Engineering Commons^™

Computational Techniques For Reducing Spectra Of The Giant Planets In Our Solar System, Holly L. Grimes

Dissertations and Theses

The dynamic atmospheres of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune provide a rich source of meteorological phenomena for scientists to study. To investigate these planets, scientists obtain spectral images of these bodies using various instruments including the Cooled Mid-Infrared Camera and Spectrometer (COMICS) at the Subaru Telescope Facility at Mauna Kea, Hawaii. These spectral images are two-dimensional arrays of double precision floating point values that have been read from a detector array. Such images must be reduced before the information they contain can be analyzed. The reduction process for spectral images from COMICS involves several steps:

1. Sky subtraction: the …

Dynamic Task Prediction For An Spmt Architecture Based On Control Independence, Komal Jothi

Dissertations and Theses

Exploiting better performance from computer programs translates to finding more instructions to execute in parallel. Since most general purpose programs are written in an imperatively sequential manner, closely lying instructions are always data dependent, making the designer look far ahead into the program for parallelism. This necessitates wider superscalar processors with larger instruction windows. But superscalars suffer from three key limitations, their inability to scale, sequential fetch bottleneck and high branch misprediction penalty. Recent studies indicate that current superscalars have reached the end of the road and designers will have to look for newer ideas to build computer processors.

Speculative …

New Model Of Productive Online Discussion And Its Implications For Research And Instruction, Fei Gao, Charles Xiaoxue Wang, Yanling Sun

Visual Communications and Technology Education Faculty Publications

We develop a new model of productive online discussion based on a brief review of research literature on online discussion. As compared to previous discussion models, the new model provides a more systematic and comprehensive framework to understand how learning occurs through online discussion. Based on the new model, we propose several directions for research on improving the quality of online discussion and learning.

Contextualizing Observational Data For Modeling Human Performance, Viet Trinh

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research focuses on the ability to contextualize observed human behaviors in efforts to automate the process of tactical human performance modeling through learning from observations. This effort to contextualize human behavior is aimed at minimizing the role and involvement of the knowledge engineers required in building intelligent Context-based Reasoning (CxBR) agents. More specifically, the goal is to automatically discover the context in which a human actor is situated when performing a mission to facilitate the learning of such CxBR models. This research is derived from the contextualization problem left behind in Fernlund's research on using the Genetic Context Learner …

An Architecture For High-Performance Privacy-Preserving And Distributed Data Mining, James Secretan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation discusses the development of an architecture and associated techniques to support Privacy Preserving and Distributed Data Mining. The field of Distributed Data Mining (DDM) attempts to solve the challenges inherent in coordinating data mining tasks with databases that are geographically distributed, through the application of parallel algorithms and grid computing concepts. The closely related field of Privacy Preserving Data Mining (PPDM) adds the dimension of privacy to the problem, trying to find ways that organizations can collaborate to mine their databases collectively, while at the same time preserving the privacy of their records. Developing data mining algorithms for …

Variable Resolution & Dimensional Mapping For 3d Model Optimization, Joseph Venezia

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Three-dimensional computer models, especially geospatial architectural data sets, can be visualized in the same way humans experience the world, providing a realistic, interactive experience. Scene familiarization, architectural analysis, scientific visualization, and many other applications would benefit from finely detailed, high resolution, 3D models. Automated methods to construct these 3D models traditionally has produced data sets that are often low fidelity or inaccurate; otherwise, they are initially highly detailed, but are very labor and time intensive to construct. Such data sets are often not practical for common real-time usage and are not easily updated. This thesis proposes Variable Resolution & Dimensional …

Hierarchical Routing In Manets Using Simple Clustering, Adam Carnine

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This thesis presents both a review of current MANET routing protocols and a new MANET routing algorithm. The routing protocols reviewed include representative samples from the three primary forms of routing found in MANETS: proactive routing, reactive routing and hybrid routing. Secure algorithms are given special treatment in the review. In addition several protocol enhancements are discussed.

The proposed routing protocol is designed to support networks of a medium size, containing over 200 nodes but less than 3,000 nodes. The design is intentionally simple to allow ease of implementation in comparison with other MANET protocols that provide similar functionality.

An Investigation Into The Semantics Of English Topological Prepositions, John D. Kelleher, Colm Sloan, Brian Mac Namee

Articles

This paper describes a psycholinguistic experiment that investigates whether the applicability of the topological spatial prepositions "at", "on" or "in" to describe the spatial configuration between two objects is related to the topological relationships between objects being described

Quantifying Network Reliability Through Finding An Upper Bound For Graph Integrity Using Graph Coloring, Ian Burchett

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Integrity of a graph is defined as 𝐺 = 𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑆⊆𝑉(𝐺){ 𝑆 + 𝑚 𝐺 − 𝑆 } , where G is a graph with vertex set V and m(G-S) denotes the order of the largest component of G - S. This provides an upper estimate of the integrity of the given graph. Using graph coloring, the color sequence of the graph can be generated, with the leading term being the largest component of the graph, the maximal independent set. The determination of the set is too time intensive to be feasible for moderate to large graphs, since there is no …

Improving Knowledge Sharing In An Open Informal Network: Knowledge Management In Open Coffee, Adrian Mihai

Dissertations

The 21st century opened a new era in communications bringing in faster, more efficient and more advanced information and communication technologies than ever. New ideas and innovations, as well as interactions and collaborations determine the landscape of knowledge and consequently add new requirements to the know-how. The creators of knowledge and design add new communication architecture bodies through the use of technology.

Meanwhile knowledge management inspires 21st century enterprises to adopt new learning patterns throughout organisations and adopt new ideas. However, internal sharing mechanisms leverage a trusted environment where people can engage freely and securely in sharing knowledge and feel …

Telecommunications Liberalisation In Africa: Proposed Regulatory Model For The Sadc Region, Z. N. Jobodwana

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

The liberalisation of the telecommunication industry in Africa, and the further development of the region’s physical infrastructure was accompanied by the further development of Africa’s information, communication and technology infrastructure. Competition within the industry stimulated heavy economic investment in other sectors of the economy. The outcome of liberalisation also included the establishment of community-based structures that continue to enable communities to manage their own development and gain access to information and communication technologies (ICTs) in an unprecedented manner. The telecommunication infrastructure further stimulated the fast development of other related services, for example, ecommerce and mobile commerce (m-commerce), e-government, internet banking, …

Agents And Service-Oriented Computing For Autonomic Computing: A Research Agenda, Frances M.T. Brazier, Jeffrey O. Kephart, H. Van Dyke Parunak, Michael N. Huhns

Faculty Publications

Autonomic computing is the solution proposed to cope with the complexity of today's computing environments. Self-management, an important element of autonomic computing, is also characteristic of single and multiagent systems, as well as systems based on service-oriented architectures. Combining these technologies can be profitable for all - in particular, for the development of autonomic computing systems.

Survivable Mesh-Network Design & Optimization To Support Multiple Qop Service Classes, Hoang N. Nguyen

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Every second, vast amounts of data are transferred over communication systems around the world, and as a result, the demands on optical infrastructures are extending beyond the traditional, ring-based architecture. The range of content and services available from the Internet is increasing, and network operations are constantly under pressure to expand their optical networks in order to keep pace with the ever increasing demand for higher speed and more reliable links.

Functional Testing Of Faults In Asynchronous Crossbar Architecture, Sriram Venkateswaran

Masters Theses

"The challenge of extending Moore's Law past the physical limits of the present semiconductor technology calls for novel innovations. Several novel nanotechnologies are being proposed as an alternative to their CMOS counterparts, with nanowire crossbar being one of the most promising paradigms. Quite recently, a new promising clock-free architecture, called the Asynchronous Crossbar Architecture has been proposed to enhance the manufacturability and to improve the robustness of digital circuits by removing various timing related failure modes. Even though the proposed clock-free architecture offers several merits, it is not free from the high defect rates induced due to nondeterministic nanoscale assembly. …

Automatic Vessel And Telangiectases Analysis In Dermoscopy Skin Lesion Images, Beibei Cheng

Masters Theses

"The blood vessels are part of the circulatory system and function to transport blood throughout the body. Vessels have their own features such as distinctive color compared to surrounding skin as well as distinctive curved and/or linear shape. Telangiectases are small dilated blood vessels near the surface of the skin or mucous membranes, measuring between 0.5 and 1 millimeter in diameter. In this research, image analysis techniques are investigated to detect vessels in dermoscopy skin lesion images. Machine vision and neural network methods are explored to discriminate skin lesions containing telangiectases from those containing normal vessels. A vessels Detection technique …

Stressed-Eye Analysis And Jitter Separation For High-Speed Serial Links, Nitin Radhakrishnan

Masters Theses

"As the computer and electronics industry moves towards higher data rates, the most important concern in the field of signal integrity is jitter. A data communication link path often consists of a transmitter, a channel, and a receiver. Many mechanisms can contribute to jitter, a timing uncertainty in the received signal. For example, transmitters have intrinsic noise sources that contribute to random jitter and to certain types of deterministic jitter. In addition, external coupling may cause periodic jitter. The bandwidth limitation of the channel also contributes to a fourth type of jitter, inter-symbol interference. This thesis studies the various components …

Design And Implementation Of An Asynchronous Null Convention Logic (Ncl) Fpga, Indira Priyadarshini Dugganapally

Masters Theses

"This Master’s thesis outlines the design of a completely asynchronous Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) for implementing NULL Convention Logic (NCL) digital circuits. The proposed design uses four Configurable Logic Blocks (CLB), each of which in turn is designed using four Logic Elements (LE) to implement NCL logic function. Each LE can be configured to function as any one of the 27 fundamental NCL gates. A Logic Element is designed by concatenating a Look-Up-Table (LUT) with a pull-up pull-down transistor chain and a hysteresis loop. The interconnections and the switch box are designed using pass transistors and SRAM. In this …

Self-Reported Cyber Crime: An Analysis On The Effects Of Anonymity And Pre-Employment Integrity, Ibrahim Baggili, Marcus Rogers

Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications

A key issue facing today’s society is the increase in cyber crimes. Cyber crimes pose threats to nations, organizations and individuals across the globe. Much of the research in cyber crime has risen from computer science-centric programs, and little experimental research has been performed on the psychology of cyber crime. This has caused a knowledge gap in the study of cyber crime. To this end, this research focuses on understanding psychological concepts related to cyber crime. Through an experimental design, participants were randomly assigned to three groups with varying degrees of anonymity. After each treatment, participants were asked to self-report …

A Physics-Based Modeling And Real-Time Simulation Of Biomechanical Diffusion Process Through Optical Imaged Alveolar Tissues On Graphical Processing Units, Ilhan Kaya

Link Foundation Modeling, Simulation and Training Fellowship Reports

Tissue engineering has broad applications fro1n creating the much needed engineered tissue and organ structures for regenerative medicine to providing in vitro testbeds for drug testing. In the later, application domain, creating alveolar lung tissue and simulating the diffusion process of oxygen and other possible agents front the air into the blood stream as well as modeling the removal of carbon dioxide and other possible entities-from the blood stream are of critical importance to simulating lung functions in various environments. In this paper, we propose a physics-based model to simulate the alveolar gas exchange and the alveolar diffusion process. Tissue …

Trusted Querying Over Wireless Sensor Networks And Network Security Visualization, Giovani Rimon Abuaitah

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) as an emerging technology faces numerous challenges. Sensor nodes are usually resource constrained. Sensor nodes are also vulnerable to physical attacks or node compromises. Answering queries over data is one of the basic functionalities of WSNs. Both resource constraints and security issues make designing mechanisms for data aggregation particularly challenging. In this thesis, we first explore the various security techniques for data aggregation in WSNs then we design and demonstrate the feasibility of an innovative reputation-based framework rooted in rigorous statistical theory and belief theory to characterize the trustworthiness of individual nodes and data queries in …

Tyflos: A Wearable Navigation Prototype For Blind & Visually Impaired; Design, Modelling And Experimental Results, Dimitrios Dakopoulos

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

The need for assistive devices has, had and will have a large merit in many engineering research arenas. This dissertation deals with the design, modeling, implementation and experimentation of the navigation component of a wearable assistive system for blind and visually impaired people, called TYFLOS (ΤΥΦΛΟΣ) which is the Greek word for "Blind".

The current prototype consists of two mini cameras attached to a pair of conventional eye-glasses, a 2D tactile display vibration array) which consists of 16 vibrating elements arranged in a 4x4 manner, attached to an elastic vest worn on the user's abdomen, a portable computer, an ear-speaker …

Semantics Enriched Service Environments, Karthik Rajagopal Gomadam

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

During the past seven years services centric computing has emerged as the preferred approach to architect complex software. Software is increasingly developed by integrating remotely existing components, popularly called services. This architectural paradigm, also called Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), brings with it the benefits of interoperability, agility and flexibility to software design and development. One can easily add or change new features to existing systems, either by the addition of new services or by replacing existing ones. Two popular approaches have emerged for realizing SOA. The first approach is based on the SOAP protocol for communication and the Web Service …

Burst Scheduling, Grooming And Qos Provisioning In Optical Burst-Switched Networks, Yuqi Fan

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

The demand of network capacity has been increasing steadily with more users than ever connected to the Internet through broadband access and the popularity of video based applications, such as YouTube. Optical wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) networks are expected to form the next-generation backbone network and to fulfill the insatiable appetite for bandwidth.

Wavelength routed WDM optical networks offer the granularity of switching at a fiber, waveband, or a wavelength level. The finest granularity offered is at a wavelength level by provisioning lightpaths for different clients/services. All-optical packet switching is still deemed technically infeasible and its competitiveness as a backbone …

A Self-Configuring 3-D Body Scanner, David James Holtkamp

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

A flexible, self-configuring body scanner is described that is capable of capturing and merging range data from multiple views into a single coordinate system without the use of registration. The scanner uses two disconnected frames with embedded lights to merge the coordinate systems of multiple cameras. The frame also serves in finding the laser plane as the lasers are swept over the surface from multiple locations. Both hardware and software details are presented as well as techniques for automating most aspects of the scanner. A new implicit surface implementation is also described for processing and triangulating the resulting point clouds …

Improving Remote Homology Detection Using A Sequence Property Approach, Gina Marie Cooper

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Understanding the structure and function of proteins is a key part of understanding biological systems. Although proteins are complex biological macromolecules, they are made up of only 20 basic building blocks known as amino acids. The makeup of a protein can be described as a sequence of amino acids. One of the most important tools in modern bioinformatics is the ability to search for biological sequences (such as protein sequences) that are similar to a given query sequence. There are many tools for doing this (Altschul et al., 1990, Hobohm and Sander, 1995, Thomson et al., 1994, Karplus and Barrett, …

A Study Of Hardware Efficient Recombination Variants In A Mini Population Genetic Algorithm, Shiva Satya Ramesh Varma Bhupathiraju Venkata

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Evolvable Hardware is an emerging sub-field of evolutionary computation in which evolutionary algorithms are employed to create designs for hardware devices. Recent work has combined continuous time recurrent neural networks with the Mini Population (Minipop) Evolutionary Algorithm to create self-configuring device controllers. Standard Minipop eschews recombination operators due to the belief that they increase the size of an algorithm's on chip implementation without adding significant search power for finding neural network controllers. The focus of this thesis is to challenge that thinking by testing a number of hardware efficient recombination operators against two benchmark problems. We consider variants that recombine …

Design And Performance Analysis Of A Secure Proces-Sor Scan-Sp With Crypto-Biometric Capabilities, Raghudeep Kannavara

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Secure computing is gaining importance in recent times as computing capability is increasingly becoming distributed and information is everywhere. Prevention of piracy and digital rights management has become very important. Information security is mandatory rather than an additional feature. Numerous software techniques have been proposed to provide certain level of copyright and intellectual property protection. Techniques like obfuscation attempt to transform the code into a form that is harder to reverse engineer. Tamper-proofing causes a program to malfunction when it detects that it has been modified. Software watermarking embeds copyright notice in the software code to allow the owners of …

Semantic And Role-Based Access Control For Data Grid Systems, Vineela Muppavarapu

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

A Grid is an integration infrastructure for sharing and coordinated use of diverseresources in dynamic, distributed virtual organizations (VOs). A Data Grid is an architecture for the access, exchange, and sharing of data in the Grid environment. Distributed data resources can be diverse in their formats, schema, quality, access mechanisms, ownership, access policies, and capabilities. In recent years, several organizations have started utilizing Grid technologies to deploy data-intensive and/or computation-intensive applications. As more and more organizations are sharing data resources and participating in Data Grids, the complexity and heterogeneity of the systems is increasing constantly, but their management techniques are …

Gathering Cows Using Virtual Fencing Methodologies, Dean M. Anderson, Marek Doniec, Carrick Detweiler, Iuliu Vesilescu, Daniela Rus, Barbara Nolen, Roy Libeau

School of Computing: Conference and Workshop Papers

Free-ranging livestock are classically controlled by herders. Holding, moving, or gathering free-ranging cattle requires flexible husbandry practices for efficient and effective lowstress animal management. Behavioral theory and practical experience indicates cattle can be taught to respond to auditory cues. Preliminary research has demonstrated that cows can be gathered autonomously using recorded audio cues associated with manual gathering. However, efficient gathering requires movement in the proper direction. Therefore, we believe using audio cues administered from directional virtual fencing (DVF™) equipment can facilitate proper animal orientation and facilitate the gathering of animals with minimal human intervention. Results from applying directional audio cues …

Achievable Rates And Resource Allocation Strategies For Imperfectly Known Fading Relay Channels, Junwei Zhang, M. Cenk Gursoy

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

Achievable rates and resource allocation strategies for imperfectly known fading relay channels are studied. It is assumed that communication starts with the network training phase in which the receivers estimate the fading coefficients. Achievable rate expressions for amplify-and-forward and decode-and-forward relaying schemes with different degrees of cooperation are obtained. We identify efficient strategies in three resource allocation problems: (1) power allocation between data and training symbols, (2) time/bandwidth allocation to the relay, and (3) power allocation between the source and relay in the presence of total power constraints. It is noted that unless the source-relay channel quality is high, cooperation …