Digital Commons Network^™

Extracting Cng Tls/Ssl Artifacts From Lsass Memory, Jacob M. Kambic

Open Access Theses

Currently, there is no publicly accessible, reliable, automated way to forensically decrypt Secure Socket Layer (SSL)/Transport Layer Security (TLS) connections that leverage ephemeral key negotiations as implemented by the modern Windows operating system. This thesis explores the Local Security Authority Sub-System (LSASS) process used for Key Isolation within the Windows 10 operating system in pursuit of identifying artifacts that would allow a solution to that problem, along with any other connection artifacts that could provide forensic value. The end result was the identication of TLS/SSL secrets from the key exchange and contextual artifacts that provide identication of the other party …

Assessing The Performance Of A Soy Methyl Ester -Polystyrene Topical Treatment To Extend The Service Life Of Concrete Structures, D'Shawn G. Thomas

Open Access Theses

Experimental results show that soy methyl ester (SME), a derivative of soy bean oil, along with the incorporation of polystyrene (PS) is a non-toxic, biodegradable and renewable material that can be used effectively as a topical concrete surface treatment. While, concrete sealants and topical surface treatments can be used to extend to durability of concrete structures, it is difficult to predict the durability of concrete structures sealed with a sealant or topical surface treatment. This is due to a lack of necessary model inputs that can be used to address the durability of concrete structures treated with these materials. In …

Preliminary Design Tools In Turbomachinery: Non-Uniformly Spaced Blade Rows, Multistage Interaction, Unsteady Radial Waves, And Propeller Horizontal-Axis Turbine Optimization, Yujun Leng

Open Access Dissertations

Turbomachinery flow fields are inherently unsteady and complex which makes the related CFD analyses computationally intensive. Physically based preliminary design tools are desirable for parametric studies early in the design stage, and to provide deep physical insight and a good starting point for the later CFD analyses. Four analytical/semi-analytical models are developed in this study: 1) a generalized flat plate cascade model for investigating the unsteady aerodynamics of a blade row with non-uniformly spaced blades; 2) a multistage interaction model for investigating rotor-stator interactions; 3) an analytical solution for quantifying the impeller wake convection and pressure wave propagating between a …

Analysis Of Scientific Argumentation In Two Physical Chemistry Classrooms Using The Pogil Approach, Alena C. Moon

Open Access Dissertations

The benefits of facilitating argumentation in science education have been well reported (Jimenez-Aleixandre & Erduran, 2007). Engaging in argumentation has shown to model authentic scientific inquiry as well as promote development of content knowledge. However, less emphasis has been placed on facilitating argumentation in upper level undergraduate courses, though it is important for evaluating undergraduate curricula to characterize upper level students’ scientific reasoning. This work considers two implementations of the POGIL physical chemistry curriculum and evaluates the classroom argumentation. The researchers aimed to consider the content of the arguments and dialectical features characteristic of socially constructed arguments (Nielson, 2013). To …

Grounding Robot Motion In Natural Language And Visual Perception, Scott Alan Bronikowski

Open Access Dissertations

The current state of the art in military and first responder ground robots involves heavy physical and cognitive burdens on the human operator while taking little to no advantage of the potential autonomy of robotic technology. The robots currently in use are rugged remote-controlled vehicles. Their interaction modalities, usually utilizing a game controller connected to a computer, require a dedicated operator who has limited capacity for other tasks.

I present research which aims to ease these burdens by incorporating multiple modes of robotic sensing into a system which allows humans to interact with robots through a natural-language interface. I conduct …

Development And Evaluation Of A Watershed-Scale Hybrid Hydrologic Model, Younghyun Cho

Open Access Dissertations

A watershed-scale hybrid hydrologic model (Distributed-Clark), which is a lumped conceptual and distributed feature model, was developed to predict spatially distributed short- and long-term rainfall runoff generation and routing using relatively simple methodologies and state-of-the-art spatial data in a GIS environment. In Distributed-Clark, spatially distributed excess rainfall estimated with the SCS curve number method and a GIS-based set of separated unit hydrographs (spatially distributed unit hydrograph) are utilized to calculate a direct runoff flow hydrograph, and time-varied SCS CN values and conditional unit hydrograph approach for different runoff depth-based flow convolution are also used to compute long-term rainfall-runoff flow hydrographs. …

Undergraduate Students' Goals For Chemistry Laboratory Coursework, Brittland K. Dekorver

Open Access Dissertations

Chemistry laboratory coursework has the potential to offer many benefits to students, yet few of these learning goals are realized in practice. Therefore, this study seeks to characterize undergraduate students’ learning goals for their chemistry laboratory coursework. Data were collected by recording video of students completing laboratory experiments and conducting interviews with the students about their experiences that were analyzed utilizing the frameworks of Human Constructivism and Self-Regulated Learning. A cross-sectional sampling of students allowed comparisons to be made among students with varying levels of chemistry experience and interest in chemistry. The student goals identified by this study were compared …

Advances In Solid Phase Microextraction For The Analysis Of Volatile Compounds In Explosives, Tire Treatments, And Entomological Specimens, William D. Kranz

Open Access Dissertations

Solid phase microextraction is a powerful and versatile technique, well-suited to the analysis of numerous samples of forensic interest. The exceptional sensitivity of the SPME platform, combined with its adaptability to traditional GC-MS systems and its ability to extract samples with minimal work-up, make it appropriate to applications in forensic laboratories.

In a series of research projects, solid phase microextraction was employed for the analysis of explosives, commercial tire treatments, and entomological specimens. In the first project, the volatile organic compounds emanating from two brands of pseudo-explosive training aids for use in detector dog imprinting were determined by SPME-GC-MS, and …

Double Optical Feedback And Pt-Symmetry Breaking Induced Nonlinear Dynamics In Semiconductor Lasers, Joseph S. Suelzer

Open Access Dissertations

A central aim of this research is to probe the nonlinear dynamics that arise in a semiconductor laser due to optical feedback. We investigate two schemes of optical feedback. The first scheme subjects the laser to optical feedback from two external cavities (or two loops), wherein each cavity contains a spectral filter. Using two filtered optical feedbacks, we experimentally demonstrate the ability to elicit and control unique dynamics in the optical emission frequency (wavelength) of the laser. These results are compared to a deterministic model describing the evolution of the complex electric field and carrier density of the laser. As …

Ibeacon Based Proximity And Indoor Localization System, Faheem Faheem

Open Access Theses

User location can be leveraged to provide a wide range of services in a variety of indoor locations including retails stores, hospitals, airports, museums and libraries etc. The widescale proliferation of user devices such as smart phones and the interconnectivity among different entities, powered by Internet of Things (IoT), makes user device-based localization a viable approach to provide Location Based Services (LBS). Location based services can be broadly classified into 1) Proximity based services that provides services based on a rough estimate of users distance to any entity, and 2) Indoor localization that locates a user's exact location in the …

Quantifying The Global N2o Emissions From Natural Ecosystems Using A Mechanistically-Based Biogeochemistry Model, Tong Yu

Open Access Theses

Nitrous oxide (N2O) has a great influence on atmospheric chemistry and climate. It is not only a major greenhouse gas, but also one of the largest ozone-depleting substances emitted from the biosphere. Process-based biogeochemistry modeling constrained by site-level observations is a feasible approach to quantifying its emissions at large temporal and spatial scales. This study developed a process-based biogeochemistry model of N2O emissions based on an extant biogeochemistry model, the Terrestrial Ecosystem Model (TEM). The model development includes: 1) incorporating the effects of physical conditions on both nitrification and denitrification and 2) implementing principles of the stoichiometry of carbon and …

Cosmic Ray Muons For Spent Nuclear Fuel Monitoring, Stylianos Chatzidakis

Open Access Dissertations

There is a steady increase in the volume of spent nuclear fuel stored on-site (at reactor) as currently there is no permanent disposal option. No alternative disposal path is available and storage of spent nuclear fuel in dry storage containers is anticipated for the near future. In this dissertation, a capability to monitor spent nuclear fuel stored within dry casks using cosmic ray muons is developed. The motivation stems from the need to investigate whether the stored content agrees with facility declarations to allow proliferation detection and international treaty verification. Cosmic ray muons are charged particles generated naturally in the …

Learning From Minimally Labeled Data With Accelerated Convolutional Neural Networks, Aysegul Dundar

Open Access Dissertations

The main objective of an Artificial Vision Algorithm is to design a mapping function that takes an image as an input and correctly classifies it into one of the user-determined categories. There are several important properties to be satisfied by the mapping function for visual understanding. First, the function should produce good representations of the visual world, which will be able to recognize images independently of pose, scale and illumination. Furthermore, the designed artificial vision system has to learn these representations by itself. Recent studies on Convolutional Neural Networks (ConvNets) produced promising advancements in visual understanding. These networks attain significant …

Effect Of Bioenergy Crops And Fast Growing Trees On Hydrology And Water Quality In The Little Vermilion River Watershed, Tian Guo

Open Access Dissertations

Energy security and sustainability require a suite of biomass crops, including woody species. Short rotation woody crops (SRWCs) such as Populus have great potential as biofuel feedstocks. Quantifying biomass yields of bioenergy crop and hydrologic and water quality responses to growth is important should it be widely planted in the Midwestern U.S. Subsurface tile drainage systems enable the Midwest area to become highly productive agricultural lands, but also create environmental problems like nitrate-N contamination of the water it drains. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) has been used to model watersheds with tile drainage, but the new tile drainage …

Fabrication And Photonics Properties Of Iii-V Semiconductor Nanowire Structures, Tzu-Ging Lin

Open Access Dissertations

III-V semiconductor nanowires (NWs) have shown great potential to be building blocks for optical, optoelectronic, and electronic devices due to their special transverse confinement of electrons and photons along the nanowire axis. In addition, semiconductor nanowires with subwavelength structures exhibit strong optical Mie resonance, making them ideal platforms for realizing novel optical devices, such as extreme solar energy absorbers and broadband light trapping devices. This special 1D optical Mie resonance can be enhanced by using semiconductor-core dielectric-shell (CS) and metal-core semiconductor-shell dielectric-outer shell (CSS) nanowire heterostructures. Those advantages can be even leveraged up by utilizing nanowire arrays, attributing to the …

Self-Regulation To Practice: Incorporating The Strategy To An Early Childhood Special Education Setting, Kathryn L. Szwed

Open Access Dissertations

Preschool students who display social emotional deficits pose challenging issues for families, caregivers and teachers who educate them. In this study, the effectiveness of an assistive technology based treatment package consisting of video self-modeling and behavior management software was investigated to determine if its combined use would result in increased student self-regulation skills. Using a multiple baseline design, three students used the treatment package to increase self-regulation skills. During the investigation, the accuracy to self-identify behaviors, the documentation of desired and undesired behaviors and the overall impact of the treatment package was studied. Interobserver agreement (IOA) was used to determine …

Learning In Vision And Robotics, Daniel P. Barrett

Open Access Dissertations

I present my work on learning from video and robotic input. This is an important problem, with numerous potential applications. The use of machine learning makes it possible to obtain models which can handle noise and variation without explicitly programming them. It also raises the possibility of robots which can interact more seamlessly with humans rather than only exhibiting hard-coded behaviors. I will present my work in two areas: video action recognition, and robot navigation. First, I present a video action recognition method which represents actions in video by sequences of retinotopic appearance and motion detectors, learns such models automatically …

Incorporation Of Gnss Multipath To Improve Autonomous Rendezvous, Docking And Proximity Operations In Space, Benjamin W. Ashman

Open Access Dissertations

Automated rendezvous and docking (AR&D;) operations are important for many future space missions, such as the resupply of space stations, repair and refueling of large satellites, and active removal of orbital debris. These operations depend critically on accurate, real-time knowledge of the relative position and velocity between two space vehicles. Unfortunately, Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) capabilities remain severely limited in close proximity to large space structures due to significant multipath effects and signal blockage. Although GNSS is used for the initial stages of approach, other instruments such as laser, radar and vision-based systems, are required to augment GNSS during …

A Collaborative Integrated Stem Teaching: Examination Of A Science And Math Teacher Collaboration On An Integrated Stem Unit, Drew C. Ayres

Open Access Theses

The integration of science, technology, engineering and mathematics curriculum in middle school science and math classrooms is a reform effort currently taking place. The teachers are being encouraged to teach integrated content through national and state standards. The teachers have not been trained to do this form of teaching, which has led to feelings of discomfort or incompetence to fulfill those standards. This has led to a need for professional developments to train these teachers. Those developing the professional developments are seeking to identify ways to encourage teachers to continue to implement integrated units.

The purpose of this study was …

Innovation As Everyday Action: A Case Study Of Organizational Discourse And The Local Meaning Of Innovation, Jennifer C. Batra

Open Access Theses

This study describes and explicates the nuanced nature of commonly adopted buzzwords such as innovation by analyzing how innovation is defined and embedded structurally within a single organization. Working to uncover how the individual construction of a local definition of innovation within the global context of a quasi-academic organization changes as organizational priorities and practices evolve over time, I present the varied framings of innovation at the micro, meso, and macro levels, through two research phases (a) the definition phase and (b) the practice phase over the course of one year.

This thesis project is situated within a single Mid-Western …

Artificial Neural Networks For Wireless Structural Control, Ghazi Binarandi

Open Access Theses

We live in an age when people desire taller buildings and longer bridges. These increasing demands of more flexible structures challenge civil engineers to ensure structural safety in the state where they are more prone to extreme dynamic loading, such as earthquakes. Extensive wiring required in traditional structural control applications may be expensive and inconvenient, especially for large scale structures. To improve the scalability, wireless sensors offer a promising alternative. However, the presence of time delay and data loss in a wireless sensor network can potentially reduce the performance of the control system. Here an artificial neural network is proposed …

A History Of African And South American Basins, Rebecca A. Bobick

Open Access Theses

As hydrocarbon development in Africa and South America continues to expand, understanding the geologic evolution as well as the geologic symmetry of each of the continent's coastal basins grows increasingly important. Unfortunately, there's currently no comprehensive database that contains the stratigraphic record, depositional environments, and tectonic evolution available for either Africa or South America. Therefore, the goal of my research is to create an extensive datapack and guide booklet for Africa's major sedimentary basins, complete the South America datapack that's currently being constructed, and correlate the western African conjugate basins to the eastern South American conjugate basins. To accomplish this, …

Using Security Risk Analysis: Is The Bring Your Own Device Policy Becoming A Liability Risk Within Healthcare?, Lee Alexander Cavett

Open Access Theses

Using computer simulation modeling, this research examined the problems contributing to data breaches within healthcare industry. The study attempted to answer two questions: 1) is the Bring Your Own Device policy becoming a liability risk within hospitals causing an increase in data breaches and 2) is there a lower risk compared to using wired desktops. An iPad was the primary focused device as one of many Bring Your Own Devices. The study used a randomly generated sample of an approximate 2,700 patients, one nurse and doctor on a eight hour work-day within the clinic (eight A.M five P.M) considering a …

Purification And Preparation Of Intrinsically Disordered Proteins For Nmr Spectroscopy, Kyle Chamberlain

Open Access Theses

NMR spectroscopy has recently become a promising field for protein characterization and dynamic studies. As the technology and pulse sequences improve for tracking proteins, a greater demand for developing effective purification protocols to produce NMR grade protein samples have arisen. This thesis explores two proteins: histone H4 tail and Mucin 1; Two very different proteins that require different methods of expression and purification to achieve a high enough yield for NMR analysis. H4 is a water soluble protein that weighs ~2.7 kDa, and has no extinction coefficient. Since the protein is too small for many methods of expression and purification, …

The Casualty Transportation Of Ebola Outbreak In Liberia: A Simulation Study, Hyejin Cho

Open Access Theses

In this paper, we have solved the unique problem of casualty transportation problem under Ebola by developing dynamic policies for vehicle routing in order to provide practical decision support. The objective of the proposed model is to minimize the total transmission risk. We describe the problem with real- constraints and parameters based on the empirical data of the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Liberia. The casualty transportation problem is a variant of Dynamic Pick-up and Delivery Problems (DPDP), in which a vehicle is dispatched to demand location in real time and it then transports the demands to the aimed area (destination). …

Characterization Of A Continuous-Flow Reactor For Solar Uv Water Disinfection, Margaret M. Busse

Open Access Theses

Lack of access to safe water is a common problem in many developing countries (UNICEF/WHO, 2011). Fortunately, solar ultraviolet (UV) radiation is abundantly available in many of these same areas, and it has been used to accomplish disinfection of drinking water by processes that involve no electrical power, such as solar water disinfection (SODIS). However, conventional SODIS systems are limited by batch processing and exclusion of UVB radiation, which is the most germicidally-active portion of the UV spectrum (Coohill and Sagripanti, 2008). To address these limitations, a continuous-flow solar UV disinfection system was developed to amplify ambient solar UV radiation, …

Transfers To A Gravitational Saddle Point: An Extended Mission Design Option For Lisa Pathfinder, Andrew D. Cox

Open Access Theses

Any possible LISA Pathfinder extended mission will immediately follow the primary mission after completion of scientific observations and technical demonstrations in a Sun-Earth L1 libration point orbit. One extended mission concept with scientific appeal is a spacecraft path that includes multiple encounters with a gravitational equilibrium point. This point, also termed a saddle point, exists where the total gravitational acceleration sums to zero and is distinct from the five Lagrange points in the three-body problem. This investigation seeks a strategy to design such a path subject to a variety of constraints. Periodic, quasi-periodic, and manifold structures are explored to …

Hardware Accelerated Redundancy Elimination In Network System, Kelu Diao

Open Access Theses

With the tremendous growth in the amount of information stored on remote locations and cloud systems, many service providers are seeking ways to reduce the amount of redundant information sent across networks by using data de-duplication techniques. Data de-duplication can reduce network traffic without the loss of information, and consequently increase available network bandwidth by reducing redundant traffic. However, due to the heavy computation required for detecting and reducing redundant data transmission, de-duplication itself can become a bottleneck in high capacity links. We completed two parts of work in this research study, Hardware Accelerated Redundancy Elimination in Network Systems (HARENS) …

Nanoscale Phonon Thermal Conductivity Via Molecular Dynamics, Jonathan M. Dunn

Open Access Theses

Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations provide a useful and simple means of calculating the nanoscale thermal properties of materials, which requires special analysis since the thermal properties of materials change when their dimensions reach the nanoscale. In this research, MD is used to investigate the nanoscale phonon thermal transport of materials that are attracting much interest in the areas of materials science and nuclear physics. In order to evaluate two distinct methods of calculating the thermal conductivity of materials using MD, the simulation methods are first applied to Si. Once an understanding of each simulation method is established, they are then …

Social Customer Relationship Management In Higher Education, Victorian A. Farnsworth

Open Access Theses

Customer Relationship Management is a concept that has become a requirement for any successful entity to attract and retain desired constituents. It is a set of processes and tools that help track, analyze, and act upon customer related data. Over the last decade, the toolsets have evolved to include social media as another source of information and connection. Nowhere is this information and connection more important than in higher education where globalization and tighter budgets have created a competitive market. This research evaluated the use of this most recent social toolset and its effectiveness in a higher education institution, all …