Digital Commons Network^™

Wireless 60 Ghz Rack To Rack Communication In A Data Center Environment, Avery John Francois

Theses

Data centers play an increasingly important role in processing the large amount of information generated in today's society. An enormous amount of growth in the computational demands of data center applications has stimulated the creation of warehouse scale data centers, holding servers that number in the thousands. As the number of servers within a data center grows, the interconnecting infrastructure becomes of paramount importance. Present day interconnects are formed using either copper wire in a twisted pair configuration or through the use of fiber optic cables. One of the main concerns with the scalability of a data center's interconnecting network …

Features And Algorithms For Visual Parsing Of Handwritten Mathematical Expressions, Lei Hu

Theses

Math expressions are an essential part of scientific documents. Handwritten math expressions recognition can benefit human-computer interaction especially in the education domain and is a critical part of document recognition and analysis.

Parsing the spatial arrangement of symbols is an essential part of math expression recognition. A variety of parsing techniques have been developed during the past three decades, and fall into two groups. The first group is graph-based parsing. It selects a path or sub-graph which obeys some rule to form a possible interpretation for the given expression. The second group is grammar driven parsing. Grammars and related parameters …

Augmented Reality Huds: Warning Signs And Drivers’ Situation Awareness, Zachary Mcdonald

Theses

Drivers must search dynamic and complex visual environments to perceive relevant environmental elements such as warning signs, pedestrians and other vehicles to select the appropriate driving maneuver. The objective of this research was to examine how an Augmented Reality Head Up Display (AR HUD) for warning signs affects driver Situation Awareness (SA) and attention. Participants viewed videos of real driving scenes with an AR HUDs or no display and were asked to report what elements in the driving scene attracted their attention. At the completion of the first driving video participants were given a warning sign recognition test. Participants then …

Sampling And Counting Crossing-Free Matchings, Wenbo Sun

Theses

Sampling of combinatorial structures is an important statistical tool used in applications in a number of areas ranging from statistical physics, data mining, to biological sciences. Of comparable importance is the computation of the cor- responding partition function, which, in the case of the uniform distribution, is equivalent to the problem of counting all such structures. For self-reducible combinatorial structures, once we can produce an almost uniform sample from them, then we can approximately count them.

Using a Markov chain Monte Carlo method, this thesis presents polynomial-time algorithms to approximately count and almost uniformly sample crossing-free matchings for certain input …

Effects Of Solder Paste Volume On Pcba Assembly Yield And Reliability, Sai Srinivas Sriperumbudur

Theses

Solder paste printing is the most common method for attaching surface mount devices to printed circuit boards and it has been reported that a majority of all assembly defects occur during the stencil printing process. It is also recognized that the solder paste printing process is wholly responsible for the solder joint formation of leadless package technologies such as Land Grid Array (LGA) and Quad-Flat No-Lead (QFN) components and therefore is a determining factor in the long-term reliability of said devices. The goal of this experiment is to determine the acceptable lower limit for solder paste volume deposit tolerances during …

A Scalable Flash-Based Hardware Architecture For The Hierarchical Temporal Memory Spatial Pooler, Lennard G. Streat

Theses

Hierarchical temporal memory (HTM) is a biomimetic machine learning algorithm focused upon modeling the structural and algorithmic properties of the neocortex. It is comprised of two components, realizing pattern recognition of spatial and temporal data, respectively. HTM research has gained momentum in recent years, leading to both hardware and software exploration of its algorithmic formulation. Previous work on HTM has centered on addressing performance concerns; however, the memory-bound operation of HTM presents significant challenges to scalability.

In this work, a scalable flash-based storage processor unit, Flash-HTM (FHTM), is presented along with a detailed analysis of its potential scalability. FHTM leverages …

Random Subspace Learning On Outlier Detection And Classification With Minimum Covariance Determinant Estimator, Bohan Liu

Theses

The questions brought by high dimensional data is interesting and challenging. Our study is targeting on the particular type of data in this situation that namely “large p, small n”. Since the dimensionality is massively larger than the number of observations in the data, any measurement of covariance and its inverse will be miserably affected. The definition of high dimension in statistics has been changed throughout decades. Modern datasets with over thousands of dimensions are demanding the ability to gain deeper understanding but hindered by the curse of dimensionality. We decide to review and explore further to negotiate with the …

Implicating E. Coli Pal In The Pathogenesis Of Gram-Negative Sepsis, Bethany R. Novick

Theses

Just under half of all sepsis cases are caused by Gram-negative bacterial infections. Sepsis occurs when an infection results in a systemic inflammatory response, which can lead to organ dysfunction and death. Studies have shown that some outer membrane proteins, lipoproteins, and lipopolysaccharides are released from Gram-negative bacteria during sepsis; those proteins and LPS toxins are thought to induce the over-exuberant host inflammatory response, which is characteristic of sepsis. The ability to detect those proteins and determine the role they play in the development and severity of sepsis infection would be a powerful tool for immunotherapy. Escherichia coli (E. coli) …

Structuring Statistical Tests For Validating Encryption: An Array-Based Approach, Kevin Hoyt

Theses

The technological advancements made in recent years regarding the transfer of personal data have brought along an imperative need for increased security and encryption capabilities. Information sent across these electronic platforms is most often intended to be delivered to and received by specific individuals. However, the notion that these selected individuals are the only people that are able to come into contact with the information is flawed. A more realistic assumption, and the assumption that is currently demonstrated, is that the information sent can and will be intercepted. This means that successful encryption of the data is an invaluable part …

Address, Xiao Li

Theses

Not only does this 21-minute long narrative short film serve as my graduate thesis project, but it is also my personal tribute to one of my favorite movie genres: film noir.

This film tells a story of a female protagonist, Felicia. She enjoys a poor yet happy life with her fiancé, Ryan, a young striving filmmaker who needs funding to continue with graduate school. After selling his car in order to cover school expenses, Ryan moves into Felicia’s house. One day, Felicia accidentally opens an envelope that was addressed to her ex-husband, Ed. The letter reveals that Ed is entitled …

Low-Resource And Fast Elliptic Curve Implementations Over Binary Edwards Curves, Brian Koziel

Theses

Elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) is an ideal choice for low-resource applications because it provides the same level of security with smaller key sizes than other existing public key encryption schemes. For low-resource applications, designing efficient functional units for elliptic curve computations over binary fields results in an effective platform for an embedded co-processor. This thesis investigates co-processor designs for area-constrained devices. Particularly, we discuss an implementation utilizing state of the art binary Edwards curve equations over mixed point addition and doubling. The binary Edwards curve offers the security advantage that it is complete and is, therefore, immune to the exceptional …

Phenotypic Studies Of Pho13Δ In Saccharomyces Cerevisiae, Courtney Kellogg

Theses

PHO13 in Saccharomyces cerevisiae (budding yeast) is a para-nitrophenyl phosphatase (pNppase) of the haloacid dehalogenase (HAD) superfamily. A biological substrate for PHO13 had remained undiscovered while a knockout phenotype has only been observed in strains engineered to grow on D-xylose. The purified enzyme has been identified in our lab to specifically hydrolyze 2-phosphoglycolate, classifying it as a phosphoglycolate phosphatase (PGPase). In photosynthetic organisms, 2-phosphoglycolate (2-PG) is generated by the oxygenation reaction of ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase (RuBisCO) in the Calvin Cycle. To be recycled back into general metabolism, photosynthetic PGPase converts 2-PG to glycolate. In non-photosynthetic yeast, 2-PG must be generated by …

Video Qos/Qoe Over Ieee802.11n/Ac: A Contemporary Survey, Rebeen R. Hama Amin

Theses

The demand for video applications over wireless networks has tremendously increased, and IEEE 802.11 standards have provided higher support for video transmission. However, providing Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE) for video over WLAN is still a challenge due to the error sensitivity of compressed video and dynamic channels. This thesis presents a contemporary survey study on video QoS/QoE over WLAN issues and solutions. The objective of the study is to provide an overview of the issues by conducting a background study on the video codecs and their features and characteristics, followed by studying QoS and QoE …

Fusion Of Mini-Deep Nets, Sai Prasad Nooka

Theses

Image classification and object recognition are some of the most prominent problems in computer vision. The difficult nature of finding objects regardless of pose and occlusions requires a large number of compute resources. Recent advancements in technology have made great strides towards solving this problem, and in particular, deep learning has revolutionized this field in the last few years.

The classification of large datasets, such as the popular ImageNet dataset, requires a network with millions of weights. Learning each of these weights using back propagation requires a compute intensive training phase with many training samples. Recent compute technology has proven …

Regulating The Violent Past: Methods In Dark Tourism, Jean Pietrowski

Theses

What if you could stay in the very room where one of the most heinous crimes in American history had occurred? At the Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast, you can, but how acceptable is this? How does one begin to experience darkness from a tourism site? Dark Tourism, which refers to “any site of death, grief, or suffering that is marketed as a site of heritage tourism,” gives people a place to experience these aspects of life and history. Places of death that are turned into places of touristic consumption give people a forum to discuss death and other tragedies. …

Appraisal And Deaccession: A Case Study With The Mark Ellingson Collection, Heather Clarke

Theses

The job of an archive is to collect and preserve primary source material that is consistent with its mission and to make sure that it is accessible to the public. It is the work of the archivist to choose what is useful to collect and preserve. Archivists also have to consider the preservation needs of all items that make it into the collection. They also have to review the collection for items that do not conform to the mission and therefore must be deaccessioned. My thesis involves applying the best practices of appraisal and deaccession to the Mark Ellingson Collection, …

Caring For Kodak's Colorama: Methodologies For Collections Care At George Eastman Museum, Mackenzie Robbins

Theses

This thesis provides an example of the research, processes, and methodologies involved in making a collection accessible. As an intern at George Eastman Museum (GEM),1 located in Rochester, New York, during the fall of 2015 through the spring of 2016, I helped to rehouse, identify, contextualize, catalog, and create a collections guide for the Kodak Colorama Collection. Colorama was a unique large-scale photograph advertisement that Kodak described as “The World’s Largest Photograph.” The collection consists of negatives, transparencies, and prints of the original 565 images that Kodak, in the order of dissemination, displayed in New York’s Grand Central Terminal from …

Equipoise: An Animated Short Film About Positiveness And Negativity., Gung-Kai Koo

Theses

Equipoise is an animated short about positiveness, negativity and the opposite but complementary relationship between them. The two opposite attitudes of an individual’s personality not only affect but also establish emotions, decisions and behaviors. Positiveness reinforces positive thinking while pessimistic assumptions and hardship are driven by negativity. A person who has an imbalanced mind may live in pain or lead to high risks.

To have a great mental condition, both positiveness and negativity have to be involved to establish the balance. However, the importance of negativity, in one case, pessimism was frequently ignored as a result of education that focuses …

Asian Gangs In The United States: A Meta-Synthesis, Sou Lee

Theses

The purpose of this study is to gain a holistic understanding of the Asian gang phenomenon through the application of a meta-synthesis, which is seldom utilized within the criminal justice and criminology discipline. Noblit and Hare’s (1988) seven step guidelines for synthesizing qualitative research informed this methodology. Through this process, 15 studies were selected for synthesis. The synthesis of these studies not only identified prevalent themes across the sample, but also provided the basis for creating overarching metaphors that captured the collective experience of Asian gang members. Through the interpretive ordering of these metaphors, a line of synthesis argument was …

Tax Reform: The Push For Consumption Taxes In Kansas And Missouri, Brent Albert Simmonds

Theses

Missouri and Kansas’ development of policies relating to consumption versus production taxes in the last couple years raises certain questions. Where did this debate come from? Why might a state switch to consumption taxes? What coalitions are pushing these taxes, who is fighting them and why? This case study seeks to examine these questions in depth by exploring relevant economic and political ideas, particularly diffusion theory; and I examine the roles of the numerous political actors in Kansas and Missouri in bringing about these policies. The legislation in Missouri is similar in essence to that passed in Kansas but comparatively …

It’S All In Your Head: A Solution To The Problem Of Object Coincidence, Graham Louis Renz

Theses

It’s uncontroversial that artifacts like statues and tables are mind-dependent. What’s controversial is what this dependence entails about the ontic status of artifacts. I argue this mind-dependence entails that the extra-mental world contains no artifacts or artifact joints. In support of this claim I respond to recent arguments proffered by defenders of the mind-independent existence of artifacts, viz. those of Lynne Rudder Baker, Crawford Elder, and Amie Thomasson. I argue the most plausible story about artifacts is that they’re in our minds, not the world; they are merely projections onto a world of “indifferent materials”. With this established, I show …

Horrendous Evils And The Problem Of Representation, William Bell

Theses

Marilyn McCord Adams’s work on the problem of evil offers one of the most creative and sophisticated religious theodicies. Adams relies upon specifically Christian resources to explain how God is able to defeat horrendous evils within the context of an individual’s life by integrating the participant’s experience of suffering into their relationship with God. This strategy rests upon the claim that God has participated in a representative sample of human horrors. I argue that traditional interpretations of the relevant Christian beliefs do not support the idea that Christ experienced the disintegration of his meaning-making capacities characteristic of horrendous evils. I …

Factors That Affect Classroom Participation, Marija Susak

Theses

The goal of this study was to identify the factors that affect the levels of classroom participation among sophomore business students at RIT Croatia in Zagreb. While previous studies conducted were mainly quantitative in nature, this study involved in-depth interviews with ten students, gaining further insight on what impacts their participation levels. It was discovered that logistics, student traits, classroom climate, and the professor impact the level of participation within the classroom. Participation levels were identified to be higher in classroom environments that were smaller in size, provided students with support, respect, constructive feedback, and involved theory being related to …

Same In The Sea And Other Stories, Mary Grace Buckley

Theses

This thesis is comprised of five novel chapters and two short stories that explore individuals’ interactions with their families and with the world around them. These interactions are not limited to physical interactions and verbal exchanges; they also include meditations on how the individual fits within the family and within the world at large. These stories also include interactions with the quirky, strange, and borderline fantastical as a way of displaying and relating to the individual’s feeling of personal strangeness by finding a similar strangeness in the outside world.

Urmson's Art, Tyler Ryan

Theses

The most fundamental problem in the philosophy of art is finding an adequate definition for the term ‘art’. One common criterion is that a definition of art should be able to accommodate future, avant-garde works, as well as acknowledge the many accepted works from the past, which in all likelihood these newer additions do not resemble. Some philosophers also believe that a definition of art should align reasonably well with our intuitions about what counts as art. I would agree, except my intuitions about what counts as art are apparently off from what most other people think qualifies as art. …

Optimal Phase Masks For High Contrast Imaging Applications, Garreth J. Ruane

Theses

Phase-only optical elements can provide a number of important functions for high-contrast imaging. This thesis presents analytical and numerical optical design methods for accomplishing specific tasks, the most significant of which is the precise suppression of light from a distant point source. Instruments designed for this purpose are known as coronagraphs. Here, advanced coronagraph designs are presented that offer improved theoretical performance in comparison to the current state-of-the-art. Applications of these systems include the direct imaging and characterization of exoplanets and circumstellar disks with high sensitivity. Several new coronagraph designs are introduced and, in some cases, experimental support is provided. …

Balancing Medical Resident Education And Workload While Ensuring Quality Patient Care, Akshit Agarwal

Theses

Medical residency is a requirement for medical professionals to practice medicine. Residency programs in internal medicine lasts 3 years and require residents to undergo a series of supervised rotations in elective, inpatient, and ambulatory units. Typically a team of chief residents develops a yearly rotational schedule that assigns residents to various departments for each week of the year, and for each day of the week. Scheduling resident rotations is complex as it needs to consider various academic, managerial, and legal restrictions while ensuring that the resulting schedules facilitate patient care and are balanced in terms of resident educational experience, workload, …

How Training And Development Can Increase African American Women Into Leadership, Kenya Thomas

Theses

At Fortune 500 companies, women account for just 15% of C-suite executives, and 5% of CEOs. African American women hold around 1.5% of these positions. Even though the number of women in these positions is growing slowly, the percentage of African American women is becoming more and more nonexistent. Are African American women not qualified? Are they afforded these opportunities as white males and females? This paper will focus on different reasons for the lack of diversity in these large organizations and what solutions may help change the lack of diversity.

Learning Robust And Discriminative Manifold Representations For Pattern Recognition, Sriram Kumar

Theses

Face and object recognition find applications in domains such as biometrics, surveillance and human computer interaction. An important component in any recognition pipeline is to learn pertinent image representations that will help the system to discriminate one image class from another. These representations enable the system to learn a discriminative function that can classify a wide range of images. In practical situations, the images acquired are often corrupted with occlusions and noise. Thus, a robust and discriminative learning is necessary for good classification performance.

This thesis explores two scenarios where robust and discriminative manifold representations help recognize face and object …

Sand Area Changes In The Emirate Of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates Between 1992 And 2013 Using A Time Series Of Satellite Imagery, Rami W A Saeed

Theses

Sand encroachment is a major problem that affects arid countries and has severe consequences on their infrastructure. It poses a threat to the environment, roads, habitats, farms and plantations thus requiring human intervention for the removal of the encroaching sands. Tracking sand dune movement and sand changes in such regions and studying their trajectories in time is very important. It allows governments to plan better counter measures to prevent their occurrence and minimize their danger.

The Emirate of Abu Dhabi underwent significant socioeconomic changes during the study period, which resulted in an unprecedented boom in population growth, reflected by increase …