Digital Commons Network^™

An Analysis Of Generational Caching Implemented In A Production Website, Marc E. Zych

Master's Theses

Website scaling has been an issue since the inception of the web. The demand for user generated content and personalized web pages requires the use of a database for a storage engine. Unfortunately, scaling the database to handle large amounts of traffic is still a problem many companies face. One such company is iFixit, a provider of free, publicly-editable, online repair manuals. Like many websites, iFixit uses Memcached to decrease database load and improve response time. However, the caching strategy used is a very ad hoc one and therefore can be greatly improved.

Most research regarding web application caching focuses …

Paris: A Parallel Rsa-Prime Inspection Tool, Joseph R. White

Master's Theses

Modern-day computer security relies heavily on cryptography as a means to protect the data that we have become increasingly reliant on. As the Internet becomes more ubiquitous, methods of security must be better than ever. Validation tools can be leveraged to help increase our confidence and accountability for methods we employ to secure our systems.

Security validation, however, can be difficult and time-consuming. As our computational ability increases, calculations that were once considered “hard” due to length of computation, can now be done in minutes. We are constantly increasing the size of our keys and attempting to make computations harder …

The Bicycle-Powered Smartphone Charger, Chris Arntzen

Master's Theses

This thesis entails the design and fabrication of a smartphone charger that is powered by a bicycle dynamo hub. In addition to the design and validation of the charger prototype, this thesis involves the testing and characterization of the dynamo hub power source, the design and construction of specialized test equipment, and the design and prototyping of a handlebar-mounted case for the smartphone and charging electronics. With the intention of making the device a commercial product, price, aesthetics, and marketability are of importance to the design. An appropriate description of the charger circuit is a microcontroller-based energy management system, tailored …

Urban Agriculture Stormwater Management In California Cities, Rachel L. Cohen

Master's Theses

Cities within California are beginning to incorporate urban agriculture into their land use designations. Prompted by residents and local organizations, cities are hoping to capture the benefits that urban agriculture provides. Research has shown that urban agriculture renews and beautifies neighborhoods, provides healthy food choices, increases public health, has the potential to help with stormwater runoff, creates jobs, and fosters community. In the last few years, several California cities have made headlines as they have adopted new zoning codes that include urban agriculture.

In reviewing these new zoning codes and exploring the topic of urban agriculture, it became evident that …

Tracking Points On A Pacing Lead In A Beating Heart, Avinash Ramesh Varma

Master's Theses

Heart failure is a common condition during which the pumping action of the heart is affected because the heart does not contract or relax properly. Heart failure affects about 5 million Americans, with 550,000 new cases diagnosed each year. Cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) is used to treat symptoms and other complications associated with a heart failure. While performing CRT, Implantation of a pacing lead in the left ventricle of the heart is a very challenging surgical procedure performed with fluoroscopy. The target location is often difficult to reach through the tortuous coronary venous anatomy, which varies greatly among individuals. Placement …

A Novel Unit Cell Antenna For Highly Integrated Phased Arrays In The Shf Band, Timothy Bryan Ogilvie

Master's Theses

Phased arrays are electromagnetic antenna systems comprised of many radiating elements and processing electronics. Radiating elements are typically positioned in an orderly grid within the antenna aperture. In the receive mode of operation, radiating elements capture some of the signal energy from incoming radiation and guide these signals to processing electronics. Signals are filtered and amplified to maintain the desired sensitivity and complexly weighted using circuits with reconfigurable amplification gain and phase delay. Finally, all signals are combined. The summation of these complexly weighted spatial samples forms a spatial filter in the same way complexly weighted temporal samples establish a …

Cuda Enhanced Filtering In A Pipelined Video Processing Framework, Austin Aaron Dworaczyk Wiltshire

Master's Theses

The processing of digital video has long been a significant computational task for modern x86 processors. With every video frame composed of one to three planes, each consisting of a two-dimensional array of pixel data, and a video clip comprising of thousands of such frames, the sheer volume of data is significant. With the introduction of new high definition video formats such as 4K or stereoscopic 3D, the volume of uncompressed frame data is growing ever larger.

Modern CPUs offer performance enhancements for processing digital video through SIMD instructions such as SSE2 or AVX. However, even with these instruction sets, …

Uav Formation Flight Utilizing A Low Cost, Open Source Configuration, Christian W. Lopez

Master's Theses

The control of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in a swarm or cooperative team scenario has been a topic of great interest for well over a decade, growing steadily with the advancements in UAV technologies. In the academic community, a majority of the studies conducted rely on simulation to test developed control strategies, with only a few institutions known to have nurtured the infrastructure required to propel multiple UAV control studies beyond simulation and into experimental testing. With the Cal Poly UAV FLOC Project, such an infrastructure was created, paving the way for future experimentation with multiple UAV control systems. …

Multiplicative Feedback Audio Distortion Circuit, Colton Parsons

Electrical Engineering

This circuit aims to distort an audio signal input in a novel and aesthetically pleasing manner. When it comes to the timbre of a note, even harmonics generally sound better than odd harmonics. Most forms of audio signal distortion (usually for electric guitar) primarily add odd harmonics to a signal, as this is easily accomplished by clipping the waveform. This project instead utilizes a signal multiplier in a feedback loop, with one multiplier input coming from the circuit’s input, and the other from the multiplier’s own output. This process creates even harmonics. A delay line is placed in the loop, …

Post-Fire Response Of Little Creek Watershed: Evaluation Of Change In Sediment Production And Suspended Sediment Transport, Andrew Wood Loganbill

Master's Theses

The Little Creek watershed was assessed to identify changes in event-based suspended sediment export and determine the factors contributing to sediment production the first year following the Lockheed Fire in 2009. The amount and volume of near-stream sediment sources were found to decrease, while an increase in hillslope sediment production was documented. High intensity, short duration rainfall (up to 87 mm/hr for 10 minute duration) initiated extensive rilling and minor channel-derived debris torrents originating from the upper south facing slopes. Rainfall simulations, hillslope erosion plots, and soil infiltration tests indicated that fire produced soil water repellency, the lack of ground …

Designing Anti-Islanding Detection Using The Synchrophasor Vector Processor, Ruth Christiana Huang

Master's Theses

ABSTRACT

Designing Anti-Islanding Detection Using the Synchrophasor Vector Processor

Ruth Huang

The need for distributed generation (DG) has become more and more popular because of the adverse effects of fossil fuels and the fear of running out of fossil fuels. By having DG, there are less transmission losses, voltage support, controllability of the system, decreased costs in transmission and distribution, power quality improvement, energy efficiency, and reduced reserve margin. The adverse effects of DG are voltage flicker, harmonics, and islanding. Islanding occurs when the DG continues to energize the power system when the main utility is disconnected. Detecting islanding is …

Evaluation Of The Anterior Talofibular And Calcaneofibular Ligament In Relation To Supination Ankle Sprains, Peter Tran

Biomedical Engineering

Ankle injuries have always posed an issue to a number of athletes. Sports that involve running and jumping accumulate about 25% of injuries correlating to ankle sprains. In most ankle sprains the inversion (supination) of the ankle cause damage to lateral ligaments. The two most common lateral ligaments to experience damage are the anterior talofibular (ATFL) and calcaneofibular (CFL) ligaments. The methods of taping and ankle braces have allowed athletes to prevent recurring sprains from occurring. However, sprains can still occur even when one or both methods are applied. The purpose of each method is to restrict the range of …

Shelf Life Study Of Electrospun Plga Copolymers, Sean Youra, Nick Hudson

Biomedical Engineering

Poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) is one of the most commonly used copolymers for electrospinning in tissue engineering applications. However, most research has not focused on the copolymer itself in regards to how long it can be used effectively and if varying the concentrations of polylactic acid (PLA) and polyglycolic acid (PGA) affect the resulting properties. Electrospinning is the method we use to create the three-dimensional constructs, or “scaffolds”, for the blood vessel mimic (BVM) in the tissue engineering lab. The aim of our project was to investigate if the morphology and mechanical properties of the scaffolds changed over time when they …

Cal Poly To Confer Three Honorary Doctorate Degrees At Commencement June 15, 16, Public Affairs Office

Press Releases

No abstract provided.

Cal Poly Students Succeed At Statewide Csu Research Competition, Public Affairs Office

Press Releases

No abstract provided.

Academic Senate - Agenda, 5/21/2013, Academic Senate

Academic Senate Agendas

No abstract provided.

An Evaluation Of Interactive Test-Driven Labs With Webide In Cs0, David S. Janzen, John Clements, Michael Hilton

Computer Science and Software Engineering

WebIDE is a framework that enables instructors to develop and deliver online lab content with interactive feedback. The ability to create lock-step labs enables the instructor to guide students through learning experiences, demonstrating mastery as they proceed. Feedback is provided through automated evaluators that vary from simple regular expression evaluation to syntactic parsers to applications that compile and run programs and unit tests. This paper describes WebIDE and its use in a CS0 course that taught introductory Java and Android programming using a test-driven learning approach. We report results from a controlled experiment that compared the use of dynamic WebIDE …

May 15, 2013 Cal Poly Report, Public Affairs Office

Cal Poly Report

No abstract provided.

Executive Committee - Meeting Minutes, 5/14/2013, Academic Senate

Academic Senate Minutes

No abstract provided.

Update On Beam Induced Rf Heating In The Lhc, B. Salvant, O. Aberle, G. Arduini, R. Assmann, B. Baglin, M.J. Barnes, W. Bartmann, P. Baudrenghien, O. Berrig, C. Bracco, E. Bravin, G. Bregliozzi, R. Bruce, A. Bertarelli, F. Carra, G. Cattenoz, F. Caspers, S. Claudet, H. Day, M. Garlasche, L. Gentini, B. Goddard, A. Grudiev, B. Henrist, R. Jones, O. Kononenko, G. Lanza, L. Lari, T. Mastoridis, V. Mertens, E. Métral, N. Mounet, J.E. Muller, A.A. Nosych, J.L. Nougaret, S. Persichelli, A.M. Piguiet, S. Redaelli, F. Roncarolo, G. Rumolo, B. Salvachua, M. Sapinski, R. Schmidt, E. Shaposhnikova, L. Tavian, M. Timmins, J. Uythoven, A. Vidal, J. Wenninger, D. Wollmann, M. Zerlauth, P. Fassnacht, S. Jakobsen, M. Deile

Physics

Since June 2011 the rapid increase of the luminosity performance of the LHC has come at the expense of both increased temperature and pressure of specific, near-beam, LHC equipment. In some cases, this beam induced heating has caused delays while equipment cool-down, beam dumps and even degradation of some devices. This contribution gathers the observations of beam induced heating, attributed to longitudinal beam coupling impedance, their current level of understanding and possible actions planned to be implemented during the 1st LHC Long Shutdown (LS1) in 2013-2014.

Investigations Of The Lhc Emittance Blow-Up During The 2012 Proton Run, M. Kuhn, G. Arduini, P. Baudrenghien, J. Emery, A. Guerrero, W. Hofle, V. Kain, M. Lamont, T. Mastoridis, F. Roncarolo, M. Sapinski, M. Schaumann, R. Steinhagen, G. Trad, D. Valuch

Physics

About 30 % of the potential luminosity performance is lost through the different phases of the LHC cycle, mainly due to transverse emittance blow-up. Measuring the emittance growth is a difficult task with high intensity beams and changing energies. Improvements of the LHC transverse profile instrumentation helped to study various effects. A breakdown of the growth through the different phases of the LHC cycle is given as well as a comparison with the data from the LHC experiments for transverse beam size. In 2012 a number of possible sources and remedies have been studied. Among these are intra beam scattering, …

May 8, 2013 Cal Poly Report, Public Affairs Office

Cal Poly Report

No abstract provided.

Executive Committee - Meeting Minutes, 5/7/2013, Academic Senate

Academic Senate Minutes

No abstract provided.

Search For 14.4 Kev Solar Axions From M1 Transition Of 57fe With Cuore Crystals, F. Alessandria, R Ardito, D. R. Artusa, F.T. Avignone Iii, O. Azzolini, M Balata, T.I. Banks, G. Bari, J. Beeman, F Bellini, A. Bersani, M. Biassoni, T. Bloxham, C Brofferio, C Bucci, X.Z. Cai, L. Canonica, S Capelli, L. Carbone, L. Cardani, M. Carrettoni, N. Casali, N. Chott, M Clemenza, C Cosmelli, O Cremonesi, R.J. Creswick, I Dafinei, A. Dally, V. Datskov, A. De Biasi, M.P. Decowski, M. M. Deninno, S Di Domizio, M.L. Di Vacri, L. Ejzak, R. Faccini, D.Q. Fang, H.A. Farach, E. Ferri, F Ferroni, E Fiorini, M.A. Franceschi, S.J. Freedman, B.K. Fujikawa, A Giachero, L. Gironi, A Giuliani, J. Goett, P Gorla, C. Gotti, E Guardincerri, T. D. Gutierrez, E.E. Haller, K. Han, K.M. Heeger, H.Z. Huang, R. Kadel, G. Keppel, L. Kogler, Yu. G. Kolomensky, D. Lenz, Y.L. Li, C. Ligi, X. Liu, Y.G. Ma, C. Maiano, M. Maino, M. Martinez, R.H. Maruyama, N. Moggi, S Morganti, T. Napolitano, S. Newman, S Nisi, C Nones, E.B. Norman, A Nucciotti, F. Orio, D. Orlandi, J.L. Ouellet, M Pallavicini, E. Palmieri, L. Pattavina, M Pavan, M Pedretti, G Pessina, S Pirro, E Previtali, V. Rampazzo, F. Rimondi, C Rosenfeld, C. Rusconi, S Sangiorgio, N.D. Scielzo, M Sisti, A.R. Smith, L. Taffarello, M. Tenconi, W.D. Tian, C. Tomei, S. Trentalange, G Ventura, M Vignati, B.S. Wang, H.W. Wang, C. A. Whitten Jr., T. Wise, A. Woodcraft, L Zanotti, C. Zarra, B.X. Zhu, S. Zucchelli

Physics

We report the results of a search for axions from the 14.4 keV M1 transition from ⁵⁷Fe in the core of the sun using the axio-electric effect in TeO₂bolometers. The detectors are 5

× 5 × 5 cm³ crystals operated at about 10 mK in a facility used to test bolometers for the CUORE experiment at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in Italy. An analysis of 43.65 kg⋅d of data was made using a newly developed low energy trigger which was optimized to reduce the energy threshold of the detector. An upper limit of 0.58 …

Executive Committee - Agenda, 5/7/2013, Academic Senate

Academic Senate Agendas

No abstract provided.

May 1, 2013 Cal Poly Report, Public Affairs Office

Cal Poly Report

No abstract provided.

Estimating The Impact Of Lost To Follow-Up On Breast Cancer Patients' Disease-Free Survival, Debbie Yan Qun Huang

Statistics

Background The 5-year survival rate for patients with breast cancer is much higher than patients with other types of cancer. Due to this longer survival period, breast cancer patients also tend to have increased rates of lost to follow-up, when compared to other cancers. When a patient becomes lost, the occurrence of distant metastasis cannot be reliably ascertained, unless the patient had a breast cancer-specific (BC) death. The impact of lost patients on recurrence rates and disease-free survival (DFS) was explored in breast cancer patients seen at the City of Hope from 1997 to 2012.

Methods Female breast cancer patients …

Investigation Of Biochemical Biorefinery Sizing And Environmental Sustainability Impacts For Conventional Bale System And Advanced Uniform Biomass Logistics Designs, Andrew M. Argo, Eric Cd Tan, Daniel Inman, Matt H. Langholtz, Lawrence M. Eaton, Jacob J. Jacobson, Christopher T. Wright, David J. Muth Jr., May M. Wu, Yi-Wen Chiu, Robin L. Graham

Natural Resources Management and Environmental Sciences

The 2011 US Billion-Ton Update1 estimates that there are enough agricultural and forest resources to sustainably provide enough biomass to displace approximately 30% of the country’s current petroleum consumption. A portion of these resources are inaccessible at current cost targets with conventional feedstock supply systems because of their remoteness or low yields. Reliable analyses and projections of US biofuels production depend on assumptions about the supply system and biorefinery capacity, which, in turn, depend on economics, feedstock logistics, and sustainability. A cross-functional team has examined optimal combinations of advances in feedstock supply systems and biorefinery capacities with rigorous design information, …

Validation Of Techniques To Mitigate Copper Surface Contamination In Cuore, F. Alessandria, R. Ardito, D.R. Artusa, F.T. Avignone Iii, O. Azzolini, M. Balata, T.I. Banks, G. Bari, J. Beeman, F. Bellini, A. Bersani, M. Biassoni, T. Bloxham, C. Brofferio, C. Bucci, X.Z. Cai, L. Canonica, S. Capelli, L. Carbone, L. Cardani, M. Carrettoni, N. Casali, N. Chott, M. Clemenza, C. Cosmelli, O. Cremonesi, R.J. Creswich, I. Dafinei, A. Dally, V. Datskov, A. De Biasi, M.M. Deninno, S. Di Domizio, M.L. Di Vacri, L. Ejzak, R. Faccini, D.Q. Fang, H.A. Farach, E. Ferri, F. Ferroni, E. Fiorini, M.A. Franceschi, S.J. Freedman, B.K. Fujikawa, A. Giachero, L. Gironi, A. Giuliani, J. Goett, A. Goodsell, P. Gorla, C. Gotti, E. Guardincerri, T.D. Gutierrez, E.E. Haller, K. Han, K.M. Heeger, H.Z. Huang, R. Kadel, K. Kazkaz, G. Keppel, L. Kogler, Yu. G. Kolomensky, D. Lenz, Y.L. Li, C. Ligi, X. Liu, Y.G. Ma, C. Maiano, M. Maino, M. Martinez, R.H. Maruyama, Y. Mei, N. Moggi, S. Morganti, T. Napolitano, S. Newman, S. Nisi, C. Nones, E.B. Norman, A. Nucciotti, F. Orio, D. Orlandi, J.L. Ouellet, M. Pallavicini, V. Palmieri, L. Pattavina, M. Pavan, M. Pedretti, G. Pessina, S. Pirro, E. Previtali, V. Rampazzo, R. Reil, F. Rimondi, C. Rosenfeld, C. Rusconi, S. Sangiorgio, N.D. Scielzo, M. Sisti, A.R. Smith, L. Sparks, F. Stivanello, L. Taffarello, M. Tenconi, W.D. Tian, C. Tomei, S. Trentalange, G. Ventura, M. Vignati, B.S. Wang, H.W. Wang, C.A. Whitten Jr, T. Wise, A. Woodcraft, L. Zanotti, C. Zarra, B.X. Zhu, S. Zucchelli

Physics

In this article we describe the background challenges for the CUORE experiment posed by surface contamination of inert detector materials such as copper, and present three techniques explored to mitigate these backgrounds. Using data from a dedicated test apparatus constructed to validate and compare these techniques we demonstrate that copper surface contamination levels better than 10⁻⁷- 10⁻⁸ Bq/cm² are achieved for ²³⁸U and ²³²Th. If these levels are reproduced in the final CUORE apparatus the projected 90% C.L. upper limit on the number of background counts in the region of interest is 0.02–0.03 counts/keV/kg/y …

Modeling The Spectral Energy Distribution Of Mrk 421, Randall L. Oglesby

Physics

Blazars are astronomical objects thought to be powered by the release of gravitational energy by accretion of material into a supermassive black hole located in the central region of the host galaxy. Some AGN present strong relativistic outflows in the form of jets, with blazars being the particular subset whose jets are aligned with our line of sight. Even though blazars account for only a small fraction of all AGN, they are the dominant class source in the high-energy sky. In this thesis we study the spectral energy distribution of Mrk 421, a prototypical blazar. Using publicly available numerical code …