Engineering Commons^™

Risk Management Of Email And Internet Use In The Workplace, John Ruhnka, Windham E. Loopesko

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

The article surveys the changing risk environment for corporations from their employees’ electronic communications. It identifies the types of liabilities that corporations can incur from such employee communications. It discusses the objectives of corporate internet use policies and the types of provisions such policies should contain. It suggests an alternative risk-based approach to corporate acceptable use policies instead of a traditional “laundry list” of internet use prohibitions.

System-Generated Digital Forensic Evidence In Graphic Design Applications, Enos Mabuto, Hein Venter

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Graphic design applications are often used for the editing and design of digital art. The same applications can be used for creating counterfeit documents such as identity documents (IDs), driver’s licences, passports, etc. However, the use of any graphic design application leaves behind traces of digital information that can be used during a digital forensic investigation. Current digital forensic tools examine a system to find digital evidence, but they do not examine a system specifically for the creating of counterfeit documents created through the use of graphic design applications. The paper in hand reviews the system-generated digital forensic evidence gathered …

Trends In Android Malware Detection, Kaveh Shaerpour, Ali Dehghantanha, Ramlan Mahmod

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

This paper analyzes different Android malware detection techniques from several research papers, some of these techniques are novel while others bring a new perspective to the research work done in the past. The techniques are of various kinds ranging from detection using host based frameworks and static analysis of executable to feature extraction and behavioral patterns. Each paper is reviewed extensively and the core features of each technique are highlighted and contrasted with the others. The challenges faced during the development of such techniques are also discussed along with the future prospects for Android malware detection. The findings of the …

Energy Efficiency Performance Improvements For Ant-Based Routing Algorithm In Wireless Sensor Networks, A. M. Zungeru, Kah Phooi Seng, Li-Minn Ang, W.C. Chia

Research outputs 2013

The main problem for event gathering in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is the restricted communication range for each node. Due to the restricted communication range and high network density, event forwarding in WSNs is very challenging and requires multihop data forwarding. Currently, the energy-efficient ant based routing (EEABR) algorithm, based on the ant colony optimization (ACO) metaheuristic, is one of the state-of-the-art energy-aware routing protocols. In this paper, we propose three improvements to the EEABR algorithm to further improve its energy efficiency. The improvements to the original EEABR are based on the following: (1) a new scheme to intelligently initialize …

Retaining The People Who Know Your Business Exploring Knowledge Sharing As A Tool To Improve Employee Retention In The Hotel Sector, Vincent Mckenna

Dissertations

The retention of core workers in the hotel/hospitality sector is a key challenge for human resource management, organisational strategies and operational effectiveness. The purpose of this research was to investigate and evaluate the impact of the introduction of knowledge sharing tools/techniques and change in work practice on the retention attitudes of knowledge workers in two context specific environments. Problems relating to the retention of knowledge workers are not confined to Ireland and are shown in this project to be a global phenomenon.

This research project is based on a knowledge audit of core knowledge workers/assets in two context specific environments …

Human Intention Recognition Based Assisted Telerobotic Grasping Of Objects In An Unstructured Environment, Karan Hariharan Khokar

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation work, a methodology is proposed to enable a robot to identify an object to be grasped and its intended grasp configuration while a human is teleoperating a robot towards the desired object. Based on the detected object and grasp configuration, the human is assisted in the teleoperation task. The environment is unstructured and consists of a number of objects, each with various possible grasp configurations. The identification of the object and the grasp configuration is carried out in real time, by recognizing the intention of the human motion. Simultaneously, the human user is assisted to preshape over …

Indeterminate Masses, Elements And Models In Information Fusion, Florentin Smarandache

Branch Mathematics and Statistics Faculty and Staff Publications

In this paper at the beginning, we make a short history of the logics, from the classical Boolean logic to the most general logic of today neutrosophic logic. We define the general logic space and give the definition of the neutrosophic logic. Then we introduce the indeterminate models in information fusion, which are due either to the existence of some indeterminate elements in the fusion space or to some indeterminate masses.

The best approach for dealing with such models is the neutrosophic logic, which is part of neutrosophy. Neutrosophic logic is connected with neutrosophic set and neutrosophic probability and statistics.

Design Of A Running Robot And The Effects Of Foot Placement In The Transverse Plane, Timothy James Sullivan

Open Access Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to make advances in the design of humanoid bipedal running robots. We focus on achieving dynamic running locomotion because it is one metric by which we can measure how far robotic technologies have advanced, in relation to existing benchmarks set by humans and other animals. Designing a running human-inspired robot is challenging because human bodies are exceptionally complex mechanisms to mimic. There are only a few humanoid robots designed specifically for running and the existing robots are either constrained to a plane, do not yet exhibit human-like motion, or are unstable.

One aspect of …

A Large Scale Distributed Syntactic, Semantic And Lexical Language Model For Machine Translation, Ming Tan

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

The n-gram model is the most widely used language model (LM) in statistical machine translation system, due to its simplicity and scalability. However, it only encodes the local lexical relation between adjacent words and clearly ignores the rich syntactic and semantic structures of the natural languages. Attempting to increase the order of an n-gram to describe longer range dependencies in natural language immediately runs into the curse of dimensionality. Although previous researches tried to increase the order of n-gram on a large corpus, they did not see obvious improvement beyond 6-gram. Meanwhile, other LMs, such as syntactic language models and …

Maximizing Resource Utilization In Video Streaming Systems, Mohammad A. Alsmirat

Wayne State University Dissertations

Video streaming has recently grown dramatically in popularity over the Internet, Cable TV, and wire-less networks. Because of the resource demanding nature of video streaming applications, maximizing resource utilization in any video streaming system is a key factor to increase the scalability and decrease the cost of the system. Resources to utilize include server bandwidth, network bandwidth, battery life in battery operated devices, and processing time in limited processing power devices. In this work, we propose new techniques to maximize the utilization of video-on-demand (VOD) server resources. In addition to that, we propose new framework to maximize the utilization of …

Autonomic Management And Performance Optimization For Cloud Computing Services, Xiangping Bu

Wayne State University Dissertations

Cloud computing has become an increasingly important computing paradigm. It offers three levels of on-demand services to cloud users: software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) . The success of cloud services heavily depends on the effectiveness of cloud management strategies. In this dissertation work, we aim to design and implement an automatic cloud management system to improve application performance, increase platform efficiency and optimize resource allocation.

For large-scale multi-component applications, especially web-based cloud applica- tions, parameter setting is crucial to the service availability and quality. The increas- ing system complexity …

Advanced Augmented Reality Telestration Techniques With Applications In Laparoscopic And Robotic Surgery, Stephen Dworzecki

Wayne State University Dissertations

The art of teaching laparoscopic or robotic surgery currently has a primary reliance on an expert surgeon tutoring a student during a live surgery. During these operations, surgeons are viewing the inside of the body through a manipulatable camera. Due to the viewpoint translation and narrow field of view, these techniques have a substantial learning curve in order to gain the mastery necessary to operate safely. In addition to moving and rotating the camera, the surgeon must also manipulate tools inserted into the body. These tools are only visible on camera, and pass through a pivot point on the body …

A Relevance Feedback-Based System For Quickly Narrowing Biomedical Literature Search Result, Massuod Hassan Alatrash

Wayne State University Dissertations

The online literature is an important source that helps people find the information. The quick increase of online literature makes the manual search process for the most relevant information a very time-consuming task and leads to sifting through many results to find the relevant ones. The existing search engines and online databases return a list of results that satisfy the user's search criteria. The list is often too long for the user to go through every hit if he/she does not exactly know what he/she wants or/and does not have time to review them one by one. My focus is …

The Effect Overall Density Plays On Performance And Preference In A Windowed Environment, Lucas M. Downard

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis consists of fundamental research into the effect that a display’s overall density has on a user’s performance and preference while performing simple tasks using a window-styled computer application specifically developed for this study. This study sought to reevaluate previous findings by exploring their application in the more current, present-day environment. In this research, overall density was considered to be a measure of a screen’s complexity and was examined at three different levels. Users performed a series of tasks using only one of three available screens with different density levels. The same tasks were performed by all users to …

Android Hacking And Analysis, Daun Lee

Summer Community of Scholars Posters (RCEU and HCR Combined Programs)

No abstract provided.

A Semantics-Based Approach To Machine Perception, Cory Andrew Henson

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Machine perception can be formalized using semantic web technologies in order to derive abstractions from sensor data using background knowledge on the Web, and efficiently executed on resource-constrained devices. Advances in sensing technology hold the promise to revolutionize our ability to observe and understand the world around us. Yet the gap between observation and understanding is vast. As sensors are becoming more advanced and cost-effective, the result is an avalanche of data of high volume, velocity, and of varied type, leading to the problem of too much data and not enough knowledge (i.e., insights leading to actions). Current estimates predict …

A Methodology For Extracting Human Bodies From Still Images, Athanasios Tsitsoulis

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Monitoring and surveillance of humans is one of the most prominent applications of today and it is expected to be part of many future aspects of our life, for safety reasons, assisted living and many others. Many efforts have been made towards automatic and robust solutions, but the general problem is very challenging and remains still open. In this PhD dissertation we examine the problem from many perspectives. First, we study the performance of a hardware architecture designed for large-scale surveillance systems. Then, we focus on the general problem of human activity recognition, present an extensive survey of methodologies that …

Anomalies In Sensor Network Deployments: Analysis, Modeling, And Detection, Giovani Rimon Abuaitah

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

A sensor network serves as a vital source for collecting raw sensory data. Sensor data are later processed, analyzed, visualized, and reasoned over with the help of several decision making tools. A decision making process can be disastrously misled by a small portion of anomalous sensor readings. Therefore, there has been a vast demand for mechanisms that identify and then eliminate such anomalies in order to ensure the quality, integrity, and/or trustworthiness of the raw sensory data before they can even be interpreted.

Prior to identifying anomalies, it is essential to understand the various anomalous behaviors prevalent in a sensor …

Visualizing Confusion Matrices For Multidimensional Signal Detection Correlational Methods And Semantic Cluster Based Visualization In Virtual Environments, Yue Zhou

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

General Recognition Theory (GRT) is a multidimensional signal detection theory framework for capturing sources of perceptual and decisional dependence. The primary type of data for GRT models is an identification-confusion matrix derived in a complete factorial identification task. This confusion matrix plots the responses of study participant for a given signal. The responses may reveal that participants were unable to recognize the signal properly. Such violations of any type of independence in the GRT framework result in response patterns that reflect some form of correlation in the GRT space. While an individual confusion matrix is rather small and relatively easy …

Cooperative Interactive Distributed Guidance On Mobile Devices, Gregory Burnett

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Mobiles device are quickly becoming an indispensable part of our society. Equipped with numerous communication capabilities, they are increasingly being examined as potential tools for civilian and military usage to aide in distributed remote collaboration for dynamic decision making and physical task completion. With an ever growing mobile workforce, the need for remote assistance in aiding field workers who are confronted with situations outside their expertise certainly increases. Enhanced capabilities in using mobile devices could significantly improve numerous components of a task's completion (i.e. accuracy, timing, etc.). This dissertation considers the design of mobile implementation of technology and communication capabilities …

Streamsurface Smoke Effect For Visualizing Dragon Fly Cfd Data In Modern Opengl With An Emphasis On High Performance, Jordan Sipes

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Visualizing 3D, time dependent velocity vector fields is a difficult topic. Streamlines can be used to visualize 3D vector fields. A smoke effect where the streamline is faded out as time progresses can provide a better visualization of a time dependent flow. This work uses modern OpenGL to create a smoke trail effect with streamsurfaces in the dragon fly data set. Many aspects affecting performance are tested to determine the best options or approach.

Natural Language Document And Event Association Using Stochastic Petri Net Modeling, Michael Thomas Mills

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The purpose of this research is to design and implement a new methodology that captures the natural language understanding of events from English natural language text and model it using Stochastic Petri Nets. To establish a baseline of recent natural language processing (NLP) and understanding (NLU) research, two surveys are presented. One is a general survey in NLP and NLU methodologies for processing multi-documents. It summarizes and presents methodologies in terms of their features, capabilities, and maturity. The second survey focuses on graph-based methods for NL text processing and understanding and analyzes them in terms of their functional descriptions, capabilities …

Adaptive Semantic Annotation Of Entity And Concept Mentions In Text, Pablo N. Mendes

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The recent years have seen an increase in interest for knowledge repositories that are useful across applications, in contrast to the creation of ad hoc or application-specific databases.

These knowledge repositories figure as a central provider of unambiguous identifiers and semantic relationships between entities. As such, these shared entity descriptions serve as a common vocabulary to exchange and organize information in different formats and for different purposes. Therefore, there has been remarkable interest in systems that are able to automatically tag textual documents with identifiers from shared knowledge repositories so that the content in those documents is described in a …

Solar-Powered Wireless Sensor Nodes With Dynamic Power Management For Indoor Use, Ethan Charles Humphrey

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Indoor environment monitoring, such as medical monitoring and home automation, is achieved through wireless sensor networks that collect data through wireless sensor nodes. These nodes are typically powered by exhaustible power sources that could be difficult or impossible to maintain regularly. A solution to the need for frequent maintenance is to collect the solar power in the environment. This project shows how collecting the solar energy in the environment can extend the lifetime of a sensor node and limit the maintenance required. Along with charging the battery with a solar panel, a dynamic power management scheme can also be implemented. …

Low Cost Open Source Modal Virtual Environment Interfaces Using Full Body Motion Tracking And Hand Gesture Recognition, Matthew J. Marangoni

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Virtual environments provide insightful and meaningful ways to explore data sets through immersive experiences. One of the ways immersion is achieved is through natural interaction methods instead of only a keyboard and mouse. Intuitive tracking systems for natural interfaces suitable for such environments are often expensive. Recently however, devices such as gesture tracking gloves and skeletal tracking systems have emerged in the consumer market. This project integrates gestural interfaces into an open source virtual reality toolkit using consumer grade input devices and generates a set of tools to enable multimodal gestural interface creation. The AnthroTronix AcceleGlove is used to augment …

Mining Diversified Decision Trees Across Multiple Datasets To Capture Similarities And Alignable Differences, Qian Han

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This dissertation studies the problem of mining shared and alignable difference knowledge structures across multiple datasets/applications. Shared and alignable difference knowledge structures are important for identifying analogies between application domains and for forming new hypothesis in challenging research applications, and for assessing the degree and types of knowledge-level similarities and differences between application domains for use in learning transfer. Generally speaking, shared knowledge structures characterize underlying datasets and highlight conceptual-level structural similarities among the datasets. This dissertation studies the mining of shared decision trees, which are a special type of shared knowledge structures. We first consider building one shared decision …

Optimal Network Topologies And Resource Mappings For Heterogeneous Networks-On-Chip, Haera Chung

Dissertations and Theses

Communication has become a bottleneck for modern microprocessors and multi-core chips because metal wires don't scale. The problem becomes worse as the number of components increases and chips become bigger. Traditional Systems-on-Chips (SoCs) interconnect architectures are based on shared-bus communication, which can carry only one communication transaction at a time. This limits the communication bandwidth and scalability. Networks-on-Chip (NoC) were proposed as a promising solution for designing large and complex SoCs. The NoC paradigm provides better scalability and reusability for future SoCs, however, long-distance multi-hop communication through traditional metal wires suffers from both high latency and power consumption. A radical …

Fpga-Based Implementation Of Dual-Frequency Pattern Scheme For 3-D Shape Measurement, Brent Bondehagen

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

Structured Light Illumination (SLI) is the process where spatially varied patterns are projected onto a 3-D surface and based on the distortion by the surface topology, phase information can be calculated and a 3D model constructed. Phase Measuring Profilometry (PMP) is a particular type of SLI that requires three or more patterns temporarily multiplexed. High speed PMP attempts to scan moving objects whose motion is small so as to have little impact on the 3-D model. Given that practically all machine vision cameras and high speed cameras employ a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) interface directly to the image sensors, …

A Comprehensive Hdl Model Of A Line Associative Register Based Architecture, Matthew A. Sparks

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

Modern processor architectures suffer from an ever increasing gap between processor and memory performance. The current memory-register model attempts to hide this gap by a system of cache memory. Line Associative Registers(LARs) are proposed as a new system to avoid the memory gap by pre-fetching and associative updating of both instructions and data. This thesis presents a fully LAR-based architecture, targeting a previously developed instruction set architecture. This architecture features an execution pipeline supporting SWAR operations, and a memory system supporting the associative behavior of LARs and lazy writeback to memory.

Power-Efficient And Low-Latency Memory Access For Cmp Systems With Heterogeneous Scratchpad On-Chip Memory, Zhi Chen

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

The gradually widening speed disparity of between CPU and memory has become an overwhelming bottleneck for the development of Chip Multiprocessor (CMP) systems. In addition, increasing penalties caused by frequent on-chip memory accesses have raised critical challenges in delivering high memory access performance with tight power and latency budgets. To overcome the daunting memory wall and energy wall issues, this thesis focuses on proposing a new heterogeneous scratchpad memory architecture which is configured from SRAM, MRAM, and Z-RAM. Based on this architecture, we propose two algorithms, a dynamic programming and a genetic algorithm, to perform data allocation to different memory …