Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Parweb: A Front-End Interface For Cluster Computing., Jacob Potter

Honors Theses

The High Performance Computational Science Laboratory at Western Michigan University operates a cluster of systems for use by students, professors, and professional researchers. Currently users that want to access the cluster, known as “Thor”, require knowledge of the Unix/Linux command line. They also require knowledge of operating a piece of software known as TORQUE to correctly achieve results from the High Performance Computing Lab.

The Web User Interface Framework for High Performance Cluster Computing alleviates the need for intimate knowledge of a command line interface, and replaces the current interaction interface with a more user friendly and graphical oriented system. …

Multisensory Emotion Recognition With Speech And Facial Expression, Jacob P. Roeland

Honors Theses

Computers through both desktop and mobile devices are only becoming more important in our lives leading us to have more involved and longer interactions with them. Because of this our brains actually classify our involvement with them in a manner similar to our interactions with our fellow humans. This can lead to frustration and anxiety when our computers interrupt our work or pleasure with contextually inappropriate messages, much the same way it would if a friend or co-worker was pushy or rude. A way to solve this issue is to give our machines emotional intelligence, or the ability to recognize …

Evolving Soft Robots With Vibration Based Movement, Andrew Danise

Honors Theses

Creating effective designs for soft robots is extremely difficult due to the large number of different possibilities for shape, material properties, and movement mechanisms. Due to the lack of methods to design soft robots, previous research has used evolutionary algorithms to tackle this problem of overwhelming options. A popular technique is to use generative encodings to create designs using evolutionary algorithms because of their modularity and ability to induce large scale coordinated change. The main drawback of generative encodings is that it is difficult to know where along the ontogenic trajectory resides the phenotype with the highest fitness. The two …

Aggressive Monetization: Why The Pay For Currency Model Is Dominating The Ios App Store Today, Theodore Kitchen

Honors Theses

The Apple iOS App Store has only been around for 5 years, and yet it has completely changed the way that mobile software is distributed. In this brief period, the online marketplace has seen dramatic shifts in the most successful strategies used by iOS software developers and, more specifically, game developers to gain revenue. As of March 14th 2014 fifteen of the twenty top-grossing iOS apps feature some form of in-app currency that users may purchase with real money, eighteen are mobile video games, and all twenty of these apps are free to download. This paper explores a new business …

Applying The Poincaré Recurrence Theorem To Billiards, Aaron Smith

Honors Theses

The Poincaré recurrence theorem is one of the first and most fundamental theorems of ergodic theory. When applied to a dynamical system satisfying the theorem's hypothesis, it roughly states that the system will, within a finite amount of time, return to a state arbitrarily close to its initial state. This result is intriguing and controversial, providing a contradiction with the Second Law of Thermodynamics known as the recurrence paradox. Here, we treat a set of pool balls on a billiard table as a dynamical system that satisfies the hypotheses of the Poincaré recurrence theorem. We prove that time is a …

Implementation Of A Visualizer For Web Request Data Generated By An Internet Information Services Server, Daniel J. Garrett

Honors Theses

I was tasked by Graham Green at FNC, Inc. to design a web tool that is capable of visualizing log data that is produced by FNC's many servers. These logs contain data that will warn Graham about web pages that are failing, servers that are experiencing heavy loads, and sundry other pieces of information, but the data is pure text, and each server has thousands of logs. A visual tool is needed to display necessary information about the data. Rather than make a graph for each individual purpose that might be needed, I built visualization tools that are customizable for …

Statistical Analysis Of The Variability And Reliability Of Eye-Tracking Test In Measuring Mild Traumatic Brain Injury, Xi He

Honors Theses

Saccadic eye-tracking tests have been advocated as a useful tool to distinguish mTBI patients from healthy people. However, intra-individual variances sometimes interfere with the interpretation of eye-tracking results, especially in experiments when group size is restricted. This study analyzes eye-tracking results of 14 mTBI patients taking the test twice with no medical administration in between. Using more accurate models to fit each individual's result, variables such as asymptote (of the fit func­tions) and hypothetical values for peak velocity, peak acceleration, and duration are derived for variability analysis. We conclude that the asymptotes for peak velocity and peak acceleration are the …

Dynamic Feature Extraction And User Classification Using Touchanalytics™, Clay Mcleod

Honors Theses

Security systems for modern computing devices suffer from a multitude of weaknesses that can render users helpless against an attack on their system. Various attempts at incorporating human characteristics into security systems have achieved varying levels of success in improving security. In this paper, we study the usefulness of TouchAnalytics™ - a second-level security system that attempts to authenticate a user based on touch-data gathered from an interaction with the device. Through the use of machine learning algorithms, we developed a system that is successful at au- thenticating users, achieving under 0.05% False Authentication Rate (FAR). We conclude that the …