Digital Commons Network^™

Optimizing Lempel-Ziv Factorization For The Gpu Architecture, Bryan Ching

Master's Theses

Lossless data compression is used to reduce storage requirements, allowing for the relief of I/O channels and better utilization of bandwidth. The Lempel-Ziv lossless compression algorithms form the basis for many of the most commonly used compression schemes. General purpose computing on graphic processing units (GPGPUs) allows us to take advantage of the massively parallel nature of GPUs for computations other that their original purpose of rendering graphics. Our work targets the use of GPUs for general lossless data compression. Specifically, we developed and ported an algorithm that constructs the Lempel-Ziv factorization directly on the GPU. Our implementation bypasses the …

A Comparison Of Image Processing Techniques For Bird Detection, Elsa Reyes

Master's Theses

Orchard fruits and vegetable crops are vulnerable to wild birds and animals. These wild birds and animals can cause critical damage to the produce. Traditional methods of scaring away birds such as scarecrows are not long-term solutions but short-term solutions. This is a huge problem especially near areas like San Luis Obispo where there are vineyards. Bird damage can be as high as 50% for grapes being grown in vineyards. The total estimated revenue lost annually in the 10 counties in California due to bird and rodent damage to 22 selected crops ranged from $168 million to $504 million (in …

Future Of Payment Platforms, Salim Benjamin Youssefzadeh

Master's Theses

With the vast increase in smartphones, there have been an increasing number of opportunities growing in the app industry. One in particular is the way we deal with money. There are huge overheads in the current payment systems around the world particularly in the United States, many of which include large transaction fees. Many new businesses have grown to solve these inefficiencies and create a new platform that provides a new user experience, security, and convenience among many other things. However, many of these platforms are still centralized, making them more susceptible to attacks. This thesis goes over the various …

Towards An Automated Weight Lifting Coach: Introducing Lift, Michael Andrew Lady

Master's Theses

The fitness device market is young and rapidly growing. More people than ever before take count of how many steps they walk, how many calories they burn, their heart rate over time, and even their quality of sleep. New, and as of yet, unreleased fitness devices have promised the next evolution of functionality with exercise technique analysis. These next generation of fitness devices have wrist and armband style form factors, which may not be optimal for barbell exercises such as back squat, bench press, and overhead press where a sensor on one arm may not provide the most relevant data …

Coffee: Context Observer For Fast Enthralling Entertainment, Anthony M. Lenz

Master's Theses

Desktops, laptops, smartphones, tablets, and the Kinect, oh my! With so many devices available to the average consumer, the limitations and pitfalls of each interface are becoming more apparent. Swimming in devices, users often have to stop and think about how to interact with each device to accomplish the current tasks at hand. The goal of this thesis is to minimize user cognitive effort in handling multiple devices by creating a context aware hybrid interface. The context aware system will be explored through the hybridization of gesture and touch interfaces using a multi-touch coffee table and the next-generation Microsoft Kinect. …

Jester: A Device Abstraction And Data Fusion Api For Skeletal Tracking, Kevin Samuel Schapansky

Master's Theses

Humans naturally interact with the world in three dimensions. Traditionally, personal computers have relied on 2D mice for input because 3D user tracking systems were cumbersome and expensive. Recently, 3D input hardware has become accurate and affordable enough to be marketed to average consumers and integrated into niche applications. Presently, 3D application developers must learn a different API for each device their software will support, and there is no simple way to integrate sensor data if the system has multiple 3D input devices. This thesis presents Jester, a library designed to simplify the development and improve the accuracy of 3D …

Structural Damage Detection Utilizing Experimental Mode Shapes, Evan Jamison Gerbo

Master's Theses

A method of locating structural damage is developed and tested to aid in the evaluation of structural health. This method will help minimize the cost of structural inspection and repair by informing engineers of where damage, due a seismic event, has occurred before the removal of finishes for visual inspection. This thesis begins to answer the question “can structural damage be detected solely through analysis of experimentally measured mode shapes?”

The work encompasses construction of a test structure, with three braces that can be repeatedly engaged or dis-engaged, thus allowing for testing of a variety of braced configurations. For this …

A Set Union Based Formulation For Course Scheduling And Timetabling, Jesse Paul Bukenberger

Master's Theses

The Course Timetabling Problem is a widely studied optimization problem where a number of sections are scheduled in concert with the assignment of students to sections in order to maximize the desirability of the resulting schedule for all stakeholders. This problem is commonly solved as a linear program with variables for each student or group of students with identical schedules. In this paper we explore an alternative formulation that aggregates binary student variables into integer variables denoting the number of students enrolled in a course. Our solution method assumes decomposition of the general schedule into time blocks, and applies a …

Laser Speckle Imaging: A Quantitative Tool For Flow Analysis, Taylor A. Hinsdale

Master's Theses

Laser speckle imaging, often referred to as laser speckle contrast analysis (LASCA), has been sought after as a quasi-real-time, full-field, flow visualization method. It has been proven to be a valid and reliable qualitative method, but there has yet to be any definitive consensus on its ability to be used as a quantitative tool. The biggest impediment to the process of quantifying speckle measurements is the introduction of additional non dynamic speckle patterns from the surroundings. The dynamic speckle pattern under investigation is often obscured by noise caused by background static speckle patterns. One proposed solution to this problem is …

Creating A Testing Framework And Workflow For Developers New To Web Application Engineering, Tag G. Ashby

Master's Theses

Web applications are quickly replacing standalone applications for everyday tasks.

These web applications need to be tested to ensure proper functionality and

reliability. There have been substantial efforts to create tools that assist with the

testing of web applications, but there is no standard set of tools or a recommended

workflow to ensure speed of development and strength of application.

We have used and outlined the merits of a number of existing testing tools

and brought together the best among them to create what we believe is a fully- featured, easy to use, testing framework and workflow for web application …

Historic Preservation Approaches For The City Of Arroyo Grande, Rachel Elizabeth Grothe

Master's Theses

Historic buildings represent a significant portion of the built environment. Local governments are at the forefront for deciding how these historic buildings will be treated and preserved. The preservation of historic buildings is important for a variety of reasons. Among these reasons is that the preservation of historic buildings and structures helps communities retain a sense of character and place. Additionally, historic preservation makes sense both economically and environmentally. The dilemma for many local municipalities, the City of Arroyo Grande in particular, is that historic structures are at risk of demolition and inappropriate alterations. Through a multi-modal approach, this project …

Addition Of A Stanton Gauge To The Boundary Layer Data System, Brittany Reanne Kinkade

Master's Theses

The Stanton gauge technique provides an indirect method for measurement of skin friction on a smooth aerodynamic surface in which a pressure tap is available. This thesis presents the design and evaluation of a new type of skin friction measurement gauge based on the Stanton gauge concept but not requiring a surface pressure tap. This new skin friction measurement gauge, called a "Flow Tab", can therefore be used on an aerodynamic model or aircraft surface without alteration of the surface. The Flow Tab is thus particularly well-suited to use with Cal Poly's Boundary Layer Data System (BLDS), a small, self-contained …

Arts And Crafts: Predictive Scaling For Request-Based Services In The Cloud, Andrew Guenther

Master's Theses

Modern web services can see well over a billion requests per day. Data and services at such scale require advanced software and large amounts of computational resources to process requests in reasonable time. Advancements in cloud computing now allow us to acquire additional resources faster than in traditional capacity planning scenarios. Companies can scale systems up and down as required, allowing them to meet the demand of their customers without having to purchase their own expensive hardware. Unfortunately, these, now routine, scaling operations remain a primarily manual task. To solve this problem, we present CRAFTS (Cloud Resource Anticipation For Timing …

Walking Assistant – A Mobile Aid For The Visually-Impaired, Adin T. Miller

Master's Theses

The most common navigation aid visually-impaired people employ is a white cane, but, recently, technology has given rise to a varied set of sophisticated navigation aids. While these new aids can provide more assistance to a visually-impaired person than a white cane, they tend to be expensive due to a small market segment, which in turn can reduce their accessibility. In an effort to produce a technologically-advanced yet accessible navigation aid, an Android application is proposed that detects and notifies users about obstacles within their path through the use of a smartphone's camera. While the smartphone is mounted on a …

Monarch Butterfly (Danaus Plexippus) Tree Preference And Intersite Movement At California Overwintering Sites, Jessica Lynn Griffiths

Master's Theses

Managing Monarch butterfly overwintering groves: making room among the eucalyptus

Proper management and conservation of the coastal California overwintering sites used by western Monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus L.) is critical for continued use of these sites by monarchs. Many management efforts are currently concentrating on eucalyptus-only sites because of the prevailing notion that monarchs prefer eucalyptus over native tree species. Yet, whether a preference exists or not has never been tested. Herein, we test the “eucalyptus preference” hypothesis with data from five overwintering sites comprised of blue gum eucalyptus (Eucalyptus globulus) and at least one other native tree …

Development Of Novel Anti-Microbial Plant Essential-Oil Treatments To Reduce The Postharvest Incidence Of Botrytis Cinerea Of Strawberries, Ryan C. Brantley

Master's Theses

Fresh strawberries have grown into a multi-billion dollar industry over the last few decades in California. Botrytis cinerea or grey mold, is the worst pathological disorder affecting strawberry fruit causing cull rates of up to 30% in the worst seasons. Strawberry fruits are fragile and have a short shelf-life making timely harvest, cooling, and marketing an absolute necessity. The current industry standard is to ship strawberries in an overwrapped CO₂-enriched headspace pallet in refrigerated trucks at 33 °F. However, B. cinerea has the ability to grow at very low temperatures and continues to plague the strawberry industry during postharvest storage …

Predicting Music Genre Preferences Based On Online Comments, Andrew J. Sinclair

Master's Theses

Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT) states that individuals adapt to each other’s communicative behaviors. This adaptation is called “convergence.” In this work we explore the convergence of writing styles of users of the online music distribution plat- form SoundCloud.com. In order to evaluate our system we created a corpus of over 38,000 comments retrieved from SoundCloud in April 2014. The corpus represents comments from 8 distinct musical genres: Classical, Electronic, Hip Hop, Jazz, Country, Metal, Folk, and World. Our corpus contains: short comments, frequent misspellings, little sentence struc- ture, hashtags, emoticons, and URLs. We adapt techniques used by researchers analyzing other …

A Proof Of Concept For Crowdsourcing Color Perception Experiments, Ryan Nathaniel Mcleod

Master's Theses

Accurately quantifying the human perception of color is an unsolved prob- lem. There are dozens of numerical systems for quantifying colors and how we as humans perceive them, but as a whole, they are far from perfect. The ability to accurately measure color for reproduction and verification is critical to indus- tries that work with textiles, paints, food and beverages, displays, and media compression algorithms. Because the science of color deals with the body, mind, and the subjective study of perception, building models of color requires largely empirical data over pure analytical science. Much of this data is extremely dated, …

Development Of A Finite Element Model For Predicting The Impact Energy Absorbing Performance Of A Composite Structure, Matthew Lowell Roberts

Master's Theses

Because of their high strength-to-weight ratio, Fiber Reinforced Composite (FRC) materials are well suited for use in high performance racing applications where weight must be kept to a minimum. Formula SAE (FSAE) race cars are designed and built by college students, roughly following the model of a scaled down Formula One car. Strict regulations are placed on specific components of the car in the interest of equalizing competition and ensuring the safety of the drivers. Students are required to construct a survival cell (the chassis), which can resist large amounts of energy in the event of a crash, with an …

Integrated Senior Housing, Kyungok Ha

Master's Theses

It is difficult to have an integrated population throughout all age strata in a society. Especially if one considers the growing percentage of the aged population and their feeling alienated in their current physical surroundings. In order to solve imminent problems with the growing elderly population, a primary task should be considering how to improve the housing of senior citizens. Furthermore, bringing the youth and elderly together would produce a functioning self-help system. It engenders interaction strategies by employing the strengths of one generation to serve another generation’s needs. This idea was introduced by the systemic family therapist Gerhard Schiele. …

Studies And Research Regarding Sound Reduction Materials With The Purpose Of Reducing Sound Pollution, Timothy G. Hawkins

Master's Theses

Noise can be defined as unwanted sound. There are many cases and applications that reducing noise level is of great importance. Loss of hearing is only one of the effects of continuous exposure to excessive noise levels. Noise can interfere with sleep and speech, and cause discomfort and other non-auditory effects. High level noise and vibration lead to structural failures as well as reduction in life span. The importance of noise issue could be well understood by looking at regulations that have been passed by governments to restrict noise production in society. Industrial machinery, air/surface transportation and construction activities are …

City Of Merced Bellevue Community Plan, Patrick Gary Gilster

Master's Theses

The Bellevue Community Plan (BCP) was developed to be consistent with the Merced Vision 2030 General Plan, and is highly reflective of its policies, illustrative plans and guiding features, such as providing significant employment generating uses that would benefit from being in close proximity to the UC Merced campus. The BCP establishes a high-level planning framework that strikes a balance between certainty and flexibility by anchoring key land uses while allowing their size to adapt to changing market conditions in response to economic growth and the expansion of UC Merced. While the BCP provides a broad range of uses and …

Oceano Community Health Plan, Eugene Phillip Brennan

Master's Theses

ABSTRACT

Oceano Community Health Plan

Phillip Brennan

Recent, mounting research shows that chronic disease, the leading causes of death and primary driver of health care costs, cannot be effectively addressed through education or preventative health alone. A physical environment that promotes health—through access to healthy food, opportunities for physical activity, quality housing, transportation options, and safe schools—is an integral part of making our communities healthier. This research and accompanying Healthy Community Plans will serve as a way for the County to begin looking in-depth at the ways the built environment (our streets, parks, and neighborhoods) contribute or detract from the …

Smarticles: A Method For Identifying And Correcting Instability And Error Caused By Explicit Integration Techniques In Physically Based Simulations, Susan Aileen Marano

Master's Theses

Using an explicit integration method in physically based animations has many advantages including conceptual and computational simplicity, however, it re- quires small time steps to ensure low numerical instability. Simulations with large numbers of individually interacting components such as cloth, hair, and fluid models, are limited by the sections of particles most susceptible to error. This results in the need for smaller time steps than required for the majority of the system. These sections can be diverse and dynamic, quickly changing in size and location based on forces in the system. Identifying and handling these trou- blesome sections could allow …

Battery Electric Aircraft Feasibility Investigation Including A Battery-In-Wing Conceptual Design, Mark H. Shushnar

Master's Theses

The feasibility of converting an existing internal combustion powered general aviation aircraft to battery electric propulsion was studied. The theoretical performance of various types of airframes with battery electric propulsion systems was compared to determine which type of airframe would be best suited for conversion. It was found that battery electric propulsion is best used in aircraft intended for slow speed, efficient flight and carrying limited payload which is a mission typically flown in motor gliders. A reference motor glider was selected and a conceptual power system packaging design study was performed. The study determined that a critical component of …

The Role Of Sirtuin Inhibitors On The Proteomic Responses Of The Mussels Mytilus Galloprovincialis And Mytilus Trossulus To Menadione Induced Oxidative Stress, Hayley C. Chilton

Master's Theses

Global climate change imposes physiological constraints on marine ecosystems that can alter the distribution of intertidal organisms. In one such instance, the native cold-adapted mussel Mytilus trossulus is being replaced along its southern range by the invasive warm-adapted Mytilus galloprovincialis. These blue mussels occur throughout rocky intertidal zones where they are subjected to greatly varying environmental conditions known to induce oxidative stress. We hypothesize that while under acute stress, related Mytilus congeners undergo a shift in redox potential from NADH-fueled respiratory pathways to pathways producing NADPH as a way to decrease the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and …

The Effect Of Fiber Depth On The Estimation Of Peripheral Nerve Fiber Diameter Using Group Delay And Simulated Annealing Optimization, Nam Tran

Master's Theses

Peripheral neuropathy refers to diseases of or injuries to the peripheral nerves in the human body. The damage can interfere with the vital connection between the central nervous system and other parts of the body, and can significantly reduce the quality of life of those affected. In the US, approximately between 15 and 20 million people over the age of 40 have some forms of peripheral neuropathy. The diagnosis of peripheral neuropathy often requires an invasive operation such as a biopsy because different forms of peripheral neuropathy can affect different types of nerve fibers. There are non-invasive methods available to …

Amphibious Architecture: Living With A Rising Bay, Heather Christine Anderson

Master's Theses

Over the past century, sea level has risen nearly eight inches along the California coast and climate scientists suggest substantial increases in sea level as a significant impact of climate change over the coming century. This project explores the concept of creating a sustainable living environment for seaside residents in Redwood City as an alternative to permanent construction on land in the event of a substantial rise in sea level.

This project will generate a flood-resilient design solution that is capable of rising and falling with the water. In order to ensure the well-being of the inhabitants, I will analyze …

Analysis Of Environmentally Friendly Marking Ink For Military Equipment And Electronics, Liang Li

Master's Theses

Recent advancements in corrosion-resistance coating technology has reduce the use of environmentally harmful compounds such as Hexavalent Chromium by replacing Hexavalent Chromium in primers and topcoat. However, marking inks were neglected in the process. Products such as Enthone 50 series are still widely used, which contain compounds such as lead, hexavalent chromium, bisphenol A (BPA), Cadmium Sulfide, and more. Excluding catalyst compositions in Enthone, the chemicals in the ink alone contained three reproductive toxicant and numerous carcinogens. Therefore, it was essential to search and validate the performance of potential marking ink that would meet the standards in military applications.

Eleven …

Adapting The Job Demand/Control Model To A Team Level, Clark Calabrese

Master's Theses

A better understanding of sources of stress within a teamwork context might be gained by applying the Job Demands/Control Model of stress (Karasek and Theorell, 1990) to teams as the unit of analysis rather than only to individuals as it is conventionally done. Team performance is frequently treated as a shared team-level outcome; it seems reasonable to assume that shared team characteristics are likely to have effects on stress as well. In particular, teams are unique in their requirement for coordination between team members. Therefore, the present study proposes an adapted Team Job Demands/Control Model of team-level stress phenomena in …