Engineering Commons^™

Security Assessment Of Select Computer Systems Under Distributed Denial Of Service Attacks Performed By Botnets, Hugo Armando Herrera Martinez

Theses and Dissertations

With the passage of time Internet connectivity has been found on more electronic devices than in previous decades. This continuous development may be perceived as a double-edged sword. While the world becomes more Internet-connected and quality of life increases, the lack of proper security protocols in some of these electronic devices permits illegitimate parties to take control of them for their own malicious purposes.

This thesis studies the impact of compromised Internet-connected devices on commonly used server operating systems: Microsoft’s Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter, Windows Server 2016 Datacenter, and Apple’s macOS 10.13.6 High Sierra deployed on Apple’s Mac Pro …

Polymeric Pvdf Fibers For Piezoelectric Applications In Energy Harvesting, Misael E. Martinez

Theses and Dissertations

This work focuses on developing and characterizing the piezoelectric response of Cerium doped Polyvinylidene Fluoride (PVDF) fine fibers and the effects of dopants and alignment on the formation of the β-phase and consequently on the piezoelectric performance. Six sets of fiber mats were prepared varying the concentration (2.5–7.5wt%) of Cerium (III) Nitrate-Hexahydrate and Ammonium-Cerium (IV) Sulfate-Dihydrate. Fiber mats were developed using the Forcespinning® technique and the angular velocity and dopant concentration were adjusted to obtain a synergy between fiber yield and fiber diameter. Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy showed a significant enhancement in the PVDF β-phase and inhibition of the non-polar …

Blockchain Technology Based Supply Chain Systems And Supply Chain Performance: A Resource-Based View, Madhavi Latha Nandi

Theses and Dissertations

Blockchain technology (BCT) is set to transform firms’ present ways of managing supply chains. This thesis explores how the efforts by firms to integrate BCT into their supply chain systems and activities, can enable certain supply chain capabilities and subsequently, improve supply chain performance. Using an abductive research approach, qualitative content analyses of 126 cases of firms’ efforts in BCT-based supply chain systems (BCT-SCS) across multiple industries are conducted to identify the BCT-enabled supply chain capabilities and their performance outcomes. Findings reveal that the present BCT-SCS efforts are mainly oriented towards improving the operational-level capabilities namely, information sharing and coordination …

Compliance Of Open Source Ehr Applications With Hipaa And Onc Security And Privacy Requirements, Maryam Farhadi, Hisham Haddad, Hossain Shahriar

Master of Science in Computer Science Theses

Electronic Health Records (EHRs) are digital versions of paper-based patient's health information. EHR applications are increasingly being adopted in many countries. They have resulted in improved quality in healthcare, convenient access to histories of patient medication and clinic visits, easier follow up of patient treatment plans, and precise medical decision-making process. EHR applications are guided by measures of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) to ensure confidentiality, integrity, and availability. However, there have been reported breaches of Protected Health Identifier (PHI) data stored by EHR applications. In many reported breaches, improper use of EHRs has resulted in disclosure …

Bs News May/June

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

The Eco-Smart Can V2.0, Darack B. Nanto

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

On a scorching summer day in 2015, a campus maintenance worker was observed emptying a trash bin. Upon closer observation, it was noted that the bin was not full; in fact, it was less than one third full. There were other bins that were full and needed to be emptied urgently. It was confusing and problematic to see that bins that needed more attention were not prioritized. After extended research, it was found that maintenance operates on daily routes to pick up trash at designated times, regardless of the level of trash in the bins. Therefore, to tackle this issue, …

The Use Of Generic Scripting In Certain Application Development Projects, Vance Allen Etnyre, Jian Denny Lin, Nanfei Sun

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

This article discusses generic scripting, a useful scripting technology for developing applications. In its simplest use, generic scripting can be used as a documentation tool to replace flowcharting or pseudocode. in certain situations, generic scripting can lead directly to a working application without the need to write, compile and test a new program. Generic scripting is discussed as a tool which can be used in logical design, detailed design and implementation of a new application. An example is presented to show how generic scripting can be used by non-programmers to simplify the development of applications. This example is used to …

College Choice Criteria Utilizing Conjoint Analysis Enabled On A Saas Platform, Alison Munsch

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

College enrollments and low to moderate household incomes are stagnating while tuition costs are increasing. The New York State Legislature enacted the nation’s first tuition-free degree program, the Excelsior Scholarship, designed to make a college education more affordable to middle class families. This legislation can impact what institution of higher education students will choose upon high school graduation. In order to understand the choice criteria for selecting an institution of higher education, a research study was conducted among a representative sample of high school upper classmen and parents of this respondent segment. The data collection and analysis were accomplished using …

Field Evidence Of A Natural Capillary Barrier In A Gravel Alluvial Aquifer, Todd Halihan, Ronald B. Miller, David Correll, Derek M. Heeren, Garey A. Fox

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

Ozark streams commonly feature “composite” floodplains, in which the vadose zone consists of silt or silt loam soils (?1 m thick) overlying gravel subsoil. Previous work has shown that preferential flow paths can exist within the gravel subsoil, which can conduct water and P at rates exceeding the sorption capacity of the gravel. At a site on Barren Fork Creek, a 1- by 1-m infiltration plot was constructed and an infiltration experiment was performed using sequentially introduced solutes including P (the constituent of regulatory interest), Rhodamine-WT (Rh-WT, a visual tracer), and Cl− (an electrical tracer). The solute transport was measured …

Aviation Safety Action Program In The United States Air Force: Mobility Aircrews’ Intentions To Use Safety Reporting, Travis Jared Whittemore

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

No abstract provided.

2019 Spring Graduate Recognition Program, Propulsion Research Center, Robert Frederick

PRC Graduate Recognition

This program includes the graduate recognition program for spring 2019. Includes photographs, upcoming events, recent publications, and student profiles.

Community Discovery In Heterogeneous Social Networks, Lei Meng, Ah-Hwee Tan, Donald C. Wunsch

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Discovering social communities of web users through clustering analysis of heterogeneous link associations has drawn much attention. However, existing approaches typically require the number of clusters a priori, do not address the weighting problem for fusing heterogeneous types of links, and have a heavy computational cost. This chapter studies the commonly used social links of users and explores the feasibility of the proposed heterogeneous data co-clustering algorithm GHF-ART, as introduced in Sect. 3.6, for discovering user communities in social networks. Contrary to the existing algorithms proposed for this task, GHF-ART performs real-time matching of patterns and one-pass learning, which guarantees …

Towards Personalized Data-Driven Bundle Design With Qos Constraint, Mustafa Misir, Hoong Chuin Lau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper, we study the bundle design problem for offering personalized bundles of services using historical consumer redemption data. The problem studied here is for an operator managing multiple service providers, each responsible for an attraction, in a leisure park. Given the specific structure of interactions between service providers, consumers and the operator, a bundle of services is beneficial for the operator when the bundle is underutilized by service consumers. Such revenue structure is commonly seen in the cable television and leisure industries, creating strong incentives for the operator to design bundles containing lots of not-so-popular services. However, as …

Re-Org: An Online Repositioning Guidance Agent, Muralidhar Konda, Pradeep Varakantham, Aayush Saxena, Meghna Lowalekar

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

No abstract provided.

Designated-Server Identity-Based Authenticated Encryption With Keyword Search For Encrypted Emails, Hongbo Li, Qiong Huang, Jian Shen, Guomin Yang, Willy Susilo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In encrypted email system, how to search over encrypted cloud emails without decryption is an important and practical problem. Public key encryption with keyword search (PEKS) is an efficient solution to it. However, PEKS suffers from the complex key management problem in the public key infrastructure. Its variant in the identity-based setting addresses the drawback, however, almost all the schemes does not resist against offline keyword guessing attacks (KGA) by inside adversaries. In this work we introduce the notion of designated-server identity-based authenticated encryption with keyword search (dIBAEKS), in which the email sender authenticates the message while encrypting so that …

Unmanned Aerial System Integration Into The National Airspace System And Airports: Risk Mitigation Using Content Analysis Methodology, Bhoomin Bhupendrabhai Chauhan

Theses and Dissertations

Over the last few years, the use of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) has significantly increased. With an increase in the use of UASs, the number of UAS sightings near manned aircraft and airports have also increased, as shown by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)(FAA, 2019a). Although not every near sighting had a severe consequence associated with it, the risks were still present. As UASs are becoming more readily available to the general public, the risks present due to UASs flying in the National Airspace System (NAS) and near airports is also increasing. For the study, incident and accident reports were …

Factors Related To The Assessment Of The Effectiveness Of Environmental Management Systems (Ems) At Airports, Kainan Li

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to identify factors that can be used to assess the effectiveness of EMS at airports in the United States (U.S.). A survey research methodology was used for this study in two phases. The first phase of the research study included a preliminary expert opinion survey of airport managers and other individuals acting in a supervisory role to determine and discuss how EMS help improve environmental performance, and ranked factors that may be related to assessing the effectiveness of EMS. The second survey was constructed based on feedback from these experts and targeted airport employees …

Aviation Professionalism: Examining The Concept Of Professionalism Within And Between Major Subgroups Of The Aviation Industry, Rüştü Tolga Turgut

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to conduct a secondary analysis of Alhallaf’s (2016) study on aviation professionalism by disaggregating his data into five subgroups: Aircraft Maintenance Technicians (AMT); Airport Managers (AM); Air Traffic Controllers (ATC); Non-Pilot Aviation Employees (NPAE), which consisted of business aviation, flight operations, and aviation colleges/universities; and Pilots. The study posed three research questions and endeavored to (a) determine factors related to professionalism in each subgroup, (b) determine the differences in levels of professionalism among the subgroups, and (c) examine each subgroup’ perceptions of professionalism. The study used an explanatory correlational design to determine the relationship …

Mitigating Risk Tolerance Among General Aviation Pilots: Identifying Factors That Contribute To Ga Pilots’ Risk Perception, Nazif Sani Nuhu

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to identify factors that contributed to general aviation (GA) pilots’ level of risk perception, which could then be manifested as an increase in risk tolerance. The study used an explanatory correlational design to determine what factors were related to risk perception. Research factors included gender, age, marital status, race/ethnicity, education level, flight hours, single- and multi-engine hours, hours as PIC, type of flight training, number of FAA licenses/ratings, number of hazardous events pilots were involved in, self-efficacy, aviation safety attitudes, level of psychological distress, and locus of control. The dependent variable was risk perception. …

Study Of A Crew Transfer Vehicle Using Aerocapture For Cycler Based Exploration Of Mars, Larissa Balestrero Machado

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents the results of a conceptual design and aerocapture analysis for a Crew Transfer Vehicle (CTV) designed to carry humans between Earth or Mars and a spacecraft on an Earth-Mars cycler trajectory. The thesis outlines a parametric design model for the Crew Transfer Vehicle and presents concepts for the integration of aerocapture maneuvers within a sustainable cycler architecture. The parametric design study is focused on reducing propellant demand and thus the overall mass of the system and cost of the mission. This is accomplished by using a combination of propulsive and aerodynamic braking for insertion into a low …

A First-Principle Power And Energy Model For Evtol Vehicles, Max Skuhersky

Theses and Dissertations

A number of well-established aircraft manufacturers, such as Airbus, Boeing, or Bell, along with new startups have begun developing flying prototypes of electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing vehicles (eVTOL). To certify this emerging type of air mobility vehicles for commercial use, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is considering adjusting currently used certification procedures for small aircraft to include eVTOL vehicles. One of the hurdles to this approach is that eVTOL vehicles are neither able to glide like a small, fixed-wing aircraft, nor to autorotate, like a helicopter, if the batteries are depleted. Therefore, active energy management and energy awareness by …

Validation Of An External Bioreactor Filtration Loop Prototype For A Tissue Engineering Test Bed, Jonah Martin Melegrito

Theses and Dissertations

As a cell line thrives within a culture, some of the cells undergo the natural process of death. Whether it is due to apoptotic or necrotic causes, cell death is a significant hurdle for tissue engineering and cell cultivation. When cells attached to a scaffold die, they slough off from the scaffold into the bloodstream. If left unchecked, these dead cells and any cellular waste products accumulate and could affect the living cells’ ability to survive. The objective of this thesis was to construct a separation system that can filter away any unwanted suspended solids while allowing nutrients to recycle …

Residence Time Distribution (Rtd) Analysis Of A Bioreactor's External Recirculation Loop For A Tissue Engineering Test Bed, Adrien Hosking

Theses and Dissertations

Currently, in tissue engineering, the focus is on morphing cells into a particular type of tissue by hand, rather than automating the process. Automating cell feeding and waste removal, alone, still requires the removal of cells from their culture to perform imaging and analysis. Without the ability to automate the imaging in a way that does not risk cell death, the advantages of automating the feeding and waste removal are largely lost. By building a fully automated tissue engineering test bed, the capacity for cell reproducibility and cell yield increases significantly. This thesis outlines the design, some initial testing, and …

Hrv - Ecg Generator: Software For Testing Heart Rate Variability Detection, Matthew Joseph Pogorelec

Theses and Dissertations

Heart rate variability (HRV) has been shown to serve as an effective diagnostic and prognostic tool in a variety of clinical applications, including for patients who have suffered from myocardial infarction, sepsis and liver cirrhosis. There currently exist a variety of devices and software to quantify HRV based on RR interval series collected from ECG data. However, as the uses for HRV expand, a greater variety of devices for different applications are being designed and developed. Thus, it is useful to have available a method for efficiently testing preliminary software. The HRV/ECG Generator software is designed to build both an …

Geo-Locating Ues Using Multi-Output Decision Tree Regressor, Edel Goreil Dawood

Theses and Dissertations

Mobile communication networks constantly need to monitor and improve the quality of service and network coverage to their users, and to do so, radio measurements are required. One common method for gathering these measurements is Drive Tests (DT) in which vehicles equipped with measuring devices are sent to locations of interests. However, DT has several limitations one of which is that DT cannot be performed on indoor locations. Other approaches were later used; however, failed to prove a considerably higher efficiency. To address this need, mobile operators developed a standardized technique called Minimization of Drive Test (MDT) that take advantage …

Hybrid Long-Range Mid-Infrared Hyperbolic Phonon Polariton Waveguide Using Hexagonal Boron Nitride, Di Xiong

Theses and Dissertations

For any photonic-on-chip applications long propagation waveguides are critical. The use of plasmon polaritons for near-infrared and optical networks has been extensively studied for the purpose of achieving long propagation lengths, however, due to plasmonic polariton effects being negligible in mid- to long-wave infrared (IR) applications, phonon polaritons are required. In recent years, extensive research has been carried out on hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN), and it has been found that h-BN has naturally occurring sub-range phonon volume-constrained hyperbolic phonon polaritons (HPhPs). The numerical results in this thesis show both the long-range and short-range phonon volume polaritons modes in h-BN. A …

Simulation Environment For Astrobee-Rings System, Tamerlan Yeleussizov

Theses and Dissertations

The thesis analyzes a flight software of a new free flying robot Astrobee, that will change the current Synchronized Position Hold Engage Reorient Experimental Satellites (SPHERES) on International Space Station (ISS). First, the main components of the flight software were examined: Robotic Operating System (ROS), Gazebo and MATLAB. During that phase, functionalities of ROS, Gazebo and MATLAB were analyzed, and it was found how these components integrate between each other to build Astrobee flying software. Next, simulation of two Astrobees performing “in-home” and “torque” maneuvers was executed. After a successful completion of simulation, results of Astrobee’s trajectory was recorded. Then, …

Design And Analysis Of Fiber Reinforced Concrete Structure For Transportation Infrastructures, Salam Adil Mutlag Wtaife

Theses and Dissertations

Concrete is one of the most popular materials in superstructures (buildings), substructures (foundation) and infrastructure facilities (bridges, pavements, and tunnels). However, concrete is a brittle material that cracks easily under tension. Fiber may be used as reinforcement to impede the concrete from cracking as well as to increase the concrete flexural strength. Nevertheless, current design codes do not include this design enhancement. Furthermore, there are discrepancies in the design methodology concerning the inclusion of discrete fibers in concrete structures. Therefore; there is a need to develop new analysis methodology and design methodology for fiber reinforced concrete (FRC) and fiber reinforced …

Acceleration, Braking, And Steering Controller For Polaris Gem E2, Matthew Benton Salfer-Hobbs

Theses and Dissertations

This paper discusses the design and simulation of lane keeping and velocity controllers for a Polaris GEM e2. The controllers were designed to be implemented in Florida Institute of Technology’s entry for the Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition self-drive challenge. The software and physical implementation of actuators were included to control the acceleration, braking, and steering. The accelerator pedal was replaced with a set of digitally controlled potentiometers, the brake pedal was replaced with a linear actuator, and the steering column was replaced with a stepper motor. Each actuator was controlled by a Raspberry Pi 3. A sliding mode controller was …

Membrane Hull Technology Implemented Into A D-Collar Work Boat, Joshua Hagan

Theses and Dissertations

Membrane Hull Technology (MHT) was initially developed for the United States Navy Rigid-Hull Inflatable Boats (RHIB) as an alternative structure design to provide weight savings and shock mitigation. MHT accomplishes this by veering away from traditional hull design and utilizing a grid like system with an increased number of longitudinal stringers and transverse frames with a significantly lower moment of inertia when compared to traditional stringers and bulkheads. The decrease in stiffness allows for increased deflection in the hull during high load events with the added benefit of shock absorption. This technology, developed by Structural Composites Inc., has been successfully …