Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Security Risk Tolerance In Mobile Payment: A Trade-Off Framework, Yong Chen

Information Technology & Decision Sciences Theses & Dissertations

Security is identified as a major barrier for consumers in adopting mobile payment. Although existing literature has incorporated security into the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), the Unified Theory of Acceptance, and the Use of Technology (UTAUT) and it has investigated the way in which security affects consumers’ acceptance of mobile payment, security is a factor only in diverse research models. Studies of mobile payment that focus on security are not available. Additionally, previous studies of mobile payment are based on Direct Carrier Billing- (DCB)-based mobile payment or Near Field Communication- (NFC)-based mobile payment. The results regarding security might not be …

Deep Learning For Segmentation Of 3d Cryo-Em Images, Devin Reid Haslam

Computer Science Theses & Dissertations

Cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) is an emerging biophysical technique for structural determination of protein complexes. However, accurate detection of secondary structures is still challenging when cryo-EM density maps are at medium resolutions (5-10 Å). Most existing methods are image processing methods that do not fully utilize available images in the cryo-EM database. In this paper, we present a deep learning approach to segment secondary structure elements as helices and β-sheets from medium- resolution density maps. The proposed 3D convolutional neural network is shown to detect secondary structure locations with an F1 score between 0.79 and 0.88 for six simulated test cases. …

Novel Technique For Gait Analysis Using Two Waist Mounted Gyroscopes, Ahmed Nasr

Computer Science Theses & Dissertations

Analysis of the human gait is used in many applications such as medicine, sports, and person identification. Several research studies focused on the use of MEMS inertial sensors for gait analysis and showed promising results. The miniaturization of these sensors and their wearability allowed the analysis of gait on a long term outside of the laboratory environment which can reveal more information about the person and introduced the use of gait analysis in new applications such as indoor localization.

Step detection and step length estimation are two basic and important gait analysis tasks. In fact, step detection is a prerequisite …

Non-Destructive Evaluation For Composite Material, Desalegn Temesgen Delelegn

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The Nondestructive Evaluation Sciences Branch (NESB) at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Langley Research Center (LaRC) has conducted impact damage experiments over the past few years with the goal of understanding structural defects in composite materials. The Data Science Team within the NASA LaRC Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) has been working with the Non-Destructive Evaluation (NDE) subject matter experts (SMEs), Dr. Cheryl Rose, from the Structural Mechanics & Concepts Branch and Dr. William Winfree, from the Research Directorate, to develop computer vision solutions using digital image processing and machine learning techniques that can help identify …

Analysis Of Bulk Power System Resilience Using Vulnerability Graph, Md Ariful Haque

Computational Modeling & Simulation Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Critical infrastructure such as a Bulk Power System (BPS) should have some quantifiable measure of resiliency and definite rule-sets to achieve a certain resilience value. Industrial Control System (ICS) and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) networks are integral parts of BPS. BPS or ICS are themselves not vulnerable because of their proprietary technology, but when the control network and the corporate network need to have communications for performance measurements and reporting, the ICS or BPS become vulnerable to cyber-attacks. Thus, a systematic way of quantifying resiliency and identifying crucial nodes in the network is critical for addressing the cyber …

New Methods To Improve Protein Structure Modeling, Maha Abdelrasoul

Computer Science Theses & Dissertations

Proteins are considered the central compound necessary for life, as they play a crucial role in governing several life processes by performing the most essential biological and chemical functions in every living cell. Understanding protein structures and functions will lead to a significant advance in life science and biology. Such knowledge is vital for various fields such as drug development and synthetic biofuels production.

Most proteins have definite shapes that they fold into, which are the most stable state they can adopt. Due to the fact that the protein structure information provides important insight into its functions, many research efforts …

Identification And Optimal Linear Tracking Control Of Odu Autonomous Surface Vehicle, Nadeem Khan

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Autonomous surface vehicles (ASVs) are being used for diverse applications of civilian and military importance such as: military reconnaissance, sea patrol, bathymetry, environmental monitoring, and oceanographic research. Currently, these unmanned tasks can accurately be accomplished by ASVs due to recent advancements in computing, sensing, and actuating systems. For this reason, researchers around the world have been taking interest in ASVs for the last decade. Due to the ever-changing surface of water and stochastic disturbances such as wind and tidal currents that greatly affect the path-following ability of ASVs, identification of an accurate model of inherently nonlinear and stochastic ASV system …

A Framework For Executable Systems Modeling, Matthew Amissah

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Systems Modeling Language (SysML), like its parent language, the Unified Modeling Language (UML), consists of a number of independently derived model languages (i.e. state charts, activity models etc.) which have been co-opted into a single modeling framework. This, together with the lack of an overarching meta-model that supports uniform semantics across the various diagram types, has resulted in a large unwieldy and informal language schema. Additionally, SysML does not offer a built in framework for managing time and the scheduling of time based events in a simulation.

In response to these challenges, a number of auxiliary standards have been offered …

To Relive The Web: A Framework For The Transformation And Archival Replay Of Web Pages, John Andrew Berlin

Computer Science Theses & Dissertations

When replaying an archived web page (known as a memento), the fundamental expectation is that the page should be viewable and function exactly as it did at archival time. However, this expectation requires web archives to modify the page and its embedded resources, so that they no longer reference (link to) the original server(s) they were archived from but back to the archive. Although these modifications necessarily change the state of the representation, it is understood that without them the replay of mementos from the archive would not be possible. Unfortunately, because the replay of mementos and the modifications made …

Leveraging Resources On Anonymous Mobile Edge Nodes, Ahmed Salem

Computer Science Theses & Dissertations

Smart devices have become an essential component in the life of mankind. The quick rise of smartphones, IoTs, and wearable devices enabled applications that were not possible few years ago, e.g., health monitoring and online banking. Meanwhile, smart sensing laid the infrastructure for smart homes and smart cities. The intrusive nature of smart devices granted access to huge amounts of raw data. Researchers seized the moment with complex algorithms and data models to process the data over the cloud and extract as much information as possible. However, the pace and amount of data generation, in addition to, networking protocols transmitting …

Effectiveness Of Social Media Analytics On Detecting Service Quality Metrics In The U.S. Airline Industry, Xin Tian

Information Technology & Decision Sciences Theses & Dissertations

During the past few decades, social media has provided a number of online tools that allow people to discuss anything freely, with an increase in mobile connectivity. More and more consumers are sharing their opinions online with others. Electronic Word of Mouth (eWOM) is the virtual communication in use; it plays an important role in customers’ buying decisions. Customers can choose to complain or to compliment services or products on their social media platforms, rather than to complete the survey offered by the providers of those services. Compared with the traditional survey, or with the air travel customer report published …

Supporting Big Data At The Vehicular Edge, Lloyd Decker

Computer Science Theses & Dissertations

Vehicular networks are commonplace, and many applications have been developed to utilize their sensor and computing resources. This is a great utilization of these resources as long as they are mobile. The question to ask is whether these resources could be put to use when the vehicle is not mobile. If the vehicle is parked, the resources are simply dormant and waiting for use. If the vehicle has a connection to a larger computing infrastructure, then it can put its resources towards that infrastructure. With enough vehicles interconnected, there exists a computing environment that could handle many cloud-based application services. …

Flexstream: Sdn-Based Framework For Programmable And Flexible Adaptive Video Streaming, Ibrahim Ben Mustafa

Computer Science Theses & Dissertations

With the tremendous increase in video traffic fueled by smartphones, tablets, 4G LTE networks, and other mobile devices and technologies, providing satisfactory services to end users in terms of playback quality and a fair share of network resources become challenging. As a result, an HTTP video streaming protocol was invented and widely adopted by most video providers today with the goal of maximizing the user’s quality of experience. However, despite the intensive efforts of major video providers such as YouTube and Netflix to improve their players, several studies as well as our measurements indicate that the players still suffer from …

Design And Implementation Of An Artificial Neural Network Controller For Quadrotor Flight In Confined Environment, Ahmed Mekky

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Quadrotors offer practical solutions for many applications, such as emergency rescue, surveillance, military operations, videography and many more. For this reason, they have recently attracted the attention of research and industry. Even though they have been intensively studied, quadrotors still suffer from some challenges that limit their use, such as trajectory measurement, attitude estimation, obstacle avoidance, safety precautions, and land cybersecurity. One major problem is flying in a confined environment, such as closed buildings and tunnels, where the aerodynamics around the quadrotor are affected by close proximity objects, which result in tracking performance deterioration, and sometimes instability. To address this …

Human-Intelligence And Machine-Intelligence Decision Governance Formal Ontology, Faisal Mahmud

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Since the beginning of the human race, decision making and rational thinking played a pivotal role for mankind to either exist and succeed or fail and become extinct. Self-awareness, cognitive thinking, creativity, and emotional magnitude allowed us to advance civilization and to take further steps toward achieving previously unreachable goals. From the invention of wheels to rockets and telegraph to satellite, all technological ventures went through many upgrades and updates. Recently, increasing computer CPU power and memory capacity contributed to smarter and faster computing appliances that, in turn, have accelerated the integration into and use of artificial intelligence (AI) in …

Deep Recurrent Learning For Efficient Image Recognition Using Small Data, Mahbubul Alam

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Recognition is fundamental yet open and challenging problem in computer vision. Recognition involves the detection and interpretation of complex shapes of objects or persons from previous encounters or knowledge. Biological systems are considered as the most powerful, robust and generalized recognition models. The recent success of learning based mathematical models known as artificial neural networks, especially deep neural networks, have propelled researchers to utilize such architectures for developing bio-inspired computational recognition models. However, the computational complexity of these models increases proportionally to the challenges posed by the recognition problem, and more importantly, these models require a large amount of data …

Applying Machine Learning To Advance Cyber Security: Network Based Intrusion Detection Systems, Hassan Hadi Latheeth Al-Maksousy

Computer Science Theses & Dissertations

Many new devices, such as phones and tablets as well as traditional computer systems, rely on wireless connections to the Internet and are susceptible to attacks. Two important types of attacks are the use of malware and exploiting Internet protocol vulnerabilities in devices and network systems. These attacks form a threat on many levels and therefore any approach to dealing with these nefarious attacks will take several methods to counter. In this research, we utilize machine learning to detect and classify malware, visualize, detect and classify worms, as well as detect deauthentication attacks, a form of Denial of Service (DoS). …