Digital Commons Network^™

Recognition Of Infrastructure Events Using Principal Component Analysis, Lane David Broadbent

Theses and Dissertations

Information Technology systems generate system log messages to allow for the monitoring of the system. In increasingly large and complex systems the volume of log data can overwhelm the analysts tasked with monitoring these systems. A system was developed that utilizes Principal Component Analysis to assist the analyst in the characterization of system health and events. Once trained, the system was able to accurately identify a state of heavy load on a device with a low false positive rate. The system was also able to accurately identify an error condition when trained on a single event. The method employed is …

Crystallography And Magnetism Of Magnetocalorically Important Ni-Mn-X Based Heusler Alloys, Amila S. B. Madiligama

Dissertations

Ni-Mn-X Heusler alloys, demonstrating strong coupling between crystalline structure and magnetic state, were studied. They undergo field-induced, first-order transformations from a low symmetry martensite to a high-symmetry austenitic phase around room temperature. The substantial difference between the entropies of the two phases results in a large adiabatic temperature change, called “Giant Magnetocaloric Effect (GMCE)”. Consequently, these alloys are promising refrigerants for near-room temperature cooling systems. This magnetic cooling is an energy-efficient and eco-friendly technology.

Crystalline structures and magnetic states of these alloys, which determine their magnetocaloric performances, highly depend on their composition. To examine new paths to optimize their magnetocaloric …

The Case For Cultural Proficiency For Teachers Of Students Of Color Who Live In Poverty: A Policy Advocacy Document, Perry A. Finch

Dissertations

This document explores how expanding educators’ cultural proficiency leads to increased learning opportunities for students of color who live in poverty. Through the development of culturally responsive curriculum and instruction, teachers might increase their abilities to meet the needs of previously disenfranchised students. A connection exists between differentiated instruction and culturally responsive instruction, as both require a heightened understanding of students’ schema, interests, and culture. This policy argues that increasing educators’ cultural proficiency should not be done simply to increase teacher effectiveness with instruction but rather because it is a moral obligation of schools.

Understanding The Effects Of Summer School, Technology, And 21st Century Skills On Student Academics, Jennifer Camilleri

Dissertations

District XYZ has hosted traditional summer school for more than 20 years to assist students not quite ready to advance to the next grade. The district has become more diverse, and many students end the school year without solid mastery of that grade’s objectives. Therefore, summer school is a pivotal time for these students who have not mastered the grade-level content to gain a solid foundation before moving on to the next grade. Because of both the changing needs of the district’s student population and the relatively short amount of time in which summer school occurs, technological tools that can …

Growth Of Methanogens In The Presence Of Perchlorate Salts: A Study For Possible Life On Mars, John Cale

Biological Sciences Undergraduate Honors Theses

The Phoenix Lander collected soil samples from Mars, and it detected perchlorate salts in its analysis [1]. As oxidizing agents, perchlorates pose a threat to the hypothesis that there may be microbial life on Mars. Since Mars is very dry, perchlorate may continue to accumulate in the soil. If anaerobic methanogens inhabit Mars, then they must be able to grow in the presence of perchlorate salts. There were four species of methanogens tested in this project. The methanogens were first exposed to small concentrations of calcium perchlorate, and then they were gradually tested at higher concentrations. Growth was measured by …

Face Image Enhancement Using Wavelet Denoising And Gabor Filters, Isra’A Abdul-Ameer

Iraqi Journal of Computers, Communications, Control and Systems Engineering

This paper aims to enhance the recognition rate in some Gabor face recognition techniques; the enhancement is done using two filtering stages. the first stage consists of applying adapted wavelet de-noising filter on the face database, this adaptive filter is composed of two filters (Bior 1.1 and Daubachies6) which are implemented successively both are at level 10 of decomposition. The second stage consists of computing and extracting the Gabor magnitude features using Gabor filter with 5 scaling and 8 orientations. All face images are loaded from the ORL database. As a result the Adaptive filtering technique produced good enhancement when …

Digital Quorum Sensing For Self-Organizing Malware, Mark E. Fioravanti Ii

Theses and Dissertations

INTRODUCTION: Malware authors present an interesting problem for the security community as they evolve and adapt to overcome network and host defenses. The determined adversary is a special class of malware author who may attempt to disrupt national interests. These adversaries may seek potentially novel Command and Control (C2) channels to coordinate their activities. Isolated and air-gapped networks pose an interesting challenge that these adversaries must adapt to in order to maintain persistence on these networks. In this work we propose that a determined adversary may seek to implement a digital quorum sensing system inspired by the quorum sensing systems …

Gbann-V: Genetically Based Artificial Neural Network With Validation For Optimal Feature Selection And Data Mining, Eric W. Worden

Theses and Dissertations

In data mining and machine learning systems, highly predictive feature attributes help researchers and data analysts classify the problem space in the most optimal way. In this thesis paper, a feature subset selection classifier system for data mining and machine learning will be presented. This feature subset selection system will test data from the PIMA Indian Diabetes Data and the Breiman Waveform Data Set. The system collects the input features and then processes them through an evolutionary search process in order to reduce the feature space into an optimal feature set. Reducing irrelevant attributes can decrease the complexity and processing …

Specialized Distributed Hardware Design For Real-Time Atmospheric Turbulence Mitigation Error Correction Calculation, Subhadra Subramanian

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis demonstrates an approach to solve execution challenges of Image processing of an Atmospheric turbulence mitigation technique in real-time. An atmospheric turbulence mitigation technique is used to eliminate the aberrations caused by turbulence in the images. The error calculation is a mathematically intensive process, that includes Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) to convert the image from the spatial domain to the spatial frequency domain. The FPGA based hardware accelerator design and architectures are investigated in this work to perform Fast Fourier Transform and error calculations in real-time, defined as 30Hz. A scalable and parallel platform is designed to execute the …

Robotic Arm Tracing Curves Recognized By Camera, Timothy Karl Findling

Theses and Dissertations

Applications such like soldering require robot arms to follow the soldering line as present on a surface. We assume here that the surface to be soldered is remote from the robotic arm, that the soldering is performed via a laser beam, and that the line to be followed can be a curve that may self-intersect (e.g. a crack in the material). We describe research conducted using a robotic arm pointing a laser for tracing a remote line on a smooth surface. The image of the line is converted to a one pixel width skeleton line generated from images using a …

Evaluation Of User Perceived Qoe In Mobile Systems Using Social Media Analytics, Ahmed Yaseen Mjhool

Theses and Dissertations

In mobile system environments, the quality perceived by users is inconstant and reliant on many factors such as cellular network, data connection, cost, coverage area, etc. Even though Quality of Service (QoS) management is enabled in most modern telecommunication systems, it does not guarantee the actual user’s perceived Quality of Experience (QoE) level. Many cellular networks rely on engineering test research, such as drive testing or smart mobile applications, to collect the required parameters in order to provide better service quality to users. However, this approach does not always yield customer satisfaction. Hence, user opinions should be considered. These opinions …

Cross-Spectral Biometric Performance Analysis On High-Resolution Face Images, Praveen Kumar Pandian Shanmuganathan

Theses and Dissertations

Biometrics is increasingly being used to authenticate the identity of individuals in critical use case devices like smart phones, laptops, and several other access-control systems in our day-to-day lives. Additionally, biometrics is also used in forensic and security sensitive areas to detect and identify suspects involved in bombings, robberies, and several police investigations. In each of these critical scenarios, the high-quality full-frontal face images of the subjects are not accurately captured as those subjects do not intend to register their identity to the Closed-Circuit Cameras. Hence in such cases, identification of the suspects becomes difficult even though we have the …

A Self-Organized Approach For Detecting Communities In Networks, Ben Collingsworth

Theses and Dissertations

The community structure of networks reveals hidden information about the whole network structure that cannot be discerned using other topological properties. Yet, the importance of identifying community structure in networks to many fields such as medicine, social sciences and national security, calls for better approaches for performing this identification. The prevalent community detection algorithms, such as the one proposed by Girvan and Newman, utilize a centralized approach that is unlikely to scale to very large networks and does not handle dynamic networks. Further, existing algorithms provide limited information regarding community overlap, where an individual participates in multiple communities. We propose …

Multi-Axial Fiber Optic Reference Strain Sensor For Flexible Dynamics Of Structures, Gabriel Lapilli

Theses and Dissertations

Launch vehicles are in an ever-decreasing weight trend, with bodies becoming more slender to reduce aerodynamic loading. Mass and stiffness tend to be opposing concepts when designing launch vehicles: a stiffer structure means it is usually heavier. Lower stiffness on launch vehicles may produce excessive vibrations during flight, reducing the performance, operating characteristics and safety margins of the vehicle. It also impacts flight dynamics: as the vehicle flies, the orientation of its thrusters and actuators are impacted by the vibrations, creating potential instabilities in the control schemes. This is currently accounted for by using single-point inertial measurements and feeding the …

Temporal Foraging Patterns Of Nonnative Frogs (Eleutherodactylus Coqui) In Hawaii, Arthur C. Wallis, Robyn L. Smith, Karen H. Beard

Wildland Resources Faculty Publications

The Puerto Rican Coqui Frog (Eleutherodactylus coqui) is a nocturnal, invasive species that was introduced into Hawaii in the 1980s. Because they reach extremely high densities (up to 90,000 frogs/ha), they have the potential to affect invertebrate prey communities. Previously, researchers used frogs collected only at night to characterize their prey. Because Coquis use retreat sites near the forest floor during the day and understory perch sites at night, frogs collected at night might show different amounts and types of prey than would frogs collected in the morning. We analyzed stomach contents of 435 frogs collected in the morning (0300–0600 …

Modeling And Analysis Of A Novel Imbedded Organic Thermal Cycle, Joel Maker Faure

Theses and Dissertations

A thermal cycle is a device that converts thermal energy into work energy. There is a strong need in the United States and the world for a cycle that can have viable performances with low-grade temperature heat sources to increase the supply of power generation. There are many cycles with different configurations, however most do not involve mixing. Generally speaking this is due to modeling difficulties with multiple constituents, phases, and the technology available that lose performance under these mixed conditions. The gap in technology for mixed flow and phase components is getting smaller due to the need. Current cycles …

Proactive Approach For The Prevention Of Ddos Attacks In Cloud Computing Environments, Brad Alshehry

Theses and Dissertations

Contemporary security systems attempt to provide protection against distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks; however, they mostly use a variety of computing and hardware resources for load distribution and request delays. As a result, ordinary users and website visitors experience timeouts, captchas, and lowspeed connections. In this paper, we propose a new multilayer system for protection against DDoS in the cloud that utilizes Threat Intelligence techniques and a proactive approach to detect traffic behavior anomalies. The first layer of the model analyzes the source IP address in the header of incoming traffic packets and the second layer analyzes the speed of requests …

Fast Power Network Detection Of Topology Change Locations Using Pmu Measurements, Elamin Ali Elamin Mohamed

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

System monitoring and contingency analysis are crucial functions in power control centers. In order to perform these analyses, a complete model of the power network is needed. Moreover, to account for system configuration dynamics, this model must be continuously updated for the purpose of on-line analysis. Several topology processing schemes have been developed in the literature to accomplish this task. The majority of these schemes process breaker statuses to detect changes in system topology. Transformer tap positions as well as statuses of capacitor and reactor bank switches must also be included in the process. This results in a complicated topology …

Automatic Parallel Octree Grid Generation Software With An Extensible Solver Framework And A Focus On Urban Simulation, Ethan Alan Hereth

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

The development of an automatic, dynamic, parallel, Cartesian, linear forest-of-octree grid generator and partial differential equation (PDE) solver framework is presented. This research is bundled into an application programmed with C++ which uses MPI for distributed parallelism. The application is named paros which stands for PARallel Octree Solver. In its current implementation, the application provides a 'zeroth' order representation of the target geometry, and as such, no cut-cell algorithm, projection method, or immersed boundary condition are implemented. In this case, 'zeroth' order means that no geometry is ever exactly represented in the final computational mesh: an octree element is either …

Vague Convergence Of Spectral Shift Functions For Periodic Restrictions Of One-Dimensional Schrodinger Operators, John B. Murphy

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

We prove weak and vague convergence results for spectral shift functions associated with self-adjoint one-dimensional Schr\"odinger operators on intervals of the form $(-\ell,\ell)$ with periodic boundary conditions to the full-line spectral shift function in the infinite volume limit $\ell\to \infty$. The approach employed relies on the use of a Krein-type resolvent identity to relate the resolvent of the operator with periodic boundary conditions to the corresponding operator with Dirichlet boundary conditions in combination with various operator theoretic facts.

Design Optimization Of Acoustic Metamaterials And Phononic Crystals With A Time Domain Method, Weiyang Lin

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

A time-dependent adjoint approach for obtaining sensitivity derivatives for shape optimizations of acoustic metamaterials and phononic crystals is presented. The gradient-based design procedure is suitable for large numbers of design variables, and results are shown on achieving effective material properties with a unit cell and the broadband noise reduction with periodic arrays of cylinders. The acoustic wave propagation problem is solved in the time-domain using a Streamline Upwind/Petrov Galerkin formulation. Topology parameterization is accomplished using the homogenization method, and shape optimization is subsequently used afterwards to refine the geometries. Surface parameterization is accomplished using control grids, which are based on …

Statistical Inferences Of Rs;K = Pr(Xk-S+1:K > Y ) For General Class Of Exponentiated Inverted Exponential Distribution With Progressively Type-Ii Censored Samples With Uniformly Distributed Random Removal, Aaron J. Fisher

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

The problem of statistical inference of the reliability parameter Pr(Xk-s+1:k > Y ) of an s-out-of-k : G system with strength components X1,X2,…,Xk subjected to a common stress Y when X and Y are independent two-parameter general class of exponentiated inverted exponential (GCEIE) progressively type-II right censored data with uniformly random removal random variables, are discussed. We use p-value as a basis for hypothesis testing. There are no exact or approximate inferential procedures for reliability of a multicomponent stress-strength model from the GCEIE based on the progressively type-II right censored data with random or fixed removals available in the literature. Simulation …

The Influence Of Resin Rich Volumes On The Mechanical Properties Of Glass Fibre Reinforced Polymer Composites, Grant Lewin

The Plymouth Student Scientist

Glass fibre composite plates were manufactured using several methods to promote increasing levels of fibre volume fraction (Vf), inversely leading to a lower residual resin content and theoretically smaller resin rich volumes (RRV). The aim of this project is to determine the effect of resin rich volumes on the mechanical properties tested and whether they scale with the increase in Vf. Five test plates were manufactured, the first using hand-lamination (HL) with three further plates produced using resin infusion (RI), with infusion occurring under consolidation pressures of 300, 600 and 900mbar. The fifth plate was infused under full vacuum, ~1000mbar …

End-Of-Life Recycling Options For Glass Fibre Reinforced Polymers, Shannon Hall

The Plymouth Student Scientist

This report covers the possible recycling options for end-of-life glass fibre reinforced polymers. Two forms (jigsaw and diamond bladed wet saw) of composite size reduction were compared to determine the most viable option. It was determined that the use of a jigsaw is essential due to its portability and low cost; being ≈36% less than the cost of the wet saw. Incineration with fibre recovery was performed at six different temperatures to determine which was the best to achieve complete resin decomposition. It was found that the most effective temperature, in terms of cost, burn-off time and effectiveness was 500°C. …

Callosal Connectivity And Interhemispheric Bilateral Advantage: A Diffusion Tensor Imaging Study, Sophie Clarke

The Plymouth Student Scientist

There is wide acknowledgement that the cerebral hemispheres do not operate in isolation when processing complex visual stimuli (Singh, 2000; Schulte & Muller-Oehring, 2010). Patterns of interhemispheric communication are believed to be integral to such cognitive abilities, yet the circumstances under which communication takes place and the nature of information being processed is poorly understood. This experiment addresses the role of interhemispheric communication regarding inter-individual differences in underlying white matter (WM) relating to the matching facial identity. Several studies have already documented the role of WM in processing abilities such as with differences in gender, age and disease (Schulte & …

Parameterisation Of Intra Array Effects Around Wind Turbine Monopiles, Maxwell Needham

The Plymouth Student Scientist

Project II is a continuation of project I which studied the effects of wave incidence angle and current interaction around offshore Wind Turbine Monopiles. This report presents a brief recap of project I findings and objectives before identifying the experimental methodology used for lab testing, post processing and results analysis. Laboratory testing conducted in the Plymouth Coast basin used a 1:50 scale Monopile to replicate the prototype site and conditions of Scroby Sands Offshore Windfarm. Turbulent Kinetic Energy (TKE) and Bed Shear Stress were measured across the wake region as part of this testing, enabling a number of conclusions to …

Fugro Seacore: Airlift Pump Modelling Proposal, Matthew Hobson

The Plymouth Student Scientist

This Project reviews options available to Fugro Seacore (fugro), an over water drilling contractor, for predicting the operability of Airlift pumps. This is particular a problem during projects conducted from Jack-Up Barges in areas with large tidal ranges. By reviewing literature and attempting to construct both mathematical and CFD models it is concluded that CFD is too complex for the speed of calculation Fugro require when tendering for projects. In literature a mathematical model is found however further work will be needed to ensure this can be applied to Fugro’s large scale pumps. This is because while Fugro operate in …

The Cowl - V.81 - N.11 - Dec 1, 2016

The Cowl

The Cowl - student newspaper of Providence College. Volume 81, Number 11 - December 1, 2016. 24 pages.

A Tale Of Two Antennules: The Performance Of Crab Odor-Capture Organs In Air And Water, Lindsay D. Waldrop, Laura A. Miller, Shilpa Khatri

Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles and Research

Odour capture is an important part of olfaction, where dissolved chemical cues (odours) are brought into contact with chemosensory structures. Antennule flicking by marine crabs is an example of discrete odour capture (sniffing) where an array of chemosensory hairs is waved through the water to create a flow–no flow pattern based on a narrow range of speeds, diameters of and spacings between hairs. Changing the speed of movement and spacing of hairs at this scale to manipulate flow represents a complicated fluid dynamics problem. In this study, we use numerical simulation of the advection and diffusion of a chemical gradient …

"Let Me Tell You What I See" Creating A Culturally Relevant Arts Based Education Through The Use Of Photography And Storytelling, William Tran

Master's Projects and Capstones

There are many constructs that can hinder the ability of students of color to succeed in a classroom environment. Factors such as the construct of whiteness, microaggressions, the banking method, as well as cuts in arts based classes create a learning environment where oppression occurs on multiple levels. The construct of whiteness creates an environment in which only the ideas, values, lived experiences, and knowledge of whites are considered valid. Microaggressions uphold the construct of whiteness by insulting and invalidating any ideas, values, lived experiences, languages, and knowledge that are outside the construct of whiteness. The constructs of whiteness as …