Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Sharedwealth: A Cryptocurrency To Reward Miners Evenly, Siddiq Ahmed Syed

Master's Projects

Bitcoin [19] is a decentralized cryptocurrency that has recently gained popularity and has emerged as a popular medium of exchange. The total market capitalization is around 1.5 billion US dollars as of October 2013 [28]. All the operations of Bitcoin are maintained in a distributed public global ledger known as a block chain which consists of all the successful transactions that have ever taken place. The security of a block chain is maintained by a chain of cryptographic puzzles solved by participants called miners, who in return are rewarded with bitcoins. To be successful, the miner has to put in …

Function Call Graph Score For Malware Detection, Deebiga Rajeswaran

Master's Projects

Metamorphic malware changes its internal structure with each infection, while maintaining its core functionality. Detecting such malware is a challenging research problem. Function call graph analysis has previously shown promise in detecting such malware. In this research, we analyze the robustness of a function call graph score with respect to various code morphing strategies. We also consider modifications of the score that make it more robust in the face of such morphing.

Clustering Web Concepts Using Algebraic Topology, Harleen Kaur Ahuja

Master's Projects

In this world of Internet, there is a rapid amount of growth in data both in terms of size and dimension. It consists of web pages that represents human thoughts. These thoughts involves concepts and associations which we can capture. Using mathematics, we can perform meaningful clustering of these pages. This project aims at providing a new problem solving paradigm known as algebraic topology in data science. Professor Vasant Dhar, Editor-In-Chief of Big Data (Professor at NYU) define data science as a generalizable extraction of knowledge from data. The core concept of semantic based search engine project developed by my …

Entity And Relational Queries Over Big Data Storage, Nachappa Achakalera Ponnappa

Master's Projects

Big data storage involves using NoSQL technologies to handle and process huge volumes of data. NoSQL databases are non-relational, schema-free where data is stored as key-value pairs. The aim of the thesis is to implement Entity and Relational queries on top of Big Data storage. In order to achieve this, we use NoSQL technologies like MongoDB and HBase. We implement various methodologies and solutions on top of MongoDB and HBase to map data across different tables and implement entity and relational queries to retrieve entities from huge volumes of data. We also measure the performance of both the technologies and …

Relationship Based Entity Recommendation System, Rakhi Poonam Verma

Master's Projects

With the increase in usage of the internet as a place to search for information, the importance of the level of relevance of the results returned by search engines have increased by many folds in recent years. In this paper, we propose techniques to improve the relevance of results shown by a search engine, by using the kinds of relationships between entities a user is interested in. We propose a technique that uses relationships between entities to recommend related entities from a knowledge base which is a collection of entities and the relationships with which they are connected to other …

Metamorphic Code Generator Based On Bytecode Of Llvm Ir, Arjun Shah

Master's Projects

Metamorphic software is famous for changing the internal structure of the code while keeping the functionality same. In order to escape the signature detection along with some advanced detection techniques, many malware writers have used metamorphism as the means. On the other hand, code morphing technique increases the diversity of the software which is considered to be a potential security advantage. In our paper, we have developed a metamorphic code generator based on the LLVM framework. The architecture of LLVM has a three-phase compiler design which includes the front end, the optimizer and the back end. It also gives assistance …

Load Balancing For Big Data Entity Matching Using Block Split, Akhilesh Kondra

Master's Projects

Entity Matching (EM) is a complex problem and has great impact on data quality. In EM we usually match all the combination of entity pairs using different similarity measures and judge if there is any match between entities. Mapreduce based parallel programing model can be used to match these entities. Even distribution of data into the map and reduce tasks will play vital role in the productivity of Mapreduce based programing model. If the dataset is large and has skewed data, then the distribution should be done effectively to achieve load balancing. In this paper, I have implemented an approach …

Comparative Analysis Of Two Clustering Algorithms: K-Means And Fsdp (Fast Search And Find Of Density Peaks), Li Miao

Master's Projects

With the overwhelming amount of data pouring into our lives, obtaining meaningful information from them is becoming a must task for people. How can people mine for "gold" in this area? Or, what tools can they use to do that? It has been proved that clustering is one of the best tools. In this project, two clustering algorithms are studied and numerically compared with various data sets. The first one is the K-means clustering which starts with initial roughly-guessed clusters, tries to classify some data points into one cluster, and iteratively repeats until converges. The second algorithm is called Fast …

Interactive Phishing Filter, Rushikesh Joshi

Master's Projects

Phishing is one of the prevalent techniques used by attackers to breach security and steal private and confidential information. It has compromised millions of users’ data. Blacklisting websites and heuristic-based methods are common approaches to detect a phishing website. The blacklist method suffers from a window of vulnerability. Many heuristics were proposed in the past. Some of them have better accuracy but a lower performance. A phishing filter should have better accuracy and peformance. It should be able to detect fresh phishing websites. Jo et al. [2] present a list of attributes of the web page to find the disparity …

Improving The Accuracy And Robustness Of Self-Tuning Histograms By Subspace Clustering, Sai Kiran Padooru

Master's Projects

Self-tuning histograms are a type of histograms very popular these days, as they allow the usage of multidimensional datasets. The main advantage of them is that they have a low computational cost due to their capacity to understand the dataset. Also, they proposed a better approach as they stay up-to-date and have adaptability to query patterns. According to the above, many researchers have worked on improving the accuracy of these type of histograms, which has led to the use of subspace clustering methods as initialization values. Following this approach in this study, a self-tuning histogram code was developed with the …

On-The-Fly Map Generator For Openstreetmap Data Using Webgl, Sreenidhi Pundi Muralidharan

Master's Projects

This project describes an approach to create an On-the-fly Map Generator for Openstreetmap Data Using WebGL. The most common methods to generate online maps generate PNG overlay tile images from a wide range of data sources, like GeoJSON, GeoTIFF, PostGIS, CSV, and SQLite, etc., based on the coordinates and zoom-level. This project aims to send vector data for the map to the browser and hence render maps on-the-fly using WebGL. We push all of the vector computation to the GPU. This means that less data needs to be sent to the browser. We have compared existing approaches to our method …

Study Of Big Data Arhitecture Lambda Arhitecture, Jaideep Katkar

Master's Projects

The lambda architecture introduced by Marz is generic, scalable and fault-tolerant data processing architecture. It aims to satisfy the needs for a robust system that is faulttolerant, both against hardware failures and human mistakes, being able to serve a wide range of workloads and use cases. The architecture proposal decomposes the problem into three layers: a) the batch layer focuses on fault tolerance and optimizes for precise results b) the speed layer is optimized for short response-times and only takes into account the most recent data and c) the serving layer provides low latency views to the results of the …

The Sluggs Survey: Globular Cluster Kinematics In A ‘Double Sigma’ Galaxy – Ngc 4473, Adebusola Alabi, Caroline Foster, Duncan Forbes, Aaron Romanowsky, Nicola Pastorello, Jean Brodie, Lee Spitler, Jay Strader, Christopher Usher

Faculty Publications

NGC 4473 is a so-called double sigma (2σ) galaxy, i.e. a galaxy with rare, double peaks in its 2D stellar velocity dispersion. Here, we present the globular cluster (GC) kinematics in NGC 4473 out to ∼10Re (effective radii) using data from combined Hubble Space Telescope/Advanced Camera for Surveys and Subaru/Suprime-Cam imaging and Keck/Deep Imaging Multi-Object Spectrograph. We find that the 2σ nature of NGC 4473 persists up to 3Re, though it becomes misaligned to the photometric major axis. We also observe a significant offset between the stellar and GC rotation amplitudes. This offset can be understood as a co-addition of …

The Sluggs Survey: Inferring The Formation Epochs Of Metal-Poor And Metal-Rich Globular Clusters, Duncan Forbes, Nicola Pastorello, Aaron Romanowsky, Christopher Usher, Jean Brodie, Jay Strader

Faculty Publications

We present a novel, observationally-based framework for the formation epochs and sites of globular clusters (GCs) in a cosmological context. Measuring directly the mean ages of the metal-poor and metal-rich GC subpopulations in our own Galaxy, and in other galaxies, is observationally challenging. Here we apply an alternative approach utilizing the property that the galaxy mass–metallicity relation is a strong function of redshift (or look-back age) but is relatively insensitive to galaxy mass for massive galaxies. Assuming that GCs follow galaxy mass–metallicity relations that evolve with redshift, one can estimate the mean formation epochs of the two GC subpopulations by …

Vegas: A Vst Early-Type Galaxy Survey: I. Presentation, Wide-Field Surface Photometry, And Substructures In Ngc 4472, Massimo Capaccioli, Marilena Spavone, Aniello Grado, Enrichetta Iodice, Luca Limatola, Nicola Napolitano, Michele Cantiello, Maurizio Paolillo, Aaron Romanowsky, Duncan Forbes, Thomas Puzia, Gabriella Raimondo, Pietro Schipani

Faculty Publications

Context. We present the VST Early-type GAlaxy Survey (VEGAS), which is designed to obtain deep multiband photometry in g,r,i, of about one hundred nearby galaxies down to 27.3, 26.8, and 26 mag/arcsec2 respectively, using the ESO facility VST/OmegaCAM.Aims. The goals of the survey are 1) to map the light distribution up to ten effective radii, re; 2) to trace color gradients and surface brightness fluctuation gradients out to a few re for stellar population characterization; and 3) to obtain a full census of the satellite systems (globular clusters and dwarf galaxies) out to 20% of the galaxy virial radius. The …

Vimos Mosaic Integral-Field Spectroscopy Of The Bulge And Disc Of The Early-Type Galaxy Ngc 4697, C. Spiniello, N. Napolitano, L. Coccato, V. Pota, Aaron Romanowsky, C. Tortora, G. Covone, M. Capaccioli

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Sluggs Survey: Combining Stellar And Globular Cluster Metallicities In The Outer Regions Of Early-Type Galaxies, Nicola Pastorello, Duncan Forbes, Christopher Usher, Jean Brodie, Aaron Romanowsky, Jay Strader, Lee Spitler, Adebusola Alabi, Caroline Foster, Zachary Jennings, Sreeja Kartha, Vincenzo Pota

Faculty Publications

The outer halo regions of early-type galaxies carry key information about their past accretion history. However, spectroscopically probing the stellar component at such galactocentric radii is still challenging. Using the DEep Imaging Multi-Object Spectrograph on the Keck, we have been able to measure the metallicities of the stellar and globular cluster components in 12 early-type galaxies out to more than 10Re. We find similar metallicity gradients for the metal-poor and metal-rich globular cluster subpopulations, suggesting a common formation process for the two subpopulations. This is in conflict with most current theoretical predictions, where the metal-poor globular clusters are thought to …

Comparisons Of Cirrus Cloud Properties Between Polluted And Pristine Air Based On In-Situ Observations From The Nasa Attrex, Nsf Hippo And Eu Inca Campaigns, Minghui Diao, Jorgen Jensen

Faculty Publications, Meteorology and Climate Science

Cirrus clouds, covering about 30% of the Earth’s surface area, play an important role in the climate and weather systems. Cirrus cloud radiative forcing (cooling or warming) is influenced by their microphysical (e.g., ice crystal number concentration and size distribution) and macroscopic (e.g., spatial extent) properties. Currently it is still unclear how the formation of cirrus clouds and their microphysical properties are influenced by anthropogenic emissions. In this work, we use in-situ observations from three flight campaigns to compare the cirrus cloud properties between polluted and pristine regions. Our dataset includes: (1) the NASA Airborne Tropical Tropopause Experiment (ATTREX) campaign …

The Sluggs Survey: Multipopulation Dynamical Modelling Of The Elliptical Galaxy Ngc 1407 From Stars And Globular Clusters, Vincenzo Pota, Aaron Romanowsky, Jean Brodie, Jorge Peñarrubia, Duncan Forbes, Nicola Napolitano, Caroline Foster, Matthew Walker, Jay Strader, Joel Roediger

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Frustrated Abc Triblock Terpolymers Morphologies, Madalyn Radlauer, Yusuke Asai, Christophe Sinturel, Marc Hillmyer

Faculty Publications, Chemistry

No abstract provided.

Investigating The Paleoecological Consequences Of Supercontinent Breakup: Sponges Clean Up In The Early Jurassic, Frank Corsetti, Kathleen Ritterbush, David Bottjer, Sarah Greene, Yadira Ibarra, Joyce Yager, A. Joshua West, William Berelson, Silvia Rosas, Thorsten Becker, Naomi Levine, Sean Loyd, Rowan Martindale, Victoria Petryshyn, Nathan Carroll, Elizabeth Petsios, Olivia Piazza, Carlie Pietsch, Jessica Stellmann, Jeffrey Thompson, Kirstin Washington, Dylan Wilmeth

Faculty Publications

The continued release of fossil fuel carbon into the atmosphere today means it is imperative to understand Earth system response to CO2 rise, and the geologic record offers unique opportunities to investigate such behavior. Stomatal and paleosol proxies demonstrate a large change in atmospheric pCO2 across the Triassic-Jurassic (T-J) transition, concomitant with the eruption and emplacement of the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province (CAMP) and the splitting of Pangea. As one of the “big 5” mass extinctions—when the so-called modern fauna was particularly hard hit—we know the biosphere was severely affected during this time, but the details are relatively poorly understood, …

A Sluggs And Gemini/Gmos Combined Study Of The Elliptical Galaxy M60: Wide-Field Photometry And Kinematics Of The Globular Cluster System, Vincenzo Pota, Jean Brodie, Terry Bridges, Jay Strader, Aaron Romanowsky, Alexa Villaume, Zach Jennings, Favio Faifer, Nicola Pastorello, Duncan Forbes, Ainsley Campbell, Christopher Usher, Caroline Foster, Lee Spitler, Nelson Caldwell, Juan Forte, Mark Norris, Stephen Zepf, Michael Beasley, Karl Gebhardt, David Hanes, Ray Sharples, Jacob Arnold

Faculty Publications

We present new wide-field photometry and spectroscopy of the globular clusters (GCs) around NGC 4649 (M60), the third brightest galaxy in the Virgo cluster. Imaging of NGC 4649 was assembled from a recently obtained Hubble Space Telescope/Advanced Camera for Surveys mosaic, and new Subaru/Suprime-Cam and archival Canada–France–Hawaii Telescope/MegaCam data. About 1200 sources were followed up spectroscopically using combined observations from three multi-object spectrographs: Keck/Deep Imaging Multi-Object Spectrograph, Gemini/Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph and Multiple Mirror Telescope/Hectospec. We confirm 431 unique GCs belonging to NGC 4649, a factor of 3.5 larger than previous data sets and with a factor of 3 improvement in …

Distributions Of Ice Supersaturation And Ice Crystals From Airborne Observations In Relation To Upper Tropospheric Dynamical Boundaries, Minghui Diao, Jorgen Jensen, Laura Pan, Cameron Homeyer, Shawn Honomichl, James Bresch, Aaron Bansemer

Faculty Publications, Meteorology and Climate Science

Ice supersaturation (ISS) is the prerequisite condition for cirrus cloud formation. To examine multiscale dynamics' influences on ISS formation, we analyze in situ aircraft observations (~200 m scale) over North America in coordinates relative to dynamical boundaries in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere. Two case studies demonstrate that ISS formation is likely influenced by mesoscale uplifting, small-scale waves, and turbulence. A collective analysis of 15 flights in April–June 2008 shows that the top layers of ISS and ice crystal distributions are strongly associated with thermal tropopause height. In addition, the average occurrence frequencies of ISS and ice crystals on …

Mining Concept In Big Data, Jingjing Yang

Master's Projects

To fruitful using big data, data mining is necessary. There are two well-known methods, one is based on apriori principle, and the other one is based on FP-tree. In this project we explore a new approach that is based on simplicial complex, which is a combinatorial form of polyhedron used in algebraic topology. Our approach, similar to FP-tree, is top down, at the same time, it is based on apriori principle in geometric form, called closed condition in simplicial complex. Our method is almost 300 times faster than FP-growth on a real world database using a SJSU laptop. The database …

Adding Syntax Parameters To The Sweet.Js Macro Library For Javascript, Vimal Kumar

Master's Projects

Lisp and Scheme have demonstrated the power of macros to enable programmers to evolve and craft languages. A macro is a rule or pattern that specifies how a certain input sequence should be mapped to an output sequence according to some defined procedure. Using a macro system a programmer can introduce new syntactic elements to the programming language. Macros found in a program are expanded by a macro expander and allow a programmer to enable code reuse. Mozilla Sweet.JS provides a way for developers to enrich their JavaScript code by adding new syntax to the language through the use of …

Introducing Faceted Exception Handling For Dynamic Information Flow, Sri Tej Narala

Master's Projects

JavaScript is most commonly used as a part of web browsers, especially client- side scripts interacting with the user. JavaScript is also the source of many security problems, which includes cross-site scripting attacks. The primary challenge is that code from untrusted sources run with full privileges on the client side, thus lead- ing to security breaches. This paper develops information flow controls with proper exception handling to prevent violations of data confidentiality and integrity.

Faceted values are a mechanism to handle dynamic information flow security in a way that overcomes the limitations caused by dynamic execution, but previous work has …

Support Vector Machines And Metamorphic Malware Detection, Tanuvir Singh

Master's Projects

Metamorphic malware changes its internal structure with each infection, which makes it challenging to detect. In this research, we test several scor- ing techniques that have shown promise in metamorphic detection. We then perform a careful robustness analysis by employing morphing strategies that cause each score to fail. Finally, we show that combining scores using a Sup- port Vector Machine (SVM) yields results that are significantly more robust than we obtained using any of the individual scores.

Cryptanalysis Of Classic Ciphers Using Hidden Markov Models, Rohit Vobbilisetty

Master's Projects

Cryptanalysis is the study of identifying weaknesses in the implementation of cryptographic algorithms. This process would improve the complexity of such algo- rithms, making the system secure.

In this research, we apply Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) to classic cryptanaly- sis problems. We show that with sufficient ciphertext, an HMM can be used to break a simple substitution cipher. We also show that when limited ciphertext is avail- able, using multiple random restarts for the HMM increases our chance of successful decryption.

Optimization Of Scheduling And Dispatching Cars On Demand, Vu Tran

Master's Projects

Taxicab is the most common type of on-demand transportation service in the city because its dispatching system offers better services in terms of shorter wait time. However, the shorter wait time and travel time for multiple passengers and destinations are very considerable. There are recent companies implemented the real-time ridesharing model that expects to reduce the riding cost when passengers are willing to share their rides with the others. This model does not solve the shorter wait time and travel time when there are multiple passengers and destinations. This paper investigates how the ridesharing can be improved by using the …

Clustering Versus Svm For Malware Detection, Usha Narra

Master's Projects

Previous work has shown that we can effectively cluster certain classes of mal- ware into their respective families. In this research, we extend this previous work to the problem of developing an automated malware detection system. We first compute clusters for a collection of malware families. Then we analyze the effectiveness of clas- sifying new samples based on these existing clusters. We compare results obtained using �-means and Expectation Maximization (EM) clustering to those obtained us- ing Support Vector Machines (SVM). Using clustering, we are able to detect some malware families with an accuracy comparable to that of SVMs. One …