Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

A Visual Approach To Automated Text Mining And Knowledge Discovery, Andrey A. Puretskiy

Doctoral Dissertations

The focus of this dissertation has been on improving the non-negative tensor factorization technique of text mining. The improvements have been made in both pre-processing and post-processing stages, with the goal of making the non-negative tensor factorization algorithm accessible to the casual user. The improved implementation allows the user to construct and modify the contents of the tensor, experiment with relative term weights and trust measures, and experiment with the total number of algorithm output features. Non-negative tensor factorization output feature production is closely integrated with a visual post-processing tool, FutureLens, that allows the user to perform in depth analysis …

Approximate Disassembly Using Dynamic Programming, Abhishek Shah

Master's Projects

Most commercial anti-virus software uses signature based techniques to detect whether a file is infected by a virus or not. However, signature based detection systems are unable to detect metamorphic viruses, since such viruses change their internal structure from generation to generation. Previous work has shown that hidden Markov models (HMMs) can be used to detect metamorphic viruses. In this technique, the code is disassembled and the resulting opcode sequences are used for training and detection. Due to the disassembly step, this process is not efficient enough to use when a decision has to be made in real time.

In …

A Study On Masquerade Detection, Lin Huang

Master's Projects

In modern computer systems, usernames and passwords have been by far the most common forms of authentication. A security system relying only on password protection is defenseless when the passwords of legitimate users are compromised. A masquerader can impersonate a legitimate user by using a compromised password.

An intrusion detection system (IDS) can provide an additional level of protection for a security system by inspecting user behavior. In terms of detection techniques, there are two types of IDSs: signature-based detection and anomaly-based detection. An anomaly-based intrusion detection technique consists of two steps: 1) creating a normal behavior model for legitimate …

Improved Worm Simulator And Simulations, Arnold Suvatne

Master's Projects

According to the latest Microsoft Security Intelligence Report (SIR), worms were the second most prevalent information security threat detected in the first half of 2010 – the top threat being Trojans. Given the prevalence and damaging effects of worms, research and development of worm counter strategies are garnering an increased level of attention. However, it is extremely risky to test and observe worm spread behavior on a public network. What is needed is a packet level worm simulator that would allow researchers to develop and test counter strategies against rapidly spreading worms in a controlled and isolated environment. Jyotsna Krishnaswamy, …

Automatic Execution Path Finding Tool, Fan Yang

Master's Projects

Today, there are many hackers trying to break software using reverse engineering tech- niques. To better protect software, we need to understand reverse engineering methods. This project presents a tool that automatically analyzes executable code in a manner simi- lar to the way an attack might analyze code.

Using reverse engineering techniques, executables can be disassembled to yield an as- sembly code representation of the program. Assembly code is much more human reada- ble than binary code. With assembly code, an attacker can attempt to modify the program to do something other than what was intended by the developer.

The …

A Microrna Target Prediction Algorithm, Rupinder Singh

Master's Projects

MicroRNA target prediction using the experimental methods is a challenging task. To accelerate the process of miRNA target validation, many computational methods are used. Computational methods yield many potential candidates for experimental validation. This project is about developing a new computational method using dynamic programming to predict miRNA targets with more accuracy. The project discusses the currently available computational methods and develops a new algorithm using the currently available knowledge about miRNA interactions.

Intrusion Detection And Prevention System: Sql-Injection Attacks, Varian Luong

Master's Projects

Personally identifiable information (PII) is information regarding things such as bank accounts, retirement or stock investment accounts, credit card accounts, medical records, or insurance claims. There is a need to protect the PII in databases that are connected to the ubiquitous, global network that is the Internet. If there is any vulnerability in the protection in a system that holds PII, then it presents an opportunity for an unauthorized person to access this PII. One of the techniques available to would- be information thieves is SQL injection (SQL-I). In this project, a system is developed to analyze the values submitted …

Online Application Monitoring Tool, Sathya Anandan

Master's Projects

In some classes, students take online tests and some types of network activity (for example trying to find the answers in www.google.com) will be considered as cheating during the exam. It would be useful if instructor could monitor online activities of each student to detect cheating. The goal of this project is to develop such a tool using client/server architecture. Tool should display the student's hostname and the website visited during unauthorized web activity. Professor should able to see the applications opened by all students and he will have an option to view the log files of all the students …

Computational Mirna Target Prediction In Animals, Leyan Tang

Master's Projects

miRNAs are a class of small RNA molecules about 22 nucleotides long that regulate gene expression at the post-transcriptional level. The discovery of the second miRNA 10 years ago was as much a surprise in its own way as the very structure of DNA discovered a half century earlier[1]. How could these small molecules regulate so many genes? During the past decade the complex cascade of regulation has been investigated and reported in detail[2]. The regions of the genome called untranslated regions, or UTRs, proved true to their name: they were indeed untranslated, but certainly not unimportant: they act as …

Functional Reactive Musical Performers, Justin M. Phillips

Master's Theses

Computers have been assisting in recording, sound synthesis and other fields of music production for quite some time. The actual performance of music continues to be an area in which human players are chosen over computer performers. Musical performance is an area in which personalization is more important than consistency. Human players play with each other, reacting to phrases and ideas created by the players that they are playing with. Computer performers lack the ability to react to the changes in the performance that humans perceive naturally, giving the human players an advantage over the computer performers.

This thesis creates …

Geophysical Study At Old Stone Fort State Archaeological Park, Manchester, Tennessee, Stephen Jay Yerka

Masters Theses

The Old Stone Fort State Archaeological Park covers over 800 acres within Manchester, Tennessee, and is owned and managed by the Tennessee Division of State Parks. The central archaeological site within the park boundary is The Old Stone Fort mounds that enclose about 50 acres on a plateau above the convergence of the Big Duck and the Little Duck Rivers. The hilltop enclosure dates to the Middle Woodland Period, and radiocarbon dates obtained at the site range from the first to the fifth century A. D. Because of its size and apparent complexity, previous investigations of the site have been …

Optimization Of P3ht-Pcbm Polymer Solar Cells Through Device Simulation And Manufacturing, James Boom

Computer Engineering

Given a good model and implementation of that model, computer simulation can be used to reduce the time and material costs of research. To this end I worked with other students to manufacture, test and simulate the single layer P3HT-PCBM solar cell. Using the data collected from this project, future work can then be done with the project's simulator to further optimize these types of solar cell devices.

Measurement And Interpolation Of Sea Surface Temperature And Salinity In The Tropical Pacific: A 9,000 Nautical Mile Research Odyssey, Amber Brooks

Earth and Soil Sciences

The purpose of this project was to compare spline and inverse distance weighting interpolation tools on data collected in the tropical Pacific Ocean by ship and data from a global network of CTD floats, known as Argo floats (fig.1), to provide evidence that technological advancement and integration is aiding our understanding of the ocean-atmosphere system of planet Earth. Thirty-one sea surface temperature and salinity samples were manually taken across a 9,000 nautical mile trek of the Pacific Ocean for the months of April, May and June 2008. Argo ASCII globally gridded monthly averaged sea surface temperature and salinity data, from …

Reducing Cluster Power Consumption By Dynamically Suspending Idle Nodes, Brian Michael Oppenheim

Master's Theses

Close to 1% of the world's electricity is consumed by computer servers. Given that the increased use of electricity raises costs and damages the environment, optimizing the world's computing infrastructure for power consumption is worthwhile. This thesis is one attempt at such an optimization. In particular, I began by building a cluster of 6 Intel Atom based low-power nodes to perform work analogous to data center clusters. Then, I installed a version of Hadoop modified with a novel power management system on the cluster. The power management system uses different algorithms to determine when to turn off idle nodes in …

Extending The Page Segmentation Algorithms Of The Ocropus Documentation Layout Analysis System, Amy Alison Winder

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

With the advent of more powerful personal computers, inexpensive memory, and digital cameras, curators around the world are working towards preserving historical documents on computers. Since many of the organizations for which they work have limited funds, there is world-wide interest in a low-cost solution to obtaining these digital records in a computer-readable form. An open source layout analysis system called OCRopus is being developed for such a purpose. In its original state, though, it could not process documents that contained information other than text. Segmenting the page into regions of text and non-text areas is the first step of …

An Exploration Of Optimization Algorithms And Heuristics For The Creation Of Encoding And Decoding Schedules In Erasure Coding, Catherine D. Schuman

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Enterprise Users And Web Search Behavior, April Ann Lewis

Masters Theses

This thesis describes analysis of user web query behavior associated with Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s (ORNL) Enterprise Search System (Hereafter, ORNL Intranet). The ORNL Intranet provides users a means to search all kinds of data stores for relevant business and research information using a single query. The Global Intranet Trends for 2010 Report suggests the biggest current obstacle for corporate intranets is “findability and Siloed content”. Intranets differ from internets in the way they create, control, and share content which can make it often difficult and sometimes impossible for users to find information. Stenmark (2006) first noted studies of corporate …

Performance Of Scattering Matrix Decomposition And Color Spaces For Synthetic Aperture Radar Imagery, Manuel E. Arriagada

Theses and Dissertations

Polarimetrc Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) has been shown to be a powerful tool in remote sensing because uses up to four simultaneous measurements giving additional degrees of freedom for processing. Typically, polarization decomposition techniques are applied to the polarization-dependent data to form colorful imagery that is easy for operators systems to interpret. Yet, the presumption is that the SAR system operates with maximum bandwidth which requires extensive processing for near- or real-time application. In this research, color space selection is investigated when processing sparse polarimetric SAR data as in the case of the publicly available \Gotcha Volumetric SAR Data Set, …

Software Internationalization: A Framework Validated Against Industry Requirements For Computer Science And Software Engineering Programs, John Huân Vũ

Master's Theses

View John Huân Vũ's thesis presentation at http://youtu.be/y3bzNmkTr-c.

In 2001, the ACM and IEEE Computing Curriculum stated that it was necessary to address "the need to develop implementation models that are international in scope and could be practiced in universities around the world." With increasing connectivity through the internet, the move towards a global economy and growing use of technology places software internationalization as a more important concern for developers. However, there has been a "clear shortage in terms of numbers of trained persons applying for entry-level positions" in this area. Eric Brechner, Director of Microsoft Development Training, suggested …