives to be a student-centered learning environment with a focus on creating a community for undergraduate success. National data reveals computer science has the lowest student retention rate compared to other STEM majors. The National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT) has compiled a list of ways to retain students in Computer Science. In particular, NCWIT calls for collaboration indicate that “a sense of belonging, or a feeling of fit, is important for supporting student interest and persistence.” One aspect of creating community is the department’s longstanding commitment to provide undergraduate teaching assistants …

Detecting Credit Card Fraud: An Analysis Of Fraud Detection Techniques, William Lovo

Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current

Advancements in the modern age have brought many conveniences, one of those being credit cards. Providing an individual the ability to hold their entire purchasing power in the form of pocket-sized plastic cards have made credit cards the preferred method to complete financial transactions. However, these systems are not infallible and may provide criminals and other bad actors the opportunity to abuse them. Financial institutions and their customers lose billions of dollars every year to credit card fraud. To combat this issue, fraud detection systems are deployed to discover fraudulent activity after they have occurred. Such systems rely on advanced …

A Multi-Input Deep Learning Model For C/C++ Source Code Attribution, Richard J. Tindell Ii

Masters Theses, 2020-current

Code stylometry is applying analysis techniques to a collection of source code or binaries to determine variations in style. The variations extracted are often used to identify the author of the text or to differentiate one piece from another.

In this research, we were able to create a multi-input deep learning model that could accurately categorize and group code from multiple projects. The deep learning model took as input word-based tokenization for code comments, character-based tokenization for the source code text, and the metadata features described by A. Caliskan-Islam et al. Using these three inputs, we were able to achieve …

Generating Acoustic Projections Using 3d Models, Jake A. Brazelton

Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current

Raytracing is used in commercial graphics engines most commonly for lighting effects, but it also has many uses when it comes to acoustic simulation. Adopted directly from these computer graphics programs, the formulas presented herein enable the visualization of acoustic intensity levels throughout a 3D space using Python 3 and the OpenGL library. In addition to visualization, they also provide the ability to calculate the reverberation time and critical distance of an enclosed space in relation to its size and material makeup. The described application bundles all of these components together in a Qt5 application that allows users to view …

Towards Natural Language Understanding In Text-Based Games, Anthony Snarr

Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current

Text-based games are a very promising space for language-focused machine learning. Within them are huge hurdles in machine learning, like long-term planning and memory, interpretation and generation of natural language, unpredictability, and more. One problem to consider in the realm of natural language interpretation is how to train a machine learning model to understand a text-based game’s objective. This work considers treating this issue like a machine translation problem, where a detailed objective or list of instructions is given as input, and output is a predicted list of actions. This work also explores how a supervised learning system might learn …

Mitigating Real-Time Relay Phishing Attacks Against Mobile Push Notification Based Two-Factor Authentication Systems, Casey Silver

Masters Theses, 2020-current

This paper explores how existing push notification based two-factor authentication systems are susceptible to real-time man-in-the-middle relay attacks and proposes a system for mitigating such attacks. A fully functional reference system of the proposed mitigation was built and compared to an existing push notification two-factor authentication system while undergoing a real-time man-in-the-middle relay attack. The reference systems used cloud infrastructure for hosting, an Apple iPhone as the notification receiver, and Apple’s push notification service to send notifications. A publicly available tool for conducting real-time man-in-the-middle relay attacks was used to conduct the attacks. The results of the tests were recorded …

Redundancy Effect Of Vehicular Cloud’S Environment Using Location Estimate (Revise), Mohamed El-Tawab, Samy El-Tawab, M. Hossain Heydari

Showcase of Graduate Student Scholarship and Creative Activities

The rapid growth of modern wireless technology increases the invention of new applications using the concept of Internet of Things (IoT). Vehicular Cloud, which is a concept introduced recently to use the vehicles sitting idle for hours as a processing devices, has been a hot topic. This subject became more popular after the Department of Transportation’s (DOT) announcement of mandatory wireless capabilities of each vehicle since 2015. We investigate the idea of benefiting from the unused processing power of vehicles sitting in parking lots for a long period of time (e.g. an airport, or train station). Moreover, researchers propose the …

Modeling A Chaotic Billiard: The Bunimovich Stadium, Randal Shoemaker

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

The Bunimovich stadium is a chaotic dynamical system in which a single particle, known as a billiard, moves indefinitely within a barrier without loss of momentum. Mathematicians and physicists have been interested in its properties since it was discovered to be chaotic in the 1970’s [5] [3] [4]. The Bunimovich stadium is actively researched [9]. This thesis and its accompanying software, the Bunimovich Stadia Evolution Viewer (BSEV), present a novel visual representation of the the chaotic dynamical system. The goal for the software is to provide insights into the stadium’s properties to aid researchers. This tool allows one to visualize …

The Effects Of Finite Precision On The Simulation Of The Double Pendulum, Rebecca Wild

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

We use mathematics to study physical problems because abstracting the information allows us to better analyze what could happen given any range and combination of parameters. The problem is that for complicated systems mathematical analysis becomes extremely cumbersome. The only effective and reasonable way to study the behavior of such systems is to simulate the event on a computer. However, the fact that the set of floating-point numbers is finite and the fact that they are unevenly distributed over the real number line raises a number of concerns when trying to simulate systems with chaotic behavior. In this research we …

A Study Of The Effect Of Memory System Configuration On The Power Consumption Of An Fpga Processor, Adam Blalock

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

With electrical energy being a finite resource, feasible methods of reducing system power consumption continue to be of great importance within the field of computing, especially as computers proliferate. A victim cache is a small fully associative cache that “captures” lines evicted from L1 cache memory, thereby reducing lower memory accesses and compensating for conflict misses. Little experimentation has been done to evaluate its effect on system power behavior and consumption. This project investigates the performance and power consumption of three different processor memory designs for a sample program using a field programmable gate array (FPGA) and the Vivado Integrated …

Using Data Science To Detect Fake News, Eliza Shoemaker

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

The purpose of this thesis is to assist in automating the detection of Fake News by identifying which features are more useful for different classifiers. The effectiveness of different extracted features for Fake News detection are going to be examined. When classifying text with machine learning algorithms features have to be extracted from the articles for the classifiers to be trained on. In this thesis, several different features are extracted: word counts, ngram counts, term frequency-inverse document frequency, sentiment analysis, lemmatization, and named entity recognition to train the classifiers. Two classifiers are used, a Random Forest classifier and a Naïve …

Intrusion-Tolerant Order-Preserving Encryption, John Huson

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Traditional encryption schemes such as AES and RSA aim to achieve the highest level of security, often indistinguishable security under the adaptive chosen-ciphertext attack. Ciphertexts generated by such encryption schemes do not leak useful information. As a result, such ciphertexts do not support efficient searchability nor range queries.

Order-preserving encryption is a relatively new encryption paradigm that allows for efficient queries on ciphertexts. In order-preserving encryption, the data-encrypting key is a long-term symmetric key that needs to stay online for insertion, query and deletion operations, making it an attractive target for attacks.

In this thesis, an intrusion-tolerant order-preserving encryption system …

A Snowball's Chance: Debt Snowball Vs. Debt Avalanche, Evan Mcallister

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Traditional mathematical analysis states that the most efficient way to pay off interest-bearing consumer debt is to pay the individual debts in order from largest to smallest interest rate. In doing this, the debtor will eliminate the largest sources of interest first, thus shortening the overall time-to-pay. This method is known as the “Debt Avalanche.” The “Debt Snowball” method, popularized in large part by investor-author David Ramsey, recommends that consumers pay debts in order from smallest to largest, regardless of interest rate. In this paper, I conduct an empirical analysis of the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finance (SCF), calculating …

The Evolution Of Computational Propaganda: Trends, Threats, And Implications Now And In The Future, Holly Schnader

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Computational propaganda involves the use of selected narratives, social networks, and complex algorithms in order to develop and conduct influence operations (Woolley and Howard, 2017). In recent years the use of computational propaganda as an arm of cyberwarfare has increased in frequency. I aim to explore this topic to further understand the underlying forces behind the implementation of this tactic and then conduct a futures analysis to best determine how this topic will change over time. Additionally, I hope to gain insights on the implications of the current and potential future trends that computational propaganda has.

My preliminary assessment shows …

Less-Java, More Learning: Language Design For Introductory Programming, Zamua Nasrawt

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Less-Java is a new procedural programming language with static, strong, and inferred typing, native unit testing, and support for basic object-oriented constructs. These features make programming in Less-Java more intuitive than traditional introductory languages, which will allow professors to dedicate more class time to overarching computer science concepts and less to syntax and language-specific quirks.

Library Guides: An Aggregation Of User Research From 1998 To 2017, David Vess

Libraries

A truly comprehensive search tool for resources provided by libraries will continue to be a distant dream until daunting technical challenges are addressed. A Google-like search experience is desirable in some contexts, but a case can be made that hiding subject-specific article databases behind a comprehensive search tool is a disservice to researchers.

Librarians have a long history of addressing the complex landscape of the various resources they offer by crafting guides to library collections. These guides provide direct links to resources while educating inexperienced researchers about discipline-specific databases. Unfortunately, this solution creates more complexities in the research resource landscape. …

Selecting Link Resolver And Knowledge Base Software: Implications Of Interoperability, Cyndy Chisare, Jody C. Fagan, David J. Gaines, Michael Trocchia

Libraries

Link resolver software and their associated knowledge bases are essential technologies for modern academic libraries. However, because of the increasing number of possible integrations involving link resolver software and knowledge bases, a library’s vendor relationships, product choices, and consortial arrangements may have the most dramatic effects on the user experience and back-end maintenance workloads. A project team at a large comprehensive university recently investigated link resolver products in an attempt to increase efficiency of back-end workflows while maintaining or improving the patron experience. The methodology used for product comparison may be useful for other libraries.

Enhancing The Learning Experience- Use Of Video Game Technology For Teaching Japanese Language, Craig A. Decampli

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

The Japanese language is challenging to learn, especially for native speakers of Indo- European languages. The three components of written Japanese -- Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji – include 2,136 Kanji characters, and 46 each for Katakana and Hiragana. Teaching Japanese – generally through repetition – can lead to student boredom and affect success. Research shows that video games can at least provide a more enjoyable learning experience. Despite this fact, there are a lack of video games for teaching Japanese characters. Using the Unity game engine and the C# programming language, a video game for enhancing the learning of students …

An Affordable Vr Environment, Matthew R. Petty

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Virtual Reality is a powerful technology with the ability to affect our senses in powerful ways. Traditionally used for entertainment, we argue that it can be used for educational purposes as well. In order to get virtual reality into the classroom, we must address its cost and portability, as well as improve the interaction that users experience with the virtual environment. Our solution, a Unity program installed on an iPhone and a Mac, attempts to solve these issues. A technical demo was created that functions and can be interfaced with. While this solution is a proof of concept, its consequences …

Software Development For Home Energy Audits: Reducing Energy Consumption In Harrisonburg Through Technology, Brantley E. Gilbert

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Fossil fuels play a vital role in our daily lives. Oil, natural gas, and coal powers our cars, heats our homes and water, and are used by power companies to generate the massive amounts of electricity used every day by the United States. However, this reliance on a finite source of energy is not sustainable. Fossil fuels such as these are non-renewable resources whose production will eventually be unable to keep up with the rate of consumption. Furthermore, the extraction of the stored energy in these fuels through combustion releases harmful substances into the environment, including toxins and greenhouse gases …