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Hilltopics: Volume 13, Issue 4, Hilltopics Staff

Hilltopics

No abstract provided.

Security Techniques For Sensor Systems And The Internet Of Things, Daniele Midi

Open Access Dissertations

Sensor systems are becoming pervasive in many domains, and are recently being generalized by the Internet of Things (IoT). This wide deployment, however, presents significant security issues.

We develop security techniques for sensor systems and IoT, addressing all security management phases. Prior to deployment, the nodes need to be hardened. We develop nesCheck, a novel approach that combines static analysis and dynamic checking to efficiently enforce memory safety on TinyOS applications. As security guarantees come at a cost, determining which resources to protect becomes important. Our solution, OptAll, leverages game-theoretic techniques to determine the optimal allocation of security resources in …

Insurance, Maren R. Cave, Stephen Schatz, Bradley S. Wolff

Mercer Law Review

A number of matters of first impression in Georgia were addressed during this survey period, including who bears the burden of establishing whether a vehicle is "uninsured," whether the use of a formula in establishing diminished value is bad faith, and what the trigger date is for coverage for claims of malicious prosecution and negligent repair. Additionally, the Georgia Supreme Court squarely and definitely addressed whether lead-based paint is a "pollutant" for purposes of a pollution exclusion in a Commercial General Liability (CGL) Policy.

Can Low-Severity Fire Reverse Compositional Change In Montane Forests Of The Sierra Nevada, California, Usa?, Kendall M. L. Becker, James A. Lutz

Wildland Resources Faculty Publications

Throughout the Sierra Nevada, nearly a century of fire suppression has altered the tree species composition, forest structure, and fire regimes that were previously characteristic of montane forests. Species composition is fundamentally important because species differ in their tolerances to fire and environmental stressors, and these differences dictate future forest structure and influence fire regime attributes. In some lower montane stands, shade-tolerant, fire-sensitive species have driven a threefold increase in tree density that may intensify the risk of high-severity fire. In upper montane forests, which were historically characterized by longer fire return intervals, the effects of fire exclusion are both …

Lateralization Of Simulated Sources And Echoes Differing In Frequency Based On Interaural Temporal Differences, Raymond H. Dye Jr., Joseph Boomer, Joleen Frankel, Jacquelyn P. Hill, Alycia N. Peloquin

Psychology: Faculty Publications and Other Works

This study examined listeners’ ability to process interaural temporal differences (ITDs) in one of two sequential sounds when the two differed in spectral content. A correlational analysis assessed weights given to ITDs of simulated source and echo pulses for echo delays of 8–128ms for conditions in which responses were based on the source or echo, a 3000-Hz Gaussian (target) pulse. The other (distractor) pulse was spectrally centered at 1500, 2000, 3000, 4000, or 5000 Hz. Also measured were proportion correct and proportion of responses predicted from the weights. Regardless of whether the echo or source pulse served as the target, …

The Constitutionality Of Prison Privatization: An Analysis Of Prison Privatization In The United States And Israel, Stacey Jacovetti

Global Business Law Review

This note analyzes the constitutionality of the current state of prison privatization in the United States under the non-delegation doctrine and the due process clause. Furthermore, this note analyzes the Israeli Supreme Court's ruling holding prison privatization as unconstitutional under the Basic Law of the Right to Human Dignity and Liberty. Subsequently, an argument is made that the current authority for the utilization of private prisons in the United States is insufficient to establish the use of private prisons as constitutional. As such, this note argues that the overall scheme of privatization should provide for more detailed contracts--similar to those …

News Representations Of Black Men, Post Black Lives Matter, Alexandria D. Isom

Honors Capstones

African-American men are overrepresented as threats or criminal suspects in society. Previous studies have found that African-American men are misrepresented in news coverage and depicted in a negative way. The Black Lives Matter Movement has gained media coverage and challenged negative stereotypes of black men. Therefore, in this study I analyze whether or not representations of black men have changed since the Black Lives Matter movement started. In my research, I analyzed the Chicago Tribune using Critical Discourse Analysis to understand the language used in articles to convey the meanings of representations of black men. In my results, I found …

Comparison Of Labview Machine Learning Algorithms For Optimizing Grasping Patterns Of A Mechanical Hand, Saul Gutierrez

McNair Scholars Research Journal

No abstract provided.

Numerical Investigation Of Vortex Generators And Jet In Cross-Flow Enhancements, Aditya Raman

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Dissertations - Archive

Vortex generators have extensively been used over the past few decades for heat transfer applications. Their passive form of enhancement coupled with the ease of their implementation is the primary reason for their growing popularity. The streamwise counter rotating vortex pair (CVP) that is formed downstream of these vortex generators act as a source of energy that can set up stirring scales to enhance heat transfer and improve mixing. The CVP can be used to energize the boundary layer in the case of wall bounded flows, and as a consequence vortex generators have also been used to delay flow separation. …

Number 20, 2016, Palara Editors

PALARA: Publication of the Afro-Latin/American Research Association

Complete Issue

Nanopetrophysics Of The Niobrara Formation In Berthoud State #3 Well, Rafael Roberto Villegas

Earth & Environmental Sciences Theses - Archive

The advent of new drilling and completion technologies over the past two decades has made unconventional shale reservoirs the focus of much of the oil and gas exploration and production throughout the United States. Despite large estimated reserves, unconventional reservoirs are typically characterized by low porosity and extremely low matrix permeability, partly accounting for the relatively low recovery rates seen, ranging from 10-15%. Increasing production from unconventional reservoirs requires an understanding of the reservoir’s nano-petrophysical properties including pore throat size distribution and edge accessible porosity. Furthermore, an understanding of the relationship between TOC, mineralogy, and pore throat distribution is critical …

Fault Detection And Localization Techniques For Concurrent Programs, Jing Xu

Computer Science and Engineering Dissertations - Archive

Concurrency faults are hard to detect and localize due to the nondeterministic behavior of concurrent programs. In this dissertation, we present three approaches to detecting and localizing faults in concurrent programs. The first approach identifies erroneous event patterns in a failed concurrent program execution. Given a failed execution, we characterize the execution as a sequence of context-switch points and then use controlled execution to distinguish erroneous context-switch points from benign context-switch points. Erroneous context-switch points are used to derive erroneous event patterns, which allow the user to quickly localize the actual fault. Our experiments were conducted on thirteen programs. Seven …

Exploratory Data Analysis Over Online Community Networks, Azade Nazi

Computer Science and Engineering Dissertations - Archive

An online community network links entities (e.g., users, products) with various relationships (e.g., friendship, co-purchase) and make such information available for access through a web interface. There are numerous such networks on the web, ranging from Twitter, Instagram, which links users as ``followers-followees'', to amazon.com, ebay.com, which links products with relationships such as ``also buy''. Online community networks often feature a web interface that only allows local-neighborhood queries - i.e., given a entity (e.g., users, products) of the community network as input, the system only returns the immediate neighbors of the entity. Further, the rate limit constraint restricts the number …

Integrative Approaches For Large-Scale Biomedical Data Analysis, Ashis Kumer Biswas

Computer Science and Engineering Dissertations - Archive

Advancement of the Next Generation Sequencing (NGS), also known as the High Throughput Sequencing (HTS) technologies allow researchers investigate genome, transcriptome, or epigenome of any organism from any perspective, thereby contributing to the enrichment of the biomedical data repositories for many of the lesser known phenomena. The regulatory activities inside genome by the non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs), the transcribed product of the long-neglected "junk DNA" molecules is one such phenomenon. While large-scale data about the ncRNAs are becoming publicly available, the computational challenges are being imposed to the bioinformaticians for efficient mining to get reliable answers to few subtle questions. Given …

The Smart Hospital Management System, Neelim Haider

2016 Fall Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

The UTA Smart Hospital is a training facility for nursing students. Our goal is to create a web platform that allows the faculty to manage their hospital information in one place; previously, this information was scattered among different websites and files. We first derived requirements for the website, and using these requirements, our team then created a prototype of a website. It was found that our website had the capability of implementing most of the features needed by the hospital, yet we could only implement features that were considered to be a higher priority. In conclusion, the website was able …

Municipal Golf Facilities And The Democratization Of Golf: Does Government Structure Make A Difference?, Clifford Smith Blumberg

Public Affairs Dissertations - Archive

The game of golf has a tumultuous history that includes long bouts with classism, racism and sexism. From its arrival to the United States more than 200 years ago, golf has found itself as a barometer for democracy. The symbolism for elitism demonstrated through the demographic makeup of its participants is evident and remained practically unchanged during this time. However, within public administration, there is a massive void in research related to municipal golf policy. This study provides a comprehensive review of municipal golf policy in cities and towns where golf facilities are located in order to determine whether the …

Effect Of Viscoelastic Modeling Of Pcb On The Board Level Reliability Of Wafer Chip Scale Package (Wcsp) In Comparison To Orthotropic Linear Elastic Modeling, Avinash Anaskure

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Theses - Archive

The assessment of board level solder joint reliability during thermal cycling is very important for electronic packages. During thermal cycling, the mismatch in Coefficient of Thermal Expansion (CTE) between the materials used in the package induces stress on the solder interconnects and result in deformation stresses. Finite element tools are widely used for rapid design optimization and also for understanding board level reliability issues. Lumped board properties approach, explicit geometry approach, and ECAD approach are the three widely used approaches for creating models for PCBs. In the lumped board properties approach, orthotropic elastic material properties are assigned to PCBs. However, …

A Harmonic Function Method For Eeg Source Reconstruction, Hongguang Xi

Mathematics Dissertations - Archive

Neuronal activities generate the electrical current in the brain, and further result in the potential changes over the scalp. Electroencephalography (EEG) is a technique used to record the potential changes on the scalp. Even though fMRI, PET, MEG and other brain-imaging tools are widely used in brain research, they are limited by low spatial/temporal resolution, cost, mobility and suitability for long-term monitoring. In contrast, EEG signals have been successfully used to obtain useful diagnostic information (neural oscillations and response times) in clinical contexts. Further, they present the advantage to be highly portable, inexpensive, and can be acquired at the bedside …

Study Of Parameters Impacting Productivity Of Tunnel Boring Machines, Hamed Hashem Pour

Civil Engineering Theses - Archive

Tunnel construction has been on the rise for transportation of humans, freight and fluids. For a successful tunneling project, it is necessary for that tunneling contractors to have sufficient data about scope of work, project features and characteristics of the ground to estimate advance rate of the a tunnel boring machine (TBM). The main objective of this thesis is to study tunneling case studies and literature to analyze TBM productivity based on ground conditions, diameter and length of each project. Project data was tabulated and results are reported in this thesis. The methodology to conduct this research was literature search …

Administrative Strategies To Improve Teacher Recruitment And Retention In Rural Public Schools, Christine Kay Butler

Dissertations

The main purpose of this study was to gain insight into the recruitment and retention strategies popularized due to the need to meet high-quality teacher demands. Additionally, recruitment and retention strategies identified by administrators and tenured teachers working in rural public schools of Missouri as effective were collected through a survey. Administrators, as well as tenured teachers currently on staff in rural public school districts of Missouri, were the population of this study. Among 286 administrators, 95 administrative participants and 33 tenured teachers completed the survey. The survey responses were compared to determine if the administrative point-ofview was similar to …

Backpacking Brothers: An Experiential, Adventure Education Program To Transform Rape Culture And Prevent Sexual Violence, Matthew Lynn

Capstone Collection

Sexual violence is a public health crisis in the United States and globally, that has devastating interpersonal, social, psychological, spiritual and economic impacts. The root causes of sexual violence are tied to all forms of oppression. The normalization and perpetuation of sexual violence is buttressed by cultural paradigms used by media, religion, education and other systems that maintain rigid gender roles and power dynamics. There are promising initiatives for preventing sexual violence before it occurs. This paper explores one of those initiatives called Backpacking Brothers. The purpose of Backpacking Brothers is to engage middle school boys in an adventure education …

Teaching Android Security Through Examples: A Publicly Available Database Of Vulnerable Apps, Daniel E. Krutz, Samuel A. Malachowsky

Articles

Security is hard, and teaching security can be even harder. Here we describe a public educational activity to assist in the instruction of both students and developers in creating secure Android apps. Our set of activities includes example vulnerable applications, information about each vulnerability, steps on how to repair the vulnerabilities, and information about how to confirm that the vulnerability has been properly repaired. Our primary goal is to make these activities available to other instructors for use in their classrooms ranging from the K-12 to university settings. A secondary goal of this project is to foster interest in security …

Knowledge Of Algebra For Teaching Quadratic Equations : The Impact Of Knowledge Dimensions On Planning And Pedagogical Strategies., Michael Raney

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Planning and presenting meaningful instruction in the mathematics classroom is a demanding task requiring mental flexibility as well as a solid foundation in relevant content knowledge and pedagogical strategies. In the last three decades, there has been a growing interest in the way teachers utilize this specialized mathematical knowledge for teaching algebra in the practice of teaching, specifically in planning and presenting classroom instruction. Even more recently, a growing area of emphasis has been the application of these domains of knowledge in a specific focal context involving a singular topic or unit of instruction in the mathematics classroom. This study …

Computational Methods For The Analysis Of Functional 4d-Ct Chest Images., Ahmed Soliman Naeem Soliman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Medical imaging is an important emerging technology that has been intensively used in the last few decades for disease diagnosis and monitoring as well as for the assessment of treatment effectiveness. Medical images provide a very large amount of valuable information that is too huge to be exploited by radiologists and physicians. Therefore, the design of computer-aided diagnostic (CAD) system, which can be used as an assistive tool for the medical community, is of a great importance. This dissertation deals with the development of a complete CAD system for lung cancer patients, which remains the leading cause of cancer-related death …

The Zodiac Army., Keith Charles Marks

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is the beginning of a book title The Zodiac Army. The book is the first in a trilogy and follows three different characters. The first, Ash, is a teenage boy who discovers he is a powerful magician who, along with another magician, can control the elements of nature. The two form a Twin pairing and will fight for each other and for the safety of the kingdom. Alora, the second character, is a young and faithful priestess in the Temple. Her faith, in both the gods and those in charge of the Temple, could bring the entire system …

Exploring The Relation Between School Pushout And Future Outlook For Black Youth., Kish Cumi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation study is an examination of the relation between school pushout and future outlook for Black youth. Theoretically, this dissertation study is framed by Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Model (Bronfenbrenner, 1977) and Racial Encounter Coping Appraisal and Socialization Theory (RECAST). In light of the systemic racial disparities entrenched in school pushout phenomena among Black youth, the researcher sought to explore parental warmth as a protective factor for youth subjected to school pushout. School pushout as praxis was discussed in conjunction with the school-toprison pipeline (STPP), as school pushout is identified as an entry point within the STPP. This dissertation study explored …

The Role And Regulation Of Inhibitor Of Kappa B Kinase In The Impaired Monocyte Response., Norman James Galbraith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Trauma, major surgery and systemic infection can lead to a subsequent immunosuppressed state which can predispose patients to nosocomial infection and death. Approximately a sixth of patients will have impaired monocyte function, as determined by decreased HLA-DR expression or decreased TNF-α production in response to ex-vivo lipopolysaccharide (LPS) stimulation. This project aimed to develop an in-vitro model of impaired monocyte function using isolated monocytes from healthy volunteers, to study the effect of monocyte impairment on IκK signaling, and determine the role of IκK in the impaired monocyte response. These studies have provided the following results:

1. Monocytes treated with low dose …

Dynamic Warehouse Optimization Using Predictive Analytics., Parvaneh Jahani

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The forward area is a small area of a warehouse with a low picking cost. Two approaches that are investigated for selecting the SKUs of this area and the allocated space are the static and the dynamic approaches. In the case that decisions about the forward area are made periodically (e.g. yearly) and the products' demand patterns are completely ignored, the FRP is static. We developed two heuristics that solve the large discrete assignment, allocation, and sizing problem simultaneously. Replenishing the same product in the same place of the forward area brings about a ``Locked" layout of the fast picking …

Crime And Culture : A Thematic Reading Of Sherlock Holmes And His Adaptations., Britney Broyles

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on the adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes character and stories into the television shows Sherlock and Elementary on air today. The project will consider three central questions: 1) Why is this Victorian detective hero still popular in the twenty-first century and what has remained constant and still resonates with modern audiences? 2) Both television shows transport Holmes in time by setting their narratives in the present day; therefore, what has been changed in this process of adaptation? 3) How do these changes represent shifts in our cultural thinking about important aspects of humanistic inquiry? The …

Approaches To Arthropod Conservation : Landscape Genetics, Community Assessment, And Prediction Of Extinction Risk., Victoria Annette Prescott

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Although urbanization is a leading cause of species extinction throughout the world, the impact of urban development on arthropods is little studied and, as a result, poorly understood. I used three distinct approaches to studying arthropod conservation in North America. First, I used landscape genetics techniques to study the impact of urbanization on gene flow among populations of Rabidosa rabida, the rabid wolf spider. While gene flow was not detrimentally reduced, urban development correlated with a reduction in migration rates among populations, and to my knowledge, this is the first study to document isolation by resistance in spiders. Next, …