Engineering Commons^™

Security Evaluation Of Microsoft’S Windows Under Cyber-Flood Attacks, Christina Y. Navarro

Theses and Dissertations

Cyberattacks are quite common occurrences today as such can compromise entire networks producing collective vulnerabilities. As shown herein, manifold experimental findings exhibit ramifications for a cyberattack victim during multiple simulations. All experiments were conducted with Apple’s iMac, the victim system, and different editions of Microsoft Windows 10 and Windows 8.1.

Cyberattacks herein categorize as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks including Smurf, Ping Flood, Transmission Control Protocol-Synchronize (TCP-SYN) Flood, and User Datagram Protocol (UDP) Flood attacks. Experimental results from each cyberattack are recordings of computer activities such as memory consumption, disk utilization, and overall processor utilization.

DDoS attack simulations include …

Ac Electrokinetic Effect Of V-Electrode Pattern On Microfluids, Mohammad Salman Parvez

Theses and Dissertations

Electrokinetics has been used for guiding, pumping, and manipulating microfluidic particles for many years in the field of Biomedical, Microbiology, Chemistry, Medicine, and other fields of research, which makes it a ubiquitous tool for the multidisciplinary research on microfluidics. Between these two Alternating Current (AC) Electrokinetics have been proven to be more feasible for the researcher than the other one. In this research, we have investigated AC Electrokinetics and s effect on a new electrode configuration called V-electrode pattern. The V-electrode has been inspired and modified from the previous research work on the Orthogonal Electrode Pattern. In this research, this …

Cyber Security Evaluation Of Centos Red Hat Based Operating System Under Cyber Attack With Increasing Magnitude, William E. R. Rivas

Theses and Dissertations

The increasing interest in ‘always-connected’ devices and the Internet of Things has led to electronic devices with Internet connectivity becoming a staple in modern household and workplace. Consequently, this increase has also led to an increase in vulnerable devices, ripe for hijacking by a malicious third party. Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks have consistently been an issue since the birth of the Internet. With the large number of devices available today, the strength and consistency of these attacks has only grown and will continue to grow. Since, depending on certain variables, these DDoS attacks can effectively render a target …

Fabrication And Flow Dynamics Analysis Of Micromixer For Lab-On-A-Chip Devices, Md Fazlay Rubby

Theses and Dissertations

The miniaturized systems designed for lab-on-a-chip (LOC) technologies are generally implemented with a micro-scale mixer to provide intimate contact between the reagent molecules for interactions and chemical reactions. The exponential increase of research in microfabrication and microfluidic applications highlights the importance of understanding the theory and mechanism that governs mixing at the microscale level. In this study, the fabrication of an active and passive micromixer was discussed. The optimized state of art soft lithography and 3D printing was used as a microfabrication technique. The challenges at different fabrication steps were presented along with the modifications. Microelectrodes were integrated with the …

A Python-Based Brain-Computer Interface Package For Neural Data Analysis, Md Hasan Anowar

Theses and Dissertations

Anowar, Md Hasan, A Python-based Brain-Computer Interface Package for Neural Data Analysis. Master of Science (MS), December, 2020, 70 pp., 4 tables, 23 figures, 74 references.

Although a growing amount of research has been dedicated to neural engineering, only a handful of software packages are available for brain signal processing. Popular brain-computer interface packages depend on commercial software products such as MATLAB. Moreover, almost every brain-computer interface software is designed for a specific neuro-biological signal; there is no single Python-based package that supports motor imagery, sleep, and stimulated brain signal analysis. The necessity to introduce a brain-computer interface package that …

Preparation And Characterization Of Dc Magnetron Sputtered Thin Films, Al Amin

Theses and Dissertations

Plasma enhanced DC magnetron sputtering is a well-known technique for thin film deposition. Thin film has wide range of applications in many fields such as electronics, optics, communication, decoration, biosystem and medical. Among them, antibacterial and biocompatible thin film coating has attracted researcher’s attention to prevent the healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) during the surgical operations as well as the implantation of foreign devices inside human body. This research has been divided into two sections. In first section, titanium (Ti) was deposited on glass substrate at DC power of 200 W, argon-nitrogen plasma, and temperature of 25 ˚C. Later this Ti-coated glass …

Microsoft’S Surface Pro 4 Performance Under Denial Of Service Attack, Adrian Guerrero

Theses and Dissertations

Microsoft Surface Pro 4 (SP4) is a new device in the line of hybrid computers today. It aims to work as both as table and laptop computer. There are multiple versions of SP4 that include devices equipped with i3, i5 and i7 core processors.

This makes SP4 a great addition for hospital, clinics or schools for its portability and features. As these locations can be prone to cyber-attacks, we plan to test this computer’s reliability and performance under cybersecurity attacks. The device tested is built with Intel Core i7-6650U 2.21 GHz processor with automatic overclocking capabilities up to 3.4 GHz, …

Electromagnetic-Triboelectric-Hybrid Energy Tile For Biomechanical Green Energy Harvesting, Elaijah Islam, Abu Musa Abdullah, Aminur Rashid Chowdhury, Farzana Tasnim, Madelyne Martinez, Carolina Olivares, Karen Lozano, Mohammed Uddin

Chemistry Faculty Publications and Presentations

Highlights

• Hybrid nanogenerator based floor-tile was developed to convert the Bio-Mechanical energy of human footsteps to Electrical Energy.

• Hybridization of Triboelectric Nanogenerator and Electro-Magnetic Generator consisting of Aluminum and Kapton.

• MoS2 is working as an electron acceptor.

• The maximum output is 1200V as open-circuit voltage, 5mA as short-circuit current, and 6W as power.

• Produces 20% more power than a commercially sold energy-harvester floor tile.

Abstract

Since the invention of Piezoelectric Nanogenerator in 2006, nanogenerators has become an attractive technology to the researchers for scavenging mechanical energy from the ambient environment for real life applications. Hybridization of these nanogenerators has been …

Robust Learning Via Ensemble Density Propagation In Deep Neural Networks, Giuseppina Carannante, Dimah Dera, Ghulam Rasool, Nidhal Carla Bouaynaya, Lyudmila Mihaylova

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Learning in uncertain, noisy, or adversarial environments is a challenging task for deep neural networks (DNNs). We propose a new theoretically grounded and efficient approach for robust learning that builds upon Bayesian estimation and Variational Inference. We formulate the problem of density propagation through layers of a DNN and solve it using an Ensemble Density Propagation (EnDP) scheme. The EnDP approach allows us to propagate moments of the variational probability distribution across the layers of a Bayesian DNN, enabling the estimation of the mean and covariance of the predictive distribution at the output of the model. Our experiments using MNIST …

Improving Hardware Implementation Of Cryptographic Aes Algorithm And The Block Cipher Modes Of Operation, Chu-Wen Cheng

Theses and Dissertations

With ever increasing Internet traffic, more business and financial transactions are being conducted online. This is even more so during these days of COVID-19 pandemic when traditional businesses such as traditional face to face educational systems have gone online requiring huge amount of data being exchanged over Internet. Increase in the volume of data sent over the Internet has also increased the security vulnerabilities such as challenging the confidentiality of data being sent over the Internet. Due to sheer volume, all data will need to be effectively encrypted. Due to increase in the volume of data, it is also important …

Signal Processing Combined With Machine Learning For Biomedical Applications, Md Shakhawat Hossain

Theses and Dissertations

The Master’s thesis is comprised of four projects in the realm of machine learning and signal processing. The abstract of the thesis is divided into four parts and presented as follows,

Abstract 1: A Kullback-Leibler Divergence-Based Predictor for Inter-Subject Associative BCI.

Inherent inter-subject variability in sensorimotor brain dynamics hinders the transferability of brain-computer interface (BCI) model parameters across subjects. An individual training session is essential for effective BCI control to compensate for variability. We report a Kullback-Leibler Divergence (KLD)-based predictor for inter-subject associative BCI. An online dataset comprising left/right hand, both feet, and tongue motor imagery tasks was used to …

Experience Of Teaching Introduction To Electrical Engineering With An Online Platform, Junfei Li, Jaime Ramos-Salas, Cara Li

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

To engage engineering students in their field of studies, it is essential for the students to take major courses as early as possible. However, first year EE major students in our institution don’t have many options as almost all major courses need physics and math courses as prerequisites. For most of our students, the Introduction to Electrical Engineering is available to them as the only Electrical Engineering course during their first semester in college. It is offered to introduce the students to such topics as electrical circuits, digital logic, and robotics. In addition to learning fundamental topics, the students are …

Effectiveness Of Using Myfpga Platform For Teaching Digital Logic, Junfei Li, Cara Li, Jae Sok Son, Weidong Kuang, Edgar Gil

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Accompanying electric circuits and computer programming, digital logic is deemed one of the most essential parts of any Electrical and Computer Engineering curriculum, so student success in the course is critical. Furthermore, research shows that the academic performance of students is heavily dependent upon student engagement, which is believed to increase with classroom strategies such as flipped-classrooms, cooperative learning, project-based learning, and virtual labs. The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) is a Hispanic serving institution with distributive campuses, where many of the students work part-time. With consideration of the special needs of our students and the latest developments …

A Real-Time Attendance System Using Deep-Learning Face Recognition, Weidong Kuang, Abhijit Baul

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

A real-time attendance system using deep learning face recognition abstract: Attendance check plays an important role in classroom management. Checking attendance by calling names or passing around a sign-in sheet is time-consuming, and especially the latter is open to easy fraud. This paper presents the detailed implementation of a real-time attendance check system based on face recognition and its results. To recognize a student’s face, the system must first take and save a picture of the student as a reference in a database. During the attendance check, the web camera takes face pictures for a student to be recognized, and …

Carbonaceous Nanomaterial: Rapid Synthesis, Property Characterization And Theoretical Analysis, Varun Gupta

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, An environmentally friendly and rapid synthesis of highly porous carbon nanomaterial is presented. The direct pyrolysis of the cane sugar was achieved in a hand-fabricated Teflon microchamber. Homogeneous heating and quick pyrolysis were carried out in 3 minutes using a household microwave oven. The porosity and surface area enhancement is obtained by in-step decompositions of household baking soda (sodium bicarbonate), a common household chemical. Sodium bicarbonate was specifically used to impregnate porous carbon foam with sodium oxide nanocomplexes, which were later washed to improve surface area and reduce oxygen content, making it suitable for applications such as …

Cyber Security Evaluation Of Smart Electric Meters, Harsh Kumar

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, effect of intermediate network systems on power usage data collection from Smart Electric Meter in Smart Grid was evaluated. Security integrity of remote data collection from GE’s Power Quality Smart Electric Meter EPM 6100 and EPM 7000 under cyber-attacks were evaluated. Experimental security evaluations of Smart Electric Meters were conducted to understand their operation under cyber-attacks. Integrity of data communication between the GE’s smart meters and remote monitoring computer was evaluated under different types of cyber security attacks. Performance comparison was done for security integrity of EPM 6100 and EPM 7000 power quality meter under various cyber-attacks.

Symmetry Versus Balance In Balancing Networks For Dipolar Antennas, James Mclean, Heinrich D. Foltz

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Imperfect balancing networks (baluns) have been identified as a source of error in emission and site attenuation measurements. For this reason performance tests have been developed to characterize the symmetry of baluns. We draw a distinction between symmetry and balance as they relate to baluns and describe both quantitatively in terms of 3-port network parameters. It is shown that a symmetric balun alone does not necessarily eliminate common-mode (CM) current on the feed transmission line. Common-mode current on the feed transmission line is minimized by use of a current balun. However, for a given implementation such as a transmissionline transformer, …

A Compendium Of Single Cell Analysis In Aging And Disease, Uday Chintapula, Samir M. Iqbal, Young-Tae Kim

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Cell is the fundamental structural and functional unit of complex multicellular organisms. Conventional methods which involve average analysis of cells in bulk populations can undermine physiologically significant cell populations, whereas analysis of cells at a single cell level may reveal unique biomarkers and other mechanisms that govern the genotype and phenotype in various physiological processes in presumed homogenous cell populations. Cellular abnormalities such as irregularities in cellular mechanisms have been linked to human aging and other major diseases including neurodegenerative, vascular, autoimmune, and cancer. Aging is a functional decline associated with various diseases in an organism, majorly arising from cellular …

Ensemble Node Embeddings Using Tensor Decomposition: A Case-Study On Deepwalk, Jia Chen, Evangelos E. Papalexakis

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Node embeddings have been attracting increasing attention during the past years. In this context, we propose a new ensemble node embedding approach, called TENSEMBLE2VEC, by first generating multiple embeddings using the existing techniques and taking them as multiview data input of the state-of-art tensor decomposition model namely PARAFAC2 to learn the shared lower-dimensional representations of the nodes. Contrary to other embedding methods, our TENSEMBLE2VEC takes advantage of the complementary information from different methods or the same method with different hyper-parameters, which bypasses the challenge of choosing models. Extensive tests using real-world data validates the efficiency of the proposed method.

Chlorophyll-Inspired Tunable Metamaterials With Multi-Negative Refractive Index Bands: The Porphyrin Ring And Hydrophobic Tail Effect, Nantakan Wongkasem

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Tunable negative electromagnetic properties: permittivity, permeability, and refractive index, in mimic Chlorophyll metamaterial structures in the X- and Ku-band regimes are theoretically and numerically demonstrated. A very broad negative permeability covering the majority of the X- and Ku bands, from 8GHz to 16GHz, is observed, while five negative permittivity bands are found within the same range. The two aforementioned properties result in a broad, greater than 25% bandwidth, low-loss negative-refractive index transmission band. These negative electromagnetic properties can be effectively tailored within the low-loss multi-transmission and the high-loss multi-absorption bands in the operating frequency range by modifying the structure’s tiller …