Engineering Commons^™

Transparent Interconnections Formed By Rapid Single-Step Fabrication Of Graphene Patterns, J. B. Park, W. Xiong, Z. Q. Xie, Y. Gao, M. Qian, M. Mitchell, M. Mahjouri-Samani, Y. S. Zhou, L. Jiang, Yongfeng Lu

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

We developed a process to form transparent interconnections using graphene patterns that were synthesized by laser chemical vapor deposition. The number of graphene layers was tightly controlled by laser scan speed. Graphene patterns were fabricated at a high scan speed of up to 200 µm/s with a single-step process. The process time is about a million times faster than the conventional chemical vapor deposition method. The fabricated graphene patterns on nickel foils were directly transferred to desired positions on patterned electrodes. The position-controlled transfer with rapid single-step fabrication of graphene patterns provides an innovative pathway for graphene-based interconnections.

Fast Growth Of Graphene Patterns By Laser Direct Writing, J. B. Park, W. Xiong, Y. Gao, M. Qian, Z. Q. Xie, M. Mitchell, Y. S. Zhou, G. H. Han, L. Jiang, Yongfeng Lu

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

Rapid single-step fabrication of graphene patterns was developed using laser-induced chemical vapor deposition (LCVD). A laser beam irradiates a thin nickel foil in a CH₄ and H₂ environment to induce a local temperature rise, thereby allowing the direct writing of graphene patterns in precisely controlled positions at room temperature. Line patterns can be achieved with a single scan without pre- or post-processes. Surprisingly, the growth rate is several thousand times faster than that of general CVD methods. The discovery and development of the LCVD growth process provide a route for the rapid fabrication of graphene patterns for various …

Small Molecule Inhibitors Of Staphylococcus Aureus Rnpa Alter Cellular Mrna Turnover, Exhibit Antimicrobial Activity, And Attenuate Pathogenesis, Patrick D. Olson, Lisa J. Kuechenmeister, Kelsi L. Anderson, Sonja Daily, Karen E. Beenken, Christelle M. Roux, Michelle L. Reniere, Tami L. Lewis, William J, Weiss, Mark Pulse, Phung Nguyen, Jerry W. Simecka, John M. Morrison, Khalid Sayood, Oluwatoyin A. Asojo, Mark S. Smeltzer, Eric P. Skaar, Paul M. Dunman

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus is estimated to cause more U.S. deaths annually than HIV/AIDS. The emergence of hypervirulent and multidrug-resistant strains has further amplified public health concern and accentuated the need for new classes of antibiotics. RNA degradation is a required cellular process that could be exploited for novel antimicrobial drug development. However, such discovery efforts have been hindered because components of the Gram-positive RNA turnover machinery are incompletely defined. In the current study we found that the essential S. aureus protein, RnpA, catalyzes rRNA and mRNA digestion in vitro. Exploiting this activity, high through-put and secondary screening assays identified …

A Novel Adaptive Distributed Cooperative Relaying Mac Protocol For Vehicular Networks, Ting Zhou, Hamid Sharif, Michael Hempel, Puttipong Mahasukhon, Wei Wang, Tao Ma

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications (to 2015)

Explosive growth in Information Technology has enabled many innovative application areas such as large-scale outdoor vehicular networks for vehicle-to-vehicle communications. By providing time-sensitive and location-aware information, vehicular networks can contribute to a safer and more efficient driving experience. However, the performance of vehicular networks requires robust and real-time data communications and is impacted by high mobility, intermittent connectivity, and unreliability of the wireless channel. In this paper, a novel adaptive distributed cooperative medium access control (ADCMAC) protocol is proposed in order to address the inherent problems in the IEEE 802.11 standard when employed in vehicular networks. ADC-MAC exploits spatial diversities …

Quantitative Analysis Of Propagation Characteristics For Mobile Wimax, Pradhumna Shrestha, Puttipong Mahasukhon, Michael Hempel, Tao Ma, Hamid Sharif

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications (to 2015)

In wireless networks, careful planning and link budget analysis is required for delivering maximum throughput reliably with minimum overhead. The efficiency of planning and eventual network performance is totally dependent upon the accuracy and quality of data used for analysis. In most studies, computer simulations and analytical models are used for generating such data. However these simulations are limited to many assumptions which are different from the actual implemented hardware, therefore, the data generated are not accurate. In this paper, we analyze the performance of Mobile WiMAX utilizing the empirical data measured from leading WiMAX equipment. We believe this data …

Power Controlled Coded-Sequence Self-Encoded Spread Spectrum Communications, Poomathi Duraisamy, Liang Chi, Won Mee Jang, Lim Nguyen

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications (to 2015)

In this paper, we propose to apply power control to coded-sequence self-encoded spread spectrum (CS-SESS) communications in dynamic fading channels. We determine the statistical characteristics of the power enhancement in the transmitter due to power control and show that the proposed approach improves the power efficiency in mobile cellular systems.

In addition, we propose to mitigate self interference in CSSESS by exploiting the information that the transmitter obtains, through feedback training sequences, about the de-spreading code in the receiver. The results show that the mitigation is significant even with only selective training chips from the de-spreading sequence. Similar improvement can …

A Study On Energy Efficient Multi-Tier Multi-Hop Wireless Sensor Networks For Freight-Train Monitoring, Puttipong Mahasukhon, Hamid Sharif, Michael Hempel, Ting Zhou, Tao Ma, Pradhumna Shrestha

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications (to 2015)

The North American freight railroad industry is trying to leverage wireless sensor networks (WSN) onboard railcars for advanced monitoring and alerting. In railroad environments, freight train WSNs exhibit a linear chain-like topology of significant length. Thus, existing wireless technologies such as the IEEE 802.15.4 communication protocol, based on a star topology, are unable to provide reliable service. The end-to-end communication between nodes generally relies on individual nodes communicating with their respective neighbors to carry the information over multiple hops and deliver it to the preferred destination. The routing performance and reliability significantly degrades with increasing number of hops. We proposed …

A High-Quality Mach-Zehnder Interferometer Fiber Sensor By Femtosecond Laser One-Step Processing, Longjiang Zhao, Lan Jiang, Sumei Wang, Hai Xiao, Yongfeng Lu, Hai-Lung Tsai

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

During new fiber sensor development experiments, an easy-to-fabricate simple sensing structure with a trench and partially ablated fiber core is fabricated by using an 800 nm 35 fs 1 kHz laser. It is demonstrated that the structure forms a Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) with the interference between the laser light passing through the air in the trench cavity and that in the remained fiber core. The fringe visibilities are all more than 25 dB. The transmission spectra vary with the femtosecond (fs) laser ablation scanning cycle. The free spectral range (FSR) decreases as the trench length increases. The MZI structure is …

A Web Application For Financial Trading Simulation, Li-Chiou Chen, Lixin Tao, Padma Kadiyala

Cornerstone 3 Reports : Interdisciplinary Informatics

No abstract provided.

Pwisegen: Generating Test Cases For Pairwise Testing Using Genetic Algorithms, Pedro Flores, Yoonsik Cheon

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Pairwise testing is a combinatorial testing technique that tests all possible pairs of input values. Although, finding a smallest set of test cases for pairwise testing is NP-complete, pairwise testing is regarded as a reasonable cost-benefit compromise among combinatorial testing methods. In this paper we formulate the problem of finding a pairwise test set as a search problem and apply a genetic algorithm to solve it. We also describe an open-source tool called PWiseGen for generating pairwise test sets. According to our experiments, PWiseGen produces competitive results compared with existing pairwise testing tools. Besides, it provides a framework and a …

Towards Optimal Few-Parametric Representation Of Spatial Variation: Geometric Approach And Environmental Applications, Misha Kosheleva, Octavio Lerma, Craig Tweedie

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In this paper, we use geometric approach to showthat under reasonable assumption, the spatialvariability of a field f(x), i.e., the expectedvalue F(z)=E[(f(x+z)-f(x))²], has the formF(z)=|Σ g_ij*z_i*z_j|^α.We explain how to find g_ij and αfrom the observations, and how to optimally place sensorsin view of this spatial variability.

Measures Of Deviation (And Dependence) For Heavy-Tailed Distributions And Heir Estimation Under Interval And Fuzzy Uncertainty, Nitaya Buntao, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Traditionally, in science and engineering, most statistical techniques are based on the assumption that the random variables are normally distributed. For such distributions, a natural characteristic of the "average" value is the mean, and a natural characteristic of the deviation from the average is the variance. However, in many practical situations, e.g., in economics and finance, we encounter probability distributions for which the variance is infinite; such distributions are called heavy-tailed. For such distributions, we describe which characteristics can be used to describe the average and the deviation from the average, and how to estimate these characteristics under interval …

Qos-Aware Fine-Grained Power Management In Networked Computing Systems, Jiayu Gong

Wayne State University Dissertations

Power is a major design concern of today's networked computing systems, from low-power battery-powered mobile and embedded systems to high-power enterprise servers. Embedded systems are required to be power efficiency because most embedded systems are powered by battery with limited capacity. Similar concern of power expenditure rises as well in enterprise server environments due to cooling requirement, power delivery limit, electricity costs as well as environment pollutions.

The power consumption in networked computing systems includes that on circuit board and that for communication. In the context of networked real-time systems, the power dissipation on wireless communication is more significant than …

Relativistic Red-Black Trees, Philip William Howard, Jonathan Walpole

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Operating system performance and scalability on sharedmemory many-core systems depends critically on efficient access to shared data structures. Scalability has proven difficult to achieve for many data structures. In this paper we present a novel and highly scalable concurrent red-black tree. Red-black trees are widely used in operating systems, but typically exhibit poor scalability. Our red-black tree has linear read scalability, uncontended read performance that is at least 25% faster than other known approaches, and deterministic lookup times for a given tree size, making it suitable for realtime applications.

The Ordering Requirements Of Relativistic And Reader-Writer Locking Approaches To Shared Data Access, Philip William Howard, Josh Triplett, Jonathan Walpole, Paul E. Mckenney

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

The semantics of reader-writer locks allow read-side concurrency. Unfortunately, the locking primitives serialize access to the lock variable to an extent that little or no concurrency is realized in practice for small critical sections. Relativistic programming is a methodology that also allows read- side concurrency. Relativistic programming uses dfferent ordering constraints than reader-writer locking. The different ordering constraints allow relativistic readers to proceed without synchronization so relativistic readers scale even for very short critical sections. In this paper we explore the diferences between the ordering constraints for reader-writer locking and relativistic programs. We show how and why the dfferent ordering …

Kindle Forensics: Acquisition & Analysis, Peter Hannay

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

The Amazon Kindle eBook reader supports a wide range of capabilities beyond reading books. This functionality includes an inbuilt cellular data connection known as Whispernet. The Kindle provides web browsing, an application framework, eBook delivery and other services over this connection. The historic data left by user interaction with this device may be of forensic interest. Analysis of the Amazon Kindle device has resulted in a method to reliably extract and interpret data from these devices in a forensically complete manner.

Column: The Consortium Of Digital Forensics Specialists (Cdfs), Christopher Kelly

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Digital forensic practitioners are faced with an extraordinary opportunity. In fact, we may never again be faced with such an opportunity, and this opportunity will challenge us in ways we may never again be challenged. At this point in the history of the Digital Forensics profession, digital forensic specialists have the unique opportunity to help this profession emerge from its infancy. But for this profession to mature -- and to flourish -- individuals and organizations integral to the practice must assemble and shape its future. This is our opportunity. In fact, this is our mandate.

Judges’ Awareness, Understanding, And Application Of Digital Evidence, Gary C. Kessler

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

As digital evidence grows in both volume and importance in criminal and civil courts, judges need to fairly and justly evaluate the merits of the offered evidence. To do so, judges need a general understanding of the underlying technologies and applications from which digital evidence is derived. Due to the relative newness of the computer forensics field, there have been few studies on the use of digital forensic evidence and none about judges’ relationship with digital evidence. This paper describes a recent study, using grounded theory methods, into judges’ awareness, knowledge, and perceptions of digital evidence. This study is the …

Technology Corner: Analysing E-Mail Headers For Forensic Investigation, M. T. Banday

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Electronic Mail (E-Mail), which is one of the most widely used applications of Internet, has become a global communication infrastructure service. However, security loopholes in it enable cybercriminals to misuse it by forging its headers or by sending it anonymously for illegitimate purposes, leading to e-mail forgeries. E-mail messages include transit handling envelope and trace information in the form of structured fields which are not stripped after messages are delivered, leaving a detailed record of e-mail transactions. A detailed header analysis can be used to map the networks traversed by messages, including information on the messaging software and patching policies …

Autonomous Mobility And Manipulation Of A 9-Dof Wmra, William Garrett Pence

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The wheelchair-mounted robotic arm (WMRA) is a 9-degree of freedom (DoF) assistive system that consists of a 2-DoF modified commercial power wheelchair and a custom 7-DoF robotic arm. Kinematics and control methodology for the 9-DoF system that combine mobility and manipulation have been previously developed and implemented. This combined control allows the wheelchair and robotic arm to follow a single trajectory based on weighted optimizations. However, for the execution of activities of daily living (ADL) in the real-world environment, modified control techniques have been implemented.

In order to execute macro ADL tasks, such as a "go to and pick up" …

A Dynamic Hierarchical Web-Based Portal, Matthew James Spaulding

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A dynamic hierarchical web-based portal was created to house a suite of web-based supply chain management applications. The portal was designed in a hierarchical manner to match the structure of large companies. Administrators of the the portal have the ability to form the portal in such a way to mimic the existing structure of their company. Access rights to the applications in the portal may be granted or denied per division and the users of the portal are placed in these divisions based on their duty in the company. In addition, users are granted roles which dictate their ability to …

Dynamic Video Object Detection With Single Ptu Camera, Yun Ye, Song Ci, Yanwei Liu, Hui Tang

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications (to 2015)

This paper presents a video object detection method under dynamic background with single PTU (pantilt unit) camera. The overall procedure contains two steps. First the moving object is tracked through interactive Mean Shift estimation and PTU control. Camera angular speed is updated online according to the estimated object position, whereby the object can remain in the center area of the image plane. In the second step, the foreground is detected through background subtraction and shape contour. An adaptive correlation thresholding method is applied to mitigate the detection distortion in boundary areas. Variational level set contour is then applied to further …

Priority Preemption For Real-Time Application Qos Guarantees In Cooperative Vehicular Networks, Ting Zhou, Hamid Sharif, Michael Hempel, Puttipong Mahasukhon, Tao Ma, Pradhumna Shrestha

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications (to 2015)

Inter-vehicle and roadside-to-vehicle communications can contribute to a safer and more efficient driving experience by providing time-sensitive and location-aware information. However, its performance suffers from vehicle mobility, intermittent user connectivity, and wireless channel unreliability. In this paper, we propose a novel cross-layer optimization approach based on our Adaptive Distributed Cooperative Medium Access Control (ADC-MAC) protocol to guarantee the quality-of-service (QoS) of real-time applications. Markov chain based theoretical analysis show that our proposed priority preemption approach can improve the quality of a real-time application by guaranteeing its bandwidth and reducing its transmission latency.

Sub Pixel Analysis And Processing Of Sensor Data For Mobile Target Intelligence Information And Verification, Theresa Allen Williams

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation introduces a novel process to study and analyze sensor data in order to obtain information pertaining to mobile targets at the sub-pixel level. The process design is modular in nature and utilizes a set of algorithmic tools for change detection, target extraction and analysis, super-pixel processing and target refinement. The scope of this investigation is confined to a staring sensor that records data of sub-pixel vehicles traveling horizontally across the ground. Statistical models of the targets and background are developed with noise and jitter effects. Threshold Change Detection, Duration Change Detection and Fast Adaptive Power Iteration (FAPI) Detection …

Semi-Automatic Management Of Knowledge Bases Using Formal Ontologies, Andreas Textor

Theses

This thesis presents an approach that deals with the ever-growing amount of data in knowledge bases, especially concerning knowledge interoperability and formal representation of domain knowledge. There arc multiple issues that must be addressed with current systems. A multitude of different formats, sources and tools exist in a domain, and it is desirable to develop their use further towards a standardised environment. Such an environment should support both the representation and processing of data from this domain, and the connection to other domains, where necessary. In order to manage large amounts of data, it should be possible to perform whatever …

Survey On Cloud Forensics And Critical Criteria For Cloud Forensic Capability: A Preliminary Analysis, Keyun Ruan, Ibrahim Baggili, Joe Carthy, Tahar Kechadi

Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications

In this paper we present the current results and analysis of the survey “Cloud forensics and critical criteria for cloud forensic capability” carried out towards digital forensic experts and practitioners. This survey was created in order to gain a better understanding on some of the key questions of the new field - cloud forensics - before further research and development. We aim to understand concepts such as its definition, the most challenging issues, most valuable research directions, and the critical criteria for cloud forensic capability.

Cat Detect (Computer Activity Timeline Detection): A Tool For Detecting Inconsistency In Computer Activity Timelines, Andrew Marrington, Ibrahim Baggili, George Mohay, Andrew Clark

Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications

The construction of timelines of computer activity is a part of many digital investigations. These timelines of events are composed of traces of historical activity drawn from system logs and potentially from evidence of events found in the computer file system. A potential problem with the use of such information is that some of it may be inconsistent and contradictory thus compromising its value. This work introduces a software tool (CAT Detect) for the detection of inconsistency within timelines of computer activity. We examine the impact of deliberate tampering through experiments conducted with our prototype software tool. Based on the …

Technology Management Trends In Law Schools, Carol A. Watson, Larry Reeves

Articles, Chapters and Online Publications

Discusses the role of librarians in law school technology management and analyzes technology staffing survey results for 2002, 2006, and 2010. While survey results indicate a trend toward establishing separate information technology departments within law schools, librarians are and will continue to be actively involved in law school technology.

Robotic Testing Of Proximal Tibio-Fibular Joint Kinematics For Measuring Instability Following Total Knee Arthroplasty, Wael K. Barsoum, Ho H. Lee, Trevor G. Murray, Robb Colbrunn, Alison K. Klika, S. Butler, Antonie J. Van Den Bogert

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

Pain secondary to instability in total knee arthroplasty (TKA) has been shown to be major cause of early failure. In this study, we focused on the effect of instability in TKA on the proximal tibio-fibular joint (PTFJ). We used a robotics model to compare the biomechanics of the PTFJ in the native knee, an appropriately balanced TKA, and an unbalanced TKA. The tibia (n = 5) was mounted to a six-degree-of-freedom force/torque sensor and the femur was moved by a robotic manipulator. Motion at the PTFJ was recorded with a high-resolution digital camera system. After establishing a neutral position, …

Multi-Pose Face Recognition And Tracking System, Binu Muraleedharan Nair, Jacob Foytik, Richard Tompkins, Yakov Diskin, Theus Aspiras, Vijayan K. Asari

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

We propose a real time system for person detection, recognition and tracking using frontal and profile faces. The system integrates face detection, face recognition and tracking techniques. The face detection algorithm uses both frontal face and profile face detectors by extracting the 'Haar' features and uses them in a cascade of boosted classifiers. The pose is determined from the face detection algorithm which uses a combination of profile and frontal face cascades and, depending on the pose, the face is compared with a particular set of faces having the same range for classification. The detected faces are recognized by projecting …