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Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Collection And Analysis Of Digital Forensic Data From Devices In The Internet Of Things, Raed Alharbi
Collection And Analysis Of Digital Forensic Data From Devices In The Internet Of Things, Raed Alharbi
Theses and Dissertations
Despite the abundance articles that have been written about the Internet of Things (IoT), little attention has been given to how digital forensics approaches can be utilized to direct advanced investigations in IoT-based frameworks. As of yet, IoT has not completely adjusted to digital forensic strategies given the fact that current digital forensic tools and functions are not ready to tackle the complexity of IoT frameworks for the purpose of collecting, analyzing, and testing potential evidence from IoT environments that might be utilized as permissible evidence in a court. Hence, the issue addressed is that; currently, there is no accepted …
Automatic Anuran Species Recognition Via Vocalization, Katrina Smart
Automatic Anuran Species Recognition Via Vocalization, Katrina Smart
Theses and Dissertations
Species recognition of Anuran vocalization is an important problem in ecology, which is costly and time consuming. Recently, biologists have turned to machine learning techniques to automate the process. An automated process can be made even more helpful if available to use on a smart phone, which can be used in the field by scientists and citizen scientists alike. The problem of automatic frog call recognition is challenging because features need to be chosen that can properly separate different species’ very similar sounding vocalizations. This thesis offers the following contributions: 1. Three novel feature extraction methods, which do not require …
Infrastructure-Based Access Policy Enforcement Using Software-Defined Networks, Tyler Carden Culp
Infrastructure-Based Access Policy Enforcement Using Software-Defined Networks, Tyler Carden Culp
Theses and Dissertations
This thesis describes a method to enhance network security using software defined networks. Standard networks use perimeter-based defenses to block attackers from gaining access to internal systems. A key problem with standard networks is that once a malicious entity has gained access to the network, they are often able to freely move throughout the network and to attack internal systems with impunity. This problem can be mitigated by placing defenses such as firewalls between machines on the network, but this approach requires significant resources and constant maintenance. If the network infrastructure itself is leveraged as a defense by individualizing the …
Mitigating Memory Randomization Weaknesses Via Moving Target Defense, Sultan M. Aldossary
Mitigating Memory Randomization Weaknesses Via Moving Target Defense, Sultan M. Aldossary
Theses and Dissertations
In this dissertation, we address the problem of weakness of address space layout randomization. The address space randomization technique was proposed to make determining the address of a shared library more difficult since each instance of the program is loaded into a random base address. However, when address space randomization layout (ASLR) is implemented on a 32-bit system, an attacker can use a brute force attack to guess the address of the shared library.The main goal of the research described in this dissertation is to study the use of a dispatching algorithm and multiple back-end servers as a moving target …
Development Of Portable Embedded Face Recognition Prototype, Prasad S. Garapati
Development Of Portable Embedded Face Recognition Prototype, Prasad S. Garapati
Theses and Dissertations
In this thesis, we focus on developing a prototype for collecting multispectral images for face recognition. With such application, the quality of the image is an important factor that affects the accuracy of the recognition. However, the sensory data either provided in RGB channel or in NIR channel. The images acquired in RGB and NIR were never aligned in previous developments during my literature study. Thus, I propose an embedded system prototype capable of acquiring NIR and RGB images providing multispectral information which is computation efficient for real time face recognition applications.
Towards Enhanced Security For Automotive Operating Systems, Maksym Hryhorenko
Towards Enhanced Security For Automotive Operating Systems, Maksym Hryhorenko
Theses and Dissertations
Modern automotive infotainment systems are represented by highly complex components with broad functionality and network capabilities. As a result, they are becoming more exposed to the outer world, thus turning into potentially lucrative targets for remote cyber attacks. In the worst case scenario, an attacker could gain complete control over critical vehicle’s systems, for instance, steering, braking, engine, etc. This thesis proposes security hardening features based on ARM’s TrustZone technology for infotainment systems that ensures confidentiality and integrity of critical applications. In addition, we present a technique that allows to mitigate the impact of certain attacks on the car’s internal …
Lighting A Path To Biofouling Prevention: Investigating The Effect Of Ultraviolet Light On Biofouling, Cierra Rose Braga
Lighting A Path To Biofouling Prevention: Investigating The Effect Of Ultraviolet Light On Biofouling, Cierra Rose Braga
Theses and Dissertations
Ultraviolet light (UV) is considered an environmentally friendly antifouling method because it disrupts biological growth without the release of harmful toxins. The application of UV for the marine shipping industry is a relatively new concept, and there still remains many unknowns before it can be fully implemented. This research investigated several aspects of applying UVC for the control of fouling. A novel method of using embedded UV LEDs within a silicone coating for fouling control proved to be very effective at preventing fouling. The research also investigated the effect of using an external UVC light treatment to control fouling on …
Wind-Driven Setup, Roughness, And Drag Over A Depth- And Fetch-Limited Coastal Estuary, Jeffrey Allen Colvin
Wind-Driven Setup, Roughness, And Drag Over A Depth- And Fetch-Limited Coastal Estuary, Jeffrey Allen Colvin
Theses and Dissertations
The understanding of the momentum exchange across the air-sea interface is critical to accurately model and forecast wind speed, wave properties, setup, and circulation. This is particularly true for a restricted estuary, such as the Indian River Lagoon (IRL), where wind is the driving force behind water movement due to the limited number of direct ocean connections. Current atmospheric and hydrodynamic models use formulations of the drag coefficient and/or roughness length based on open ocean studies in which wave properties are not considered. This dissertation develops two parameterizations – one for wind setup and one for the drag coefficient – …
Measurement Of The Cross Section Of Top Quark Pairs In Association With A Photon In Lepton+Jets Events At √S =13 Tev, Titas Roy
Theses and Dissertations
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN is the world’s biggest and most powerful accelerator. Colliding protons at the highest centre of mass energy yet, data are being collected by the detectors at an unprecendented rate, making it possible to search for new particles as well as make precise measurements. With the increase in statistics and energy of the data collected, it is now possible to make precise measurements with events that have a relatively low probability of occuring. In this thesis, the production cross section of a top quark pair plus a radiated photon, tt¯+γ, is measured in proton-proton …
1. Synthesis And Characterization Of A Vanadium Based Transition State Mimic For Organophosphate Hydrolase 2. Catalytic Oxidation Of Thioanisole And 2-Chloroethyl Ethyl Sulfide Using Resin Bead Supported Oxoperoxidovanadium(V) Complexes, Efram Goldberg
Theses and Dissertations
Two vanadium(V) complexes were prepared for different projects. First the ONS tridentate ligand 14 was prepared according to literature procedure. This ligand was chosen to make the ONS dioxovanadium complex 15 for conjugation to a protein and to eventually elicit catalytic antibodies for the hydrolysis of the chemical weapon VX. Complex 15 was prepared in 65% overall yield and a full characterization was performed including X-ray diffraction. Initial screening performed at the Naval Research Laboratory indicated an IC50 of 84 nM for inhibition of a bacterial cholinesterase. It was also found to be 50% as effective as the control antiobiotic …
First Steps In Retrofitting A Versatile Software Testing Infrastructure To Android, Carol Anne Oliver
First Steps In Retrofitting A Versatile Software Testing Infrastructure To Android, Carol Anne Oliver
Theses and Dissertations
Are existing software testing technologies satisfying the needs of mobile software testing practitioners? This dissertation provides evidence that the existing technologies fall short of practitioner’s actual needs and analyzes some reasons why this is so. The first contribution presents a framework for analyzing the software testing needs of practitioners, which is then used to assess the existing software testing tools and body of research, revealing significant gaps. The second contribution proposes a vision for a new software testing technology for mobile apps, which is then applied to a real-world problem causing problems for software testing practitioners (namely, the verification of …
On The Qualitative Theory Of The Nonlinear Parabolic P-Laplacian Type Reaction-Diffusion Equations, Roqia Abdullah Jeli
On The Qualitative Theory Of The Nonlinear Parabolic P-Laplacian Type Reaction-Diffusion Equations, Roqia Abdullah Jeli
Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation presents full classification of the evolution of the interfaces and asymptotics of the local solution near the interfaces and at infinity for the nonlinear second order parabolic p-Laplacian type reaction-diffusion equation of non-Newtonian elastic filtration ut − ( |ux| p−2 ux ) x +buβ = 0, p > 1, β > 0. (1) Nonlinear partial differential equation (1) is a key model example expressing competition between nonlinear diffusion with gradient dependent diffusivity in either slow (p > 2) or fast (1 < p < 2) regime and nonlinear state dependent reaction (b > 0) or absorption (b < 0) forces. If interface is finite, it may expand, shrink, or remain stationary as a result of the competition of the diffusion and reaction terms near the interface, expressed in terms of the parameters p, β,sign b, and asymptotics of the initial function near its support. In the fast diffusion regime strong domination of the diffusion causes infinite speed of propagation and interfaces are absent. In all cases with finite interfaces we prove the explicit formula for the interface and the local solution with accuracy up to constant coefficients. We prove explicit asymptotics of the local solution at infinity in all cases with infinite speed of propagation. The methods of the proof are generaliii ization of the methods developed in U.G. Abdulla & J. King, SIAM J. Math. Anal., 32, 2(2000), 235-260; U.G. Abdulla, Nonlinear Analysis, 50, 4(2002), 541-560 and based on rescaling laws for the nonlinear PDE and blow-up techniques for the identification of the asymptotics of the solution near the interfaces, construction of barriers using special comparison theorems in irregular domains with characteristic boundary curves.
Time Sensitive Functionals Of Marked Random Measures In Real Time, Kizza M. Nandyose Frisbee
Time Sensitive Functionals Of Marked Random Measures In Real Time, Kizza M. Nandyose Frisbee
Theses and Dissertations
In this dissertation, we study marked random measures that model stochastic networks (under attacks), status of queueing systems during vacation modes, responses to cancer treatments (such as chemotherapy and radiation), hostile actions in economics and warfare. We extend the recently developed time sensitivity technique for investigating the processes’ behavior about a fixed threshold to a novel time sensitive technique in three important directions: (1) real-time monotone stochastic processes; (2) two-dimensional signed random measures; and (3) antagonistic stochastic games with two active players and one passive player. The need for the time sensitive feature in our study (i.e., an analytical association …
Robotic Arm Remote Control Framework, Anthony La Rosa
Robotic Arm Remote Control Framework, Anthony La Rosa
Theses and Dissertations
This thesis presents a robot control framework to aid in research using a robotic arm. The scope of this current study is to develop a framework to allow controlling the robotic arm from either a remote network or locally in the lab. A previous method of remote control was present using a Java applet that is no longer supported. The new framework allows communication through REST calls to a server controlling the robot and also tests direct commands to the robot controller to evaluate the overhead of all communication methods.
Design And Characterization Of Composite Membranes For Solar Fuel Generating Devices, Ibtehaj Fahad Alshdoukhi
Design And Characterization Of Composite Membranes For Solar Fuel Generating Devices, Ibtehaj Fahad Alshdoukhi
Theses and Dissertations
Currently, there is a great need for research and development on new sources of energy in order to meet energy demands in a clean, efficient, sustainable, economical and environmentally friendly way. A system that promises to meet these requirements is water splitting through artificial photosynthesis, generating hydrogen and oxygen, effectively storing light energy in the form of fuel such as H2. One main limitation in artificial photosynthesis is that the membrane must be able to conduct the ions involved in redox reactions, as well as the electrons/hole carriers produced by light absorption, while being mechanically stable and optically transparent. No …
A Study Of Cloud Haskell With Applications To Mapreduce, Shreyas Ramnath
A Study Of Cloud Haskell With Applications To Mapreduce, Shreyas Ramnath
Theses and Dissertations
In this thesis, we developed a MapReduce application for performing word count in files. We compared the performance of the implementations done using Control.Parallel - built-in Haskell library for parallel/concurrent computations, Cloud Haskell - a distributed framework/DSL for Haskell and the Java Streams API (immutable datatypes). During profiling of our implementations, we found that for a lower number of words in input files the difference in speed of the Control.Parallel and Cloud Haskell implementations were negligible. So to get a better idea we profiled the implementations 12 times for each word size (excluded the highest and lowest values) in the …
A Recommender System For Improving Program Security Through Source Code Mining And Knowledge Extraction, Fitzroy Nembhard
A Recommender System For Improving Program Security Through Source Code Mining And Knowledge Extraction, Fitzroy Nembhard
Theses and Dissertations
The security of computer programs and systems is a very critical issue. Threats against computer networks and software are on the rise. Therefore, businesses and IT professionals should take steps to ensure that their information systems are as secure as possible. However, many programmers and software engineers do not think about adding security to their programs until their projects are near completion, which results in vulnerable and insecure systems that could be exploited by attackers. This dissertation presents a recommender system to help programmers write more secure code. We created a model that mines and categories source code from existing …
Data Mining Algorithms For Decision Support Based On User Activities, Ebad Ahmadzadeh
Data Mining Algorithms For Decision Support Based On User Activities, Ebad Ahmadzadeh
Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation covers four data mining problems with applications in decision support based on user activity data. The first problem is an efficient approach to maximizing spread of information in social networks with applications in decision support for marketing where the goal is to find the best set of users, based on a limited budget, to maximize the word of mouth. The data for this problem is based on user activities in social networks that lead to formation of friendship (or follower-followee) graphs. The second problem is identifying action-outcome relationships to facilitate building a knowledge base of actions that could …
Enhancing And Reinforcing Security And Usability Of User Account Authentication Using Fingerprints As Username Credential, Mohammad Hassan Algarni
Enhancing And Reinforcing Security And Usability Of User Account Authentication Using Fingerprints As Username Credential, Mohammad Hassan Algarni
Theses and Dissertations
With the process of logging in, the users gain access to a computer system after identifying and authenticating themselves. The user credentials are required to login, and they are typically some form of a username and a matching password. The username for logging in an account is textual. This text can be either email address or some alphanumeric or numeric or characters chosen by the user. However, if the email account of a user is compromised, the attacker can click on Forgot Password link available on the user interface of the target account. If the compromised email account has the …
Standardizing The Requirements Specification Of Multi-Agent Systems, Khaled Ali M Slhoub
Standardizing The Requirements Specification Of Multi-Agent Systems, Khaled Ali M Slhoub
Theses and Dissertations
Development of multi-agent systems is negatively impacted by the lack of process standardization across the major development phases, such as the requirements analysis phase. This issue creates a key barrier for agent technology stakeholders regarding comprehending and analyzing complexity associated with agent-oriented specification. Instead, such fundamental low-level infrastructure is loosely attended to in an ad-hoc fashion, and important aspects of requirements analysis are often neglected altogether. The IEEE Std 830 model is a recommended practice aimed at describing how to write better quality requirements specification of conventional software. Knowing that agent-based computing is a natural evolution of the conventional approaches …
A Comprehensive Data-Driven Characterization Of Organ Transplantation, Diego Marconi Pinheiro Ferreira Silva
A Comprehensive Data-Driven Characterization Of Organ Transplantation, Diego Marconi Pinheiro Ferreira Silva
Theses and Dissertations
Organ transplantation yearly saves thousands of lives worldwide; yet, 22 people still die each day only in the USA due to the ever-increasing imbalance between the supply and demand of organs. Currently, this organ-allocation gap is mainly tackled by optimally allocating organs based on major survivability factors (i.e., efficiency), by providing the population equal access to transplantation (i.e., equity), and by promoting population health literacy (i.e., awareness). Efficiency, equity, and awareness impact each other; yet, the state-of-the-art in organ transplantation still lacks the characterization of awareness, and the trade-off between these aspects are not fully-understood. Given the current availability of …
X-Rays From Magnetic B-Type Stars, Corinne Fletcher
X-Rays From Magnetic B-Type Stars, Corinne Fletcher
Theses and Dissertations
Recent surveys have found that ∼10% of massive stars host strong, mostly dipolar magnetic fields with strengths on the order of a kilogauss. The prominent idea describing the interaction between the stellar winds and the magnetic field is the magnetically confined wind shock (MCWS) model. In this model, the ionized wind material is forced to move along the closed magnetic field loops and collides at the magnetic equator, creating a shock (Δv ∼ 500−800 km s−1). As the shocked material cools radiatively, it will emit X-rays. Therefore, X-ray spectroscopy is a key tool in detecting and probing the wind material …
A Development Environment To Integrate Big Data With Deep Learning, Daljeet Kaur Kaushal
A Development Environment To Integrate Big Data With Deep Learning, Daljeet Kaur Kaushal
Theses and Dissertations
This thesis describes a development environment that integrates big data architectures and deep learning models to facilitate rapid experimentation. The thesis makes three major contributions: First, it describes a big-data architecture that supports big data collection and organization supporting deep learning models. Second, it describes a language used to create a data view that converts the various big data streams into a view that can be used by a deep learning system. Third, it demonstrates the system’s effectiveness by applying the tool to several different deep learning applications.
Lower Order Perturbations Of Critical Fractional Laplacian Equations, Khalid Fanoukh Al Oweidi
Lower Order Perturbations Of Critical Fractional Laplacian Equations, Khalid Fanoukh Al Oweidi
Theses and Dissertations
We give sufficient conditions for the existence of nontrivial solutions to a class of critical nonlocal problems of the Brezis-Nirenberg type. Our result extends some results in the literature for the local case to the nonlocal setting. It also complements the known results for the nonlocal case.
A Novel Approach To Containerize Existing Applications, Vineet Haresh Palan
A Novel Approach To Containerize Existing Applications, Vineet Haresh Palan
Theses and Dissertations
Cloud computing has dominated the way different services are offered, utilized and managed over the internet. Typically, applications run inside the virtual machines in an isolated environment. However, there is always a hardware virtualization overhead for running these virtual machines. Recently, Linux containers have gathered attention because of their significantly lower overhead when compared with VM through OS-level virtualization. They mainly provide high availability, isolation, portability, interoperability and scalability. Thus, everyone is trying to move their existing applications onto Linux containers with the help of available tools and framework. However, these tools fail to gather all the relevant information required …
An Authentication Framework For Wearable Devices, Abdullah Alharbi
An Authentication Framework For Wearable Devices, Abdullah Alharbi
Theses and Dissertations
The popularity of wearable devices (WDs) has been growing rapidly in recent years because of the convenience they add to users lives. Although WDs may be considered an extension of mobile computing devices (e.g., smartphones), their form factor is very different: WDs are always available and expected to be accessible, and they often lack typical input means such as a keyboard. Therefore, they need to be treated, in terms of authentication, differently than other computing devices since we cannot simply apply possibly unsuitable traditional authentication methods such as password that were designed for other modalities. In this dissertation, we introduce …
Towards Intelligent Intrusion Detection Systems For Cloud Computing, Mohammed J. Aljebreen
Towards Intelligent Intrusion Detection Systems For Cloud Computing, Mohammed J. Aljebreen
Theses and Dissertations
Statistics presented in the background chapter show the tremendous number of security breaches that occurred in recent years. Furthermore, securing the new advanced technologies has become more challenging. Cloud computing and containers are among those emerging technologies that have introduced security challenges, and it is necessary that they be addressed. One of the main features of both cloud and container technologies is the sharing of resources of both hardware and software. The challenge becomes more complex when running containers in a cloud environment. Thus, advancing the security of container in the cloud environment is necessary, especially becasause of the lack …
On The Automation Of Cyber Experimentation, Dhanish Mehta
On The Automation Of Cyber Experimentation, Dhanish Mehta
Theses and Dissertations
There are a variety of tools available to users to perform cyber experimentation, and many of them automate some aspects of the experimentation lifecycle. However, they either support a minimal subset of the tools across various experimentation environments, or solve a particular problem in the cyber experiment lifecycle. In pursuit of making cyber experimentation easier and more efficient, we introduce a new framework that can design, create, execute and analyze experiments and is agnostic of the underlying environments. We show the effectiveness of our framework by presenting a prototype implementation and perform two case studies using the prototype implementation. We …
Identifying The Most Relevant Arguments From User Meta-Data, Roussi Roussev
Identifying The Most Relevant Arguments From User Meta-Data, Roussi Roussev
Theses and Dissertations
Arguments are essential objects in a debate. In the DirectDemocracyP2P system, they occur in association with signatures for petitions. The arguments of a signer on a given issue are grouped into one single justification, are classified by the type of signature, in our case supporting or opposing, and can be subject to various types of relations such as refute, subsume or more recent. Given those signatures and relations, the addressed problems are: (i) what makes a good supporting or opposing justification (ii) how to recommend the best justification to a new voter, (iii) how to recommend a compact list of …
Automated Software For The Detection Of Bolide Events, Elena Botella
Automated Software For The Detection Of Bolide Events, Elena Botella
Theses and Dissertations
The proper detection and analysis of bolide events ensures that we will once day be prepared for a big, catastrophic impact by a meteor. The data obtained from the analysis of these detected smaller events will provide important information about the meteor’s journey through our atmosphere and its orbit before it crossed the Earth’s path. SkySentinel is one of the All-Sky networks in charge of looking at the skies every night and detecting these objects as they fall. At the moment, SkySentinel’s detection process relies heavily on manpower to check whether their cameras picked up actual bolide events or false …