Engineering Commons^™

To License Or Not To License: An Examination Of State Statutes Regarding Private Investigators And Digital Examiners, Thomas Lonardo, Doug White, Alan Rea

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

In this paper the authors examine statutes that regulate, license, and enforce investigative functions in each US state. After identification and review of Private Investigator licensing requirements, the authors find that very few state statutes explicitly differentiate between Private Investigators and Digital Examiners. After contacting all state agencies the authors present a distinct grouping organizing state approaches to professional Digital Examiner licensing. The authors conclude that states must differentiate between Private Investigator and Digital Examiner licensing requirements and oversight.

The Forensics Aspects Of Event Data Recorders, Jeremy S. Daily, Nathan Singleton, Elizabeth Downing, Gavin W. Manes

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

The proper generation and preservation of digital data from Event Data Recorders (EDRs) can provide invaluable evidence to automobile crash reconstruction investigations. However, data collected from the EDR can be difficult to use and authenticate, complicating the presentation of such information as evidence in legal proceedings. Indeed, current techniques for removing and preserving such data do not meet the court’s standards for electronic evidence. Experimentation with an EDR unit from a 2001 GMC Sierra pickup truck highlighted particular issues with repeatability of results. Fortunately, advances in the digital forensics field and memory technology can be applied to EDR analysis in …

Data Security Measures In The It Service Industry: A Balance Between Knowledge & Action, N. Mlitwa, Y. Kachala

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

That “knowledge is power” is fast becoming a cliché within the intelligentsia. Such power however, depends largely on how knowledge itself is exchanged and used, which says a lot about the tools of its transmission, exchange, and storage. Information and communication technology (ICT) plays a significant role in this respect. As a networked tool, it enables efficient exchanges of video, audio and text data beyond geographical and time constraints. Since this data is exchanged over the worldwide web (www), it can be accessible by anyone in the world using the internet. The risk of unauthorised access, interception, modification, or even …

Book Review: Mac Os X, Ipod, And Iphone Forensic Analysis Dvd Toolkit, Gary C. Kessler

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Apple's hold on the personal computer marketplace started dwindling on August 12, 1981, the day that the IBM PC was introduced. As an Apple ][+ bigot myself, I refused to touch a PC for some years. But I was also a command line bigot, so when the first Macintosh was introduced in 1983 and hermetically sealed the operating system from users, I did not go out and buy one. In fact, like many of my era, I did eventually end up on the PC side which, ironically, let me do many of the things that my trusty Apple ][+ had …

Modeling Timed Component-Based Real-Time Systems, Huang-Ming Huang, Christopher Gill

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Component based middleware helps to facilitate software reuse by separating application-specific concerns into modular components that are shielded from the concerns of other components and from the common concerns addressed by underlying middleware services. In real-time systems, concerns such as invocation rates, execution latencies, deadlines, and concurrency semantics cross-cut multiple component and middleware abstractions. Thus, the verification of these systems must consider features of the application components (e.g., their execution latencies and relative invocation rates) and of the supporting middleware (e.g., concurrency and scheduling) together. However, existing approaches only address a sub-set of the features that must be modeled in …

Scheduling Design And Verification For Open Soft Real-Time Systems, Robert Glaubius, Terry Tidwell, William D. Smart, Christopher Gill

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Open soft real-time systems, such as mobile robots, experience unpredictable interactions with their environments and yet must respond both adaptively and with reasonable temporal predictability. New scheduling approaches are needed to address the demands of such systems, in which many of the assumptions made by traditional real-time scheduling theory do not hold. In previous work we established foundations for a scheduling policy design and verification approach for open soft real-time systems, that can use different decision models, e.g., a Markov Decision Process (MDP), to capture the nuances of their scheduling semantics. However, several important refinements to the preliminary techniques developed …

Faster Optimal State-Space Search With Graph Decomposition And Reduced Expansion, Yixin Chen

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Traditional AI search methods, such as BFS, DFS, and A*, look for a path from a starting state to the goal in a state space most typically modelled as a directed graph. Prohibitively large sizes of the state space graphs make optimal search difficult. A key observation, as manifested by the SAS+ formalism for planning, is that most commonly a state-space graph is well structured as the Cartesian product of several small subgraphs. This paper proposes novel search algorithms that exploit such structure. The results reveal that standard search algorithms may explore many redundant paths. Our algorithms provide an automatic …

Local Neighborhoods For Shape Classification And Normal Estimation, Cindy Grimm, William Smart

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

We introduce the concept of local neighborhoods, a generalization of the one-ring on a mesh to unlabeled 3D data points arising from sampling a 2D surface embedded in 3D. The local neighborhood supports both local shape classification and robust normal estimation. In particular, local neighborhoods out-perform traditional approaches in unevenly sampled, curved regions. We show that the local neighborhood can be used in place of a full mesh structure for applications such as smoothing, moving least-squares reconstruction, and parameterization. Longer version of paper submitted to CAGD

Scheduling For Reliable Execution In Autonomic Systems, Terry Tidwell, Robert Glaubius, Christopher Gill, William D. Smart

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Scheduling the execution of multiple concurrent tasks on shared resources such as CPUs and network links is essential to ensuring the reliable operation of many autonomic systems. Well known techniques such as rate-monotonic scheduling can offer rigorous timing and preemption guarantees, but only under assumptions (i.e., a fixed set of tasks with well-known execution times and invocation rates) that do not hold in many autonomic systems. New hierarchical scheduling techniques are better suited to enforce the more flexible execution constraints and enforcement mechanisms that are required for autonomic systems, but a rigorous foundation for verifying and enforcing concurrency and timing …

Animal Microrna Target Prediction By Incorporating Diverse Sequence-Specific Determinants, Yun Zheng, Weixiong Zhang

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

More recent evidence has shown that access of animal microRNAs (miRNAs) to their complementary sites in target mRNAs is determined by more sequence-specific determinants than the seed regions in the 5' end of miRNAs. Although these factors have been shown to be related to the repressive power of miRNAs and used, in separate programs, to predict the efficacy of miRNA complementary sites, it remains unclear whether these factors can help to improve miRNA target prediction. We develop a new miRNA target prediction algorithm, called Hitsensor, by incorporating more sequence-specific features that determine complementarities between miRNAs and their targets, in addition …

Flexible Service Provisioning For Heterogeneous Sensor Networks, Chien-Liang Fok, Gruia-Catalin Roman, Chenyang Lu

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

This paper presents Servilla, a highly flexible service provisioning framework for heterogeneous wireless sensor networks. Its service-oriented programming model and middleware enable developers to construct platform-independent applications over a dynamic set of devices with diverse computational resources and sensors. A salient feature of Servilla is its support for dynamic discovery and binding to local and remote services, which enables flexible and energy-efficient in-network collaboration among heterogeneous devices. Furthermore, Servilla provides a modular middleware architecture that can be easily tailored for devices with a wide range of resources, allowing even resource-limited devices to provide services and leverage resource-rich devices for in-network …

Dedication To Pierre Lallemand On The Occasion Of His Retirement, Dominque D'Humieres, Manfred Krafczyk, Li-Shi Luo, Robert Rubinstein

Mathematics & Statistics Faculty Publications

The fourth international conference for mesoscopic methods in engineering and science (http://www.icmmes. org), held in Munich, Germany, 16–20 July 2007, was closed with a celebration honouring Dr Pierre Lallemand on the occasion of his retirement from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) after more than 40 years of service.

Sublethal And Killing Effects Of Atmospheric-Pressure, Nonthermal Plasma On Eukaryotic Microalgae In Aqueous Media, Ying Zhong Tang, Xin Pei Lu, Mounir Laroussi, Fred C. Dobbs

OES Faculty Publications

In-depth studies on the interaction of nonthermal plasmas with microorganisms usually focus on bacteria; only little attention has been given to their effects on more complex eukaryotic cells. We report here nonthermal plasma's effects on cell motility, viability staining, and morphology of eukaryotic microalgae, with three marine dinoflagellates and a marine diatom as major targets. The effects on motility and viability staining depended on the time of exposure to plasma and the species of microalgae. We observed a strong pH decrease in aqueous samples (marine and freshwater algal cultures, their culture media, and deionized water) after exposure to plasma, and …

Catalytic Wet Air Oxidation Of Mono Azo Dye Orange Ii: Catalyst Selection, Reaction Kinetics, And Modeling, Pinar Ozdural

Civil & Environmental Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Wastewaters generated as byproducts of dyeing processes are not treatable with conventional methods. It has been estimated that among the 900,000 tons of different dyes produced annually in the world, approximately 10–15% are lost in wastewater streams during manufacturing and processing operations. Once in rivers and streams, dyes cause major problems, such as reducing light penetration, or displaying toxic effects on aquatic life. Therefore, it is essential that dyes are removed from wastewaters before being discharged into the environment.

This study focuses on the catalytic wet air oxidation (CWAO) of Orange II, a mono azo dye used in large amounts …

Covert Encryption And Document Authentication Using Texture Coding, Jonathan Blackledge, Mary Hallot

Articles

With the improvements in the quality of Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) printing and scanning devices, the ability to counterfeit documents has become a widespread problem. Consequently, there has been an increasing demand to develop digital watermarking techniques which can be applied to both electronic and printed images (and documents) that can be authenticated, prevent unauthorized copying and withstand abuse and degradation. In this paper , a new approach to digital watermarking is presented and a range of possible applications are considered. The process is defined by using concepts and techniques borrowed from Cryptography. It is based on computing a 'scramble image' by …

Object Detection And Classification With Applications To Skin Cancer Screening, Jonathan Blackledge, Dmitryi Dubovitskiy

Articles

This paper discusses a new approach to the processes of object detection, recognition and classification in a digital image. The classification method is based on the application of a set of features which include fractal parameters such as the Lacunarity and Fractal Dimension. Thus, the approach used, incorporates the characterisation of an object in terms of its texture.

The principal issues associated with object recognition are presented which includes two novel fast segmentation algorithms for which C++ code is provided. The self-learning procedure for designing a decision making engine using fuzzy logic and membership function theory is also presented and …

Modeling The Fate Of Pharmaceuticals And Personal Care Products In Sewage Treatment Plants, Craig D. Adams

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Chemical fate models can be used to estimate the transformation reactions and the partitioning behavior of pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) in sewage treatment plants (STPs). Modeling the fate of PPCPs in a STP requires parameters such as rate constants or partition coefficients that are often unique to a specific STP, and that may exhibit significant temporal variability. Chemical fate models provide both a valuable test of our understanding of the fundamental underlying mechanisms regarding the fate of PPCPs in STPs, as well as a means of providing both qualitative and quantitative estimates for PPCP removal. This paper is …

Generalized Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman Formulation-Based Neural Network Control Of Affine Nonlinear Discrete-Time Systems, Zheng Chen, Jagannathan Sarangapani

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this paper, we consider the use of nonlinear networks towards obtaining nearly optimal solutions to the control of nonlinear discrete-time (DT) systems. The method is based on least squares successive approximation solution of the generalized Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (GHJB) equation which appears in optimization problems. Successive approximation using the GHJB has not been applied for nonlinear DT systems. The proposed recursive method solves the GHJB equation in DT on a well-defined region of attraction. The definition of GHJB, pre-Hamiltonian function, HJB equation, and method of updating the control function for the affine nonlinear DT systems under small perturbation assumption are proposed. …

Glass Transition Behavior Of Poly(Methyl Acrylate) End-Grafted By Atrp To Amorphous Silica, Manikantan B. Nair, Frank D. Blum

Chemistry Faculty Research & Creative Works

Ultra-thin polymer films attached to solid substrates (supported films) have attracted significant interest in recent years. Supported films are used in the design of advanced materials like photoresists, lubricants and other electronic devices. Glass transition temperatures (Tgs) of supported polymer films have also been of significant interest. The Tg has been shown to depend on the thickness of the polymer film on the surface and the inherent nature of the surface. The effect of end-grafting of a polymer chain to a surface, on the Tg of the polymer has been studied previously.1 Reports on the study of glass transition behaviors …

Dynamics Of Adsorbed Pma-D₃ - Effect Of Substrate, Frank D. Blum, Burak Metin, Macduff O. Okuom

Chemistry Faculty Research & Creative Works

In the last few years, our group has focused much of our attention on studying the dynamics of polymers adsorbed at interfaces. Much of our work, to date has been on labeled poly(vinyl acetate)-d3 (PVAc-d3)1 and poly(methyl acrylate)-d3 (PMA-d3)2 on silica. We have been able to probe the effects of adsorbed amount,3 molecular mass,4,5 and the effect of overlayer.6 These studies have provided a view of the adsorbed polymer consistent with a motional gradient in the layer with the more mobile segments being those at the air-polymer interface and the less-mobile segments at the substratepolymer interface. However, we have not …

Dynamics Of Pipa-D₇ On Silica Surface, Piyawan Krisanangkura, Frank D. Blum

Chemistry Faculty Research & Creative Works

Molecular motion of polymer chains is an important determinant in understanding the physical properties of polymeric materials. Glass transition temperature (Tg) is a physical property of polymers, which is of primary interest. The study of the dynamics of polymer segments assists in understanding the dependence of Tg on polymer structure.1 For decades, studies have addressed the molecular motion in various polymers. Some of them have probed the dynamics of polymer backbones.2,3 the properties of a polymer at an interface may change because of the type of polymer, the substrate, or other variables. The side chain of a polymer can also …

Creating Preservation-Ready Web Resources, Joan A. Smith, Michael L. Nelson

Computer Science Faculty Publications

There are innumerable departmental, community, and personal web sites worthy of long-term preservation but proportionally fewer archivists available to properly prepare and process such sites. We propose a simple model for such everyday web sites which takes advantage of the web server itself to help prepare the site's resources for preservation. This is accomplished by having metadata utilities analyze the resource at the time of dissemination. The web server responds to the archiving repository crawler by sending both the resource and the just-in-time generated metadata as a straight-forward XML-formatted response. We call this complex object (resource + metadata) a CRATE. …

Emergent Behavior In Massively-Deployed Sensor Networks, Ekaterina Shurkova, Ruzana Ishak, Stephan Olariu, Shaharuddin Salleh

Computer Science Faculty Publications

The phenomenal advances in MEMS and nanotechnology make it feasible to build small devices, referred to as sensors that are able to sense, compute and communicate over small distances. The massive deployment of these small devices raises the fascinating question of whether or not the sensors, as a collectivity, will display emergent behavior, just as living organisms do. In this work we report on a recent effort intended to observe emerging behavior of large groups of sensor nodes, like living cells demonstrate. Imagine a massive deployment of sensors that can be in two states "red" and "blue". At deployment time …

Efficient Corona Training Protocols For Sensor Networks, Alan A. Bertossi, Stephan Olariu, Cristina M. Pinotti

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Phenomenal advances in nano-technology and packaging have made it possible to develop miniaturized low-power devices that integrate sensing, special-purpose computing, and wireless communications capabilities. It is expected that these small devices, referred to as sensors, will be mass-produced and deployed, making their production cost negligible. Due to their small form factor and modest non-renewable energy budget, individual sensors are not expected to be GPS-enabled. Moreover, in most applications, exact geographic location is not necessary, and all that the individual sensors need is a coarse-grain location awareness. The task of acquiring such a coarse-grain location awareness is referred to as training. …

Columbia University/Vireo-Cityu/Irit Trecvid2008 High-Level Feature Extraction And Interactive Video Search, Shih-Fu Chang, Junfeng He, Yu-Gang Jiang, Elie El Khoury, Chong-Wah Ngo, Akira Yanagawa, Eric Zavesky

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this report, we present overview and comparative analysis of our HLF detection system, which achieves the top performance among all type-A submissions in 2008. We also describe preliminary evaluation of our video search system, CuZero, in the interactive search task.

Rapid Prototyping For Virtual Environments, Emre Baydogan

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Development of Virtual Environment (VE) applications is challenging where application developers are required to have expertise in the target VE technologies along with the problem domain expertise. New VE technologies impose a significant learning curve to even the most experienced VE developer. The proposed solution relies on synthesis to automate the migration of a VE application to a new unfamiliar VE platform/technology. To solve the problem, the Common Scene Definition Framework (CSDF) is developed, that serves as a superset/model representation of the target virtual world. Input modules are developed to populate the framework with the capabilities of the virtual world …

Network Formation Using Ant Colony Optimization -- A Systematic Review, Steven C. Oimoen, Gilbert L. Peterson, Kenneth M. Hopkinson

Faculty Publications

A significant area of research in the field of hybrid communications is the Network Design Problem (NDP) [1]. The NDP is an NP complete problem [1] that focuses on identifying the optimal network topology for transmitting commodities between nodes, under constraints such as bandwidth, limited compatible directed channels, and link and commodity costs. The NDP focuses on designing a flexible network while trying to achieve optimal flow or routing. If a link (or arc) is used, then an associated fixed cost of the edge is incurred. In addition, there is a cost for using the arc depending on the flow. …

Performance Comparison Of Pb(Zr0.52Ti0.48)O3-Only And Pb(Zr0.52Ti0.48)O3-On-Silicon Resonators, Hengky Chandrahalim, Sunil A. Bhave, Ronald G. Polcawich, Jeff Pulskamp, Dan Judy, Roger Kaul, Madan Dubey

Faculty Publications

This paper provides a quantitative comparison and explores the design space of lead zirconium titanate (PZT)–only and PZT-on-silicon length-extensional mode resonators for incorporation into radio frequency microelectromechanical system filters and oscillators. We experimentally measured the correlation of motional impedance (R_X) and quality factor (Q) with the resonators’ silicon layer thickness (t_Si). For identical lateral dimensions and PZT-layer thicknesses (t_PZT), the PZT-on-silicon resonator has higher resonant frequency (f_C), higher Q (5100 versus 140), lower R_X (51 Ω versus 205 Ω), and better linearity [third-order input intercept …

Metal Modulation Epitaxy Growth For Extremely High Hole Concentrations Above 10(19) Cm(-3) In Gan, Gon Namkoong, Elaissa Trybus, Kyung Keun Lee, Michael Moseley, W. Alan Doolittle, David C. Look

Applied Research Center Publications

The free hole carriers in GaN have been limited to concentrations in the low 10¹⁸ cm⁻³ range due to the deep activation energy, lower solubility, and compensation from defects, therefore, limiting doping efficiency to about 1%. Herein, we report an enhanced doping efficiency up to ~10% in GaN by a periodic doping, metal modulation epitaxy growth technique. The hole concentrations grown by periodically modulating Ga atoms and Mg dopants were over ~1.5 x 10¹⁹ cm⁻³.

© 2008 American Institute of Physics.

2007 Fall Engr333/Biol354 Project Final Report, 2007 Fall Engr333, 2007 Fall Biol354

ENGR 333

The students of Calvin College’s Engineering 333 and Biology 354 classes were given the task of determining “What would it take to make Calvin College Carbon Neutral?” At first glance, it would not appear that classes on Advanced Thermal System Design and Investigations in Plant Ecology would have much in common. However, the biology and engineering students comprising these classes banded together to tackle the problem. Coming to a satisfactory conclusion would require:

• Creating an inventory of Green House Gas (GHG) emissions and sequestration potential
• Coming up with detailed solutions to achieve Carbon Neutrality
• Working out a practical schedule to …