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Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

The Design And Implementation Of A Mobile Game Engine For The Android Platform, Jon Hammer Dec 2012

The Design And Implementation Of A Mobile Game Engine For The Android Platform, Jon Hammer

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

In this thesis, a two-dimensional game engine is proposed for the Android mobile platform that facilitates rapid development of those games by individual developers or hobbyists. The essential elements of game design are presented so as to introduce the reader to the concepts that are crucial for comprehension of the paper. A brief overview of the Android Operating System is also included for those unfamiliar with it. Three primary design goals are identified, and a prototype solution is described in detail. The prototype is then evaluated against those design goals to see how well it accomplishes each task. The results …


Locating And Protecting Facilities Subject To Random Disruptions And Attacks, Hugh Medal Aug 2012

Locating And Protecting Facilities Subject To Random Disruptions And Attacks, Hugh Medal

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Recent events such as the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan have revealed the vulnerability of networks such as supply chains to disruptive events. In particular, it has become apparent that the failure of a few elements of an infrastructure system can cause a system-wide disruption. Thus, it is important to learn more about which elements of infrastructure systems are most critical and how to protect an infrastructure system from the effects of a disruption. This dissertation seeks to enhance the understanding of how to design and protect networked infrastructure systems from disruptions by developing new mathematical models and …


A Domain Specific Model For Generating Etl Workflows From Business Intents, Wesley Deneke Aug 2012

A Domain Specific Model For Generating Etl Workflows From Business Intents, Wesley Deneke

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Extract-Transform-Load (ETL) tools have provided organizations with the ability to build and maintain workflows (consisting of graphs of data transformation tasks) that can process the flood of digital data. Currently, however, the specification of ETL workflows is largely manual, human time intensive, and error prone. As these workflows become increasingly complex, the users that build and maintain them must retain an increasing amount of knowledge specific to how to produce solutions to business objectives using their domain's ETL workflow system. A program that can reduce the human time and expertise required to define such workflows, producing accurate ETL solutions with …


A Modular Framework For Home Healthcare Monitoring, Blake Puryear May 2012

A Modular Framework For Home Healthcare Monitoring, Blake Puryear

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Many patients with chronic health problems have multiple ailments but different patients may have different such ailments. Home monitoring systems for individual ailments exist but a patient may have multiple of these, all designed independently. There are no standard architectures so this leads to unmanageable diversity which causes problems for patients in having to learn to use a variety of monitors and for physicians in trying to monitor many patients. The purpose of this project was to design and prototype a next generation modular remote healthcare monitoring system capable of monitoring multiple ailments and extensible to new ailments in order …


Wi-Fi Sensing Algorithms Utilizing Zigbee Rf Reciever For Use In Emergency Communications Mesh, Alexander Nelson May 2012

Wi-Fi Sensing Algorithms Utilizing Zigbee Rf Reciever For Use In Emergency Communications Mesh, Alexander Nelson

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis introduces the idea of a low-power Wi-Fi sensing wake-up controller for an emergency communications mesh network, progressively developing a prototype system which could be used in a live environment. Wireless network protocols are reviewed, as well as a limited view of cluster analysis, in order to introduce relevant concepts crucial to understanding this thesis. Algorithms for system implementation are developed, and pseudocode, designed to be configurable and platform independent, is given for each. Design goals for the system are identified with potential approaches are defined in order to optimize for each. An example hardware configuration is given, in …


Simple Touch-Based Gaming: Project Pond, Taylor Yust May 2012

Simple Touch-Based Gaming: Project Pond, Taylor Yust

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The mainstream success of smartphone technology has prompted the video game industry to invest resources into new types of mobile games. While seemingly successful on the surface, there are unseen issues and risks that may potentially harm the long-term sustainability of the market. In response, I’ve developed my own smartphone gaming app that addresses what I find to be some of the largest problems in the market. My intent is to test my design theories while also challenging the status quo in mobile game design. The fruit of my labor is Pond, a smartphone gaming app for Windows Phone 7. …


Insider Threat Mitigation Models Based On Thresholds And Dependencies, Harini Ragavan May 2012

Insider Threat Mitigation Models Based On Thresholds And Dependencies, Harini Ragavan

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Insider threat causes great damage to data in any organization and is considered a serious issue. In spite of the presence of threat prevention mechanisms, sophisticated insiders still continue to attack a database with new techniques. One such technique which remains an advantage for insiders to attack databases is the dependency relationship among data items. This thesis investigates the ways by which an authorized insider detects dependencies in order to perform malicious write operations. The goal is to monitor malicious write operations performed by an insider by taking advantage of dependencies. A term called `threshold' is associated with every data …


Virtual "University Of Arkansas" Campus, Seth Williams May 2012

Virtual "University Of Arkansas" Campus, Seth Williams

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The aim of the Virtual Campus project is to develop a way to automate building 3D virtual worlds using map and other data from the real world. A demonstration presented in this BS honors thesis uses automated tools to build the University of Arkansas campus from data supplied by the UA Center for Advanced Spatial Technology (CAST). At present, in virtual worlds like Second Life and Unity, terraforming of terrain is a manual process, and it can take days to weeks to build a landscape. But by using existing map data, we are now able to automate that process. Working …


Extending The Hybridthread Smp Model For Distributed Memory Systems, Eugene Anthony Cartwright Iii May 2012

Extending The Hybridthread Smp Model For Distributed Memory Systems, Eugene Anthony Cartwright Iii

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Memory Hierarchy is of growing importance in system design today. As Moore's Law allows system designers to include more processors within their designs, data locality becomes a priority. Traditional multiprocessor systems on chip (MPSoC) experience difficulty scaling as the quantity of processors increases. This challenge is common behavior of memory accesses in a shared memory environment and causes a decrease in memory bandwidth as processor numbers increase. In order to provide the necessary levels of scalability, the computer architecture community has sought to decentralize memory accesses by distributing memory throughout the system. Distributed memory offers greater bandwidth due to decoupled …


Mitigating Insider Threat In Relational Database Systems, Qussai Yaseen May 2012

Mitigating Insider Threat In Relational Database Systems, Qussai Yaseen

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The dissertation concentrates on addressing the factors and capabilities that enable insiders to violate systems security. It focuses on modeling the accumulative knowledge that insiders get throughout legal accesses, and it concentrates on analyzing the dependencies and constraints among data items and represents them using graph-based methods. The dissertation proposes new types of Knowledge Graphs (KGs) to represent insiders' knowledgebases. Furthermore, it introduces the Neural Dependency and Inference Graph (NDIG) and Constraints and Dependencies Graph (CDG) to demonstrate the dependencies and constraints among data items. The dissertation discusses in detail how insiders use knowledgebases and dependencies and constraints to get …


Three-Dimensional Scene Reconstruction Using Multiple Microsoft Kinects, Matt Miller May 2012

Three-Dimensional Scene Reconstruction Using Multiple Microsoft Kinects, Matt Miller

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Microsoft Kinect represents a leap forward in the form of cheap, consumer friendly, depth sensing cameras. Through the use of the depth information as well as the accompanying RGB camera image, it becomes possible to represent the scene, what the camera sees, as a three-dimensional geometric model. In this thesis, we explore how to obtain useful data from the Kinect, and how to use it for the creation of a three-dimensional geometric model of the scene. We develop and test multiple ways of improving the depth information received from the Kinect, in order to create smoother three-dimensional models. We …


Recognizing Patterns In Transmitted Signals For Identification Purposes, Baha' A. Alsaify May 2012

Recognizing Patterns In Transmitted Signals For Identification Purposes, Baha' A. Alsaify

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The ability to identify and authenticate entities in cyberspace such as users, computers, cell phones, smart cards, and radio frequency identification (RFID) tags is usually accomplished by having the entity demonstrate knowledge of a secret key. When the entity is portable and physically accessible, like an RFID tag, it can be difficult to secure given the memory, processing, and economic constraints. This work proposes to use unique patterns in the transmitted signals caused by manufacturing differences to identify and authenticate a wireless device such as an RFID tag. Both manufacturer identification and tag identification are performed on a population of …


Object Recognition Based On Shape And Function: Inspired By Children's Word Acquisition, Akihiro Eguchi Jan 2012

Object Recognition Based On Shape And Function: Inspired By Children's Word Acquisition, Akihiro Eguchi

Inquiry: The University of Arkansas Undergraduate Research Journal

This paper explores a new approach to computational object recognition by borrowing an idea from child language acquisition studies in developmental psychology. Whereas previous image recognition research used shape to recognize and label a target object, the model proposed in this study added the function of the object resulting in a more accurate recognition. This study makes use of new gaming technology, Microsoft’s Kinect, in implementing the proposed new object recognition model. A demonstration of the model developed in this project properly infers different names for similarly shaped objects and the same name for differently shaped objects.


Wi-Fi Sensing Algorithms Utilizing Zigbee Rf Receiver For Use In Emergency Communications Mesh, Alexander H. Nelson Jan 2012

Wi-Fi Sensing Algorithms Utilizing Zigbee Rf Receiver For Use In Emergency Communications Mesh, Alexander H. Nelson

Inquiry: The University of Arkansas Undergraduate Research Journal

This thesis examines a low-power Wi-Fi sensing wake-up controller for an emergency communications mesh network; the goal of the research study is to progressively develop a prototype system that could be used in a live environment. Wireless network protocols are reviewed, in addition to a limited view of cluster analysis, in order to introduce relevant receiver concepts crucial to understanding this study. Algorithms for system implementation are developed, and pseudocode, designed to be configurable and platform-independent, is given for each. The system’s design goals are identified, followed by a discussion on approaches and optimizations in order to maximize the system’s …


Investigating 3 Axis Cnc Processes For Creating 3d Objects, Michael Jake Newsum Jan 2012

Investigating 3 Axis Cnc Processes For Creating 3d Objects, Michael Jake Newsum

Inquiry: The University of Arkansas Undergraduate Research Journal

Using 3 axis CNC (computer numerical code) routing processes of the Visualization Lab, the CNC was tested for 3D object milling. The CNC process was designed for manufacturing 2D cut out objects with or without a 3D surface. The processes of modeling the object, using CAM (Computer Aided Manufacturing) programs, producing the Toolpath, post processing, editing G Code, positioning the stock material, and setting the machine origin were tested for an understanding of what changes had to be made to the process to accurately mill and cut out 3D objects. Solutions were discovered through digital and physical setups that are …


Comparing Methods For Interpolation To Improve Raster Digital Elevation Models, J. C. Guarneri, R. C. Weih Jr. Jan 2012

Comparing Methods For Interpolation To Improve Raster Digital Elevation Models, J. C. Guarneri, R. C. Weih Jr.

Journal of the Arkansas Academy of Science

Digital elevation models (DEMs) are available as raster files at 100m, 30m, and 10m resolutions for the contiguous United States and are used in a variety of geographic analyses. Some projects may require a finer resolution. GIS software offers many options for interpolating data to higher resolutions. We compared ten interpolation methods using 10m sample data from the Ouachita Mountains in central Arkansas. We interpolated the 10m DEM to 5m, 2.5m, and 1m resolutions and compared the absolute mean difference (AMD) for each using surveyed control points. Overall, there was little difference in the accuracy between interpolation methods at the …