Digital Commons Network^™

Algorithms For Bounding Folkman Numbers, Jonathan Coles

Theses

For an undirected, simple graph G, we write G -> (a_1,...,a_k)^v (G -> (a_1,...,a_k)^e) if for every vertex (edge) k-coloring, a monochromatic K_(a_i) is forced in some color i in {1,...,k}. The vertex (edge) Folkman number is defined as F_v(a_1,...,a_k;p) = min{|V(G)| : G -> (a_1,...,a_k;p)^v, K_p not in G} F_e(a_1,...,a_k;p) = min{|V(G)| : G -> (a_1,...,a_k;p)^e, K_p not in G} for p > max{a_1,...,a_k}. Folkman showed in 1970 that these numbers always exist for valid values of p. This thesis concerns the computation of a new result in Folkman number theory, namely that F_v(2,2,3;4)=14. Previously, the bounds stood at 10 <= F_v(2,2,3;4) <= 14, proven by Nenov in 2000. To achieve this new result, specialized algorithms were executed on the computers of the Computer Science network in a distributed processing effort. We discuss the mathematics and algorithms used in the computation. We also discuss ongoing research into the computation of the value of F_e(3,3;4). The current bounds stand at 16 <= F_e(3,3;4) <= 3e10^9. This number was once the subject of an Erd s prize---claimed by Spencer in 1988.

Group Key Agreement Protocols With Implicit Key Authentication, Jisoo Kim

Theses

There have been numerous studies performed on secure group communication over unsecured channels such as the Internet and ad-hoc network. Most of the results are focused on cryptographic methods to share secret keys within the group. In the real world, however, we cannot establish an application for group communication without considering authentication of each peer (group member) since the adversary could digitally disguise itself and intrude into the key sharing process without valid membership. Therefore, authentication is an inevitable component for any secure communication protocols as well as peer group communication. In the classical design of group key protocols, each …

Electronic Voting System For Rit Student Government Elections, Sungho Maeung

Theses

Recent studies argue that traditional voting systems do not encourage increased voter participation due to constraints in time, location, accuracy, and, accessibility. To ensure the rights of a democratic society and to enhance and secure the voting rights of citizens by surpassing all the limitations of the traditional voting system, the development of an electronic voting system is an attractive solution. Research on secure electronic voting systems has been conducted for at least the past two decades. We propose to develop an electronic voting system, called the Rochester Institute of Technology Student Government Election System (SGEES) based on Damgard et …

Managing The Acm Programming Contest, Navin Bhaskar

Theses

The Association for Computer Machinery (ACM) conducts an international collegiate programming contest held on an annual basis. Teams compete to solve multiple questions within the allotted six hour duration of the contest. A panel of judges grades the solutions online. The team that answers the maximum questions correctly wins the contest. This application will assist in the process of selection of winners of the programming contest. It will make the process of submission of solutions, and grading of the answers convenient. The ACM application is a Java based and web-enabled application and therefore platform independent.

Myth- An Extension To C, Greg Rowe

Theses

Myth is a programming language that is an extension of C. Myth adds modules, interfaces, tuple returns, and bit sets. These features are very helpful in nearly any programming environment. The Myth language as a whole is a good choice for embedded systems where resources are limited. Modules help organize code into logical groupings. Interfaces provide an automated mechanism to write reusable code. Tuple returns provide a simple mechanism for returning multiple values from a function. Bitsets make it easy to define logical groups of bit flags. Bisets are particularly useful in code that interfaces with hardware. The advantage of …

N-Body Visualizations, William Mclaughlin

Theses

In the age of technology and information, data calculations and visualizations are key to the communication and understanding of the world in which we live. It is sometimes difficult to display data in a way to make it clear and understanding, or is difficult to calculate the data to be displayed. The N-body problem has elements of both. The N-body problem is a set of N particles representing stars that move in response to the gravitational force generated by the N-1 other particles. There have been many attacks to this problem. The GRAPEcluster Project of RIT has developed software and …

M2mimud, Robert Whitcomb

Theses

M2MIMud is a simple MUD (multi-user dungeon) type game that is designed to run on an ad hoc network of devices without the presence of any central server. It runs over Many-to-Many Invocation (M2MI), a distributed object system API that uses broadcasts and handles, rather than IP addresses, to communicate. Most existing multi-user computer games rely on a client-server architecture with a central server storing and maintaining the state of the game. In contrast, M2MIMud runs on an ad hoc network of devices with no central server. This paper describes M2MI and its use for serverless multi-user applications, discusses the …

Ad Hoc Collaborative Photo Sharing With A Tuple Board, Yutao Cheng

Theses

The tuple board is a new distributed computing paradigm based on the tuple space concept invented by Gelernter in 1985. Designed for ad hoc mobile wireless networks, tuple board is a serverless architecture that differs from the original client-server paradigm proposed in tuple space. In this project, Tuple Board, a tuple board implementation has been developed based on the M2MP protocol. Comparing to the previous implementation in Bondada's work, the following improvements have been made: (1) M2MP, instead of M2MI, is used as the underlying network protocol for data communication, (2) notification is available in the tuple board implementation for …

Integrating Database And Data Stream Systems, Rutul Mashruwala

Theses

Traditionally, Database systems are viewed as passive data storage. Finite data sets are stored in traditional Database Systems and retrieved when needed. But applications such as sensor networks, network monitoring, retail transactions, and others, produce infinite data sets. A new system is under research and development, known as Data Stream Management System (DSMS), to deal with the infinite data sets. In DSMS, Data stream is a continuous source of sequential data. In Object-Oriented languages, like C/C++ and Java, the concept of stream does exist. The stream is viewed as a channel to which data is being inserted at one end …

Ad Hoc File System, Swarup Datta

Theses

Ad hoc File System (AFS) is middleware for peers wishing to share and access data in ad hoc fashion. AFS permits processes to export local files and import files shared by other processes. Communication between hosts is facilitated by the M2MI Framework, a novel paradigm for building collaborative systems. The API provided by AFS allows for data to be exported to the middleware, which become accessible to hosts running AFS. Interested peers can import exported data to their local system, allowing uniform access to local and remote files. Peers can also unexport and unimport data undoing effects of export and …

Faculty Scheduling Using Genetic Algorithms, Kevin Soule

Theses

The problem of developing a class schedule for a faculty has been proven to be NP-complete. Therefore when the schedule is large enough, finding just one feasible solution can be impossible for any direct search algorithm within a reasonable time. This project is geared toward investigating the possibility of using genetic-based algorithms to solve faculty scheduling problems of 100 courses or larger quickly. Multiple versions of genetic algorithms and heuristics are tested. Many parameter levels for these algorithms are optimized for fastest convergence.

Efficient Encryption On Limited Devices, Roderic Campbell

Theses

Encryption algorithms have been used since the dawn of time to ensure secure communication over insecure communication channels. Once a secret encryption key is established and as long as the key remains secret, two parties can communicate freely over open channels. The question of how to obtain such a secret key is a large dilemma. Many methods of obtaining such keys have been tried from the most basic form of a one-on-one encounter to more advanced techniques like Diffie-Hellman. This paper compares three versions of the Diffie-Hellman key exchange protocol -- using arithmetic in the field of integers modulo a …

Study Of Visualizations For N-Body Stellar Models, Christian Gray

Theses

The visualization of large datasets is invaluable to the advancement of scientific knowledge. N-Body problems produced large dataset that present several challenges to visualization. These challenges include over-plotting and self-obscuring data. Using the general visualization framework, Spiegel, five different visualization techniques are explored to solve these problems: slicing, projection, 3D projection, 3D density shells, and direct volume rendering. Each visualization looks to solve the problem in a slightly different manner while all have kernel density estimation as their starting point. While none of the visualization is ground breaking or perfectly solves the problems they do provide new insight allowing for …

Hf-Dsr: Dynamic Source Routing For High Frequency Radio Networks, Michael Stringer

Theses

HF-DSR is an ad hoc routing protocol designed to operate efficiently over high frequency (HF) radio networks. Ad hoc routing protocols allow networks to provide dynamic routing between endpoints. In contrast, static routing schemes require networks to be configured with potential routes in advance. As such, ad hoc routing mechanisms can compensate for unanticipated factors such as radio frequency (RF) interference or node mobility. HF-DSR is largely based on Dynamic Source Routing (DSR), a level 3 ad hoc networking protocol that emits network control information on demand. HF-DSR incorporates portions of DSR which minimize the quantity of control information transmitted. …

Routing In Anhinga, Aakash Chauhan

Theses

Anhinga project with Many-to-Many Protocol (M2MP) takes fundamentally different approach to resolve dynamic network topology in ad hoc networks. Instead of trying host-address based networking and routing to make work in ad hoc network environment, M2MP removes device address and groups. All messages goes to all devices within proximal area and each device decides whether and how to process the message based on message s content. [1] This project expands on this infrastructure by delivering these messages beyond sender device s broadcast range. The project implements Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) protocol based controlled flooding techniques. It also provides functionality for …

Web Based Monitoring System In Wireless Sensor Networks, Kanishk Panwar

Theses

Goal of the project is to develop a scalable web application to monitor a wireless sensor network. Wireless sensor network, an upcoming technology, is comprised of multiple data sensors that send back packets of information back to the base station. The sensor network runs on a real time operating system called TinyOS and the application is implemented using Moteiv Telos Revision B wireless sensors. The web application collects the reading from the base station and generates graphical representation of the readings for the front end and creates PDF reports when readings are not within defined thresholds. This application incorporates various …

A Charge Control Model For Iii-V Hemts Using A Self-Consistent Numerical Solution Of The Schrodinger And Poisson Equations, Melissa Manney

Theses

"With the increasing demand for smaller devices that can perform faster and more reliably there is a need to explore options that allow for this combination in spite of the fact that smaller size tends to lead to a reduction in reliability and overall device performance. High electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) have proven superior to MOSFETS and BJTs in the areas of voltage and temperature ranges in which they can operate as well as their high breakdown fields, carrier density and velocity saturation. Studying HEMTs and understanding their constraints and how they respond to variations in their makeup and in …

Indium Tin Oxide (Ito) Deposition, Patterning And Schottky Contact Fabrication, Jianming Zhou

Theses

As a transparent conductive material, indium tin oxide (ITO) has been utilized as electrodes in liquid crystal displays, solar cells, heat reflecting films and gas sensors. In general, the desired properties are high conductance and transmission. However, due to the complexity of ITO, the film properties strongly depend on the deposition processes. In this study, the deposition conditions for ITO film were optimized to get both high conductivity and transmission. The emphasis was on investigating the effects of various deposition parameters, such as oxygen partial pressure, total gas flow, annealing conditions and power. These are the most critical parameters for …

Adjusting The Margins: Building Bridges Between Deaf And Hearing Cultures Through Performance Arts, Luane Davis Haggerty

Theses

This study addresses a gap in scholarship on leadership styles in the Deaf community. There is an invisible style of leadership differing from the mainstream culture that has not been previously addressed in the literature at any depth. My study was composed of three interlocking parts in a sequence that constitutes the practice of anthropology: fieldwork, analysis, and presentation. The foundation for my fieldwork was an “archeology of the structure of the perceived world” (Merleau-Ponty), using the holding environment of the rehearsal process and the structural process of an acting technique called Del-Sign. Del- Sign is a fusion acting style …

School Connectedness: Using School Websites To Foster A Sense Of Belonging In School, Valerie L. Mergler

Theses

The current study explored the relationships between adolescents' internet use, feelings of school connectedness, social anxiety, and interest in the school's website. Participants were 8th (n = 121) and 11th (n = 71) grade students from a rural upstate New York, middle and high school. Data was collected using the Social Use of the Internet Survey, which was designed to measure participants' internet use, interest in the school's website, feelings of school connectedness and loneliness. No significant mean differences were present between the 8th and 11th grade groups on school connectedness and on interest in the school's website. Multiple regression …

Sweetness And Light, Stephanie Leach

Theses

Not included

Local Norms For Deaf And Hard-Of-Hearing Students, Kecia A. Boncek

Theses

Deafness is a low incident disability and therefore deaf children are frequently not included in the norm group of norm-referenced tests (Braden, 1994). The necessity of local norms is an ongoing debate among professionals who assess deaf children (Braden, 2005). This study evaluated the utility of local norms for three different intelligence tests. One sample t-tests were run to determine significance differences between means for a deaf and hard-of-hearing sample compared to the norm group, for the Differential Ability Scales (DAS), Universal Nonverbal Intelligence Test (UNIT), and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Third Edition (WISC-III). Verbal cluster and Word Definition …

Tissue Surface Identification For Microwave Imaging System Calibration, Surat Teerakapibal

Theses

The methods used for biomedical imaging include X-ray, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), ultrasound, and most recently, microwave imaging each with its own advantages and disadvantages for specific application. The frequency dependent nature of the Electromagnetic (EM) waves makes it possible for microwave imaging to achieve a tissue differentiation comparable to that obtained by X-ray and would be superior to ultra sound and MRI.

This work addresses one aspect of an ongoing research effort at Rochester Institute of Technology which is a new methodology for detecting diseased tissues by a non-invasive procedure. The methodology is based on the extraction of the …

Parent Perceptions Of School Climate And Its Impact On Their Child's School Performance, Danielle Malinowski

Theses

This study compared the relationship of student and parent perceptions of school climate to the student's academic performance and school problem behaviors (disciplinary referrals, unexcused absences, and tardiness). A sample of students (n=531), grades 7-12, completed the School Climate Survey (Haynes et al., 1996). Additional information was obtained regarding each student's academic performance and school problem behaviors. A randomly selected sample of parents were sent the School Climate Survey,

Parent Edition and were asked to voluntarily return them (n=45). Correlation results found no significant relationship between parent and student perceptions of school climate. A significant relationship was found between Parent …

Public Policy And Technology: Advancing Civilization At The Expense Of Individual Privacy, Aaron D. Sanders

Theses

Technological advances have created a new existence, providing an unforeseen level of interaction and transaction between parties that have never physically met. Preliminary thinking was that these advances would create a previously unimaginable level of privacy and anonymity. While a surface examination suggests an abundance of privacy in modern society, a more thorough examination reveals different results. Advances in technology and changes in public policy have produced a world in which a startling amount of information is available regarding a given individual. Rather than experiencing an increase in individual privacy, modern societies suffer from rapidly decreasing individual privacy.

An Improved Approach To Watercolor Reproduction By Profile Editing, Rochelle Kyong Kim

Theses

Fine art is usually produced on paper or canvas as a one-of-a-kind artwork. Fine art may be reproduced in limited editions and put up for sale as art. Different printing technologies have been used in fine art reproduction such as lithography, screenprinting, and most recently inkjet.

The research aspect of watercolor reproduction has been the question of "how good is good enough." In this case, the artists demand the exact match between the original watercolor and its reproduction. While there are difficulties in quantifying the degree of color image match, the initial testing of watercolor reproduction using a colormanaged approach …

Perspective By Incongruity In Visual Advertising: Applying Kenneth Burke's Theory To The Adbusters Anti-Consumerism Campaign, Elizabeth B. Gorman

Theses

Kenneth Burke developed the theory of "perspective by incongruity" in which he claimed that oddly juxtaposed symbols influence audiences to have new perspectives by challenging their habits of thinking. This study applies Kenneth Burke's rhetorical theory of perspective by incongruity to the Adbusters anti-consumerism campaign. Twenty "spoof ad" postcards created by the Adbusters Media Foundation were analyzed to see how they utilize the technique of incongruous juxtaposition. The analysis concluded that the cards either juxtaposed two incongruous images, two incongruous phrases or words, or a combination of incongruous words and images in order to create new insights about consumer advertising …

Dynamic Analysis Of Hollow Tapered Isotropic And Composite Shafts Using Finite Element Techniques, Lindsay Larocca Parslow

Theses

Finite element techniques were used to analyze the dynamic characteristics of hollow tapered isotropic and composite shafts. Mathematical models of hollow tapered isotropic and composite shafts were developed, which were then discretized using Galerkin's Method to produce standard vibration equations. The solutions to the standard vibration equations were coded into two com puter programs, which can be used to calculate the torsional dynamic characteristics of an isotropic rotor system, and the coupled axial-torsional dynamic characteristics of a composite shaft. Several examples using each computer program are presented, illustrating their ability to predict natural frequencies and mode shapes of torsional systems.

Self-Directed Work Teams: Do They Impact Employee Motivation And Accountability To Reduce, Melissa Noyes

Theses

This thesis attempted to tie Self-Directed work teams (SDWT) to safety performance through research, employee surveys and statistical analysis. The ultimate focus of the thesis was to answer two related research questions. To answer the questions required a trip down a road that is not, at this time, traveled frequently by safety professionals or other management. It is not to say that managers throughout the world are unaware of SDWT, but because SDWT are not used in many companies, it was difficult to obtain information to fully attack the problem. However, the focus remained on answering the problem, and defining …

The Phenomenon Of Cyberstalking On The Rit Campus: Definitions, Behaviors And Normalization, Julia Phillips Dickinson

Theses

Stalking via the Internet (cyberstalking) occurs via technologies such as email, instant messaging, chat rooms, discussion groups, and social networking websites. Recent news reports indicate a growing concern about the ease with which personal information can be accessed on the Internet - a fact that is shaping new social norms for young adults and children who have grown up using the Internet. This thesis measured the prevalence and nature of cyberstalking among Rochester Institute of Technology students. A survey was conducted and the results were evaluated with SIDE theory and social conduct theory as guides to understand if cyberstalking behavior …