Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Trends In The Ams Education Symposium And Highlights From 2012, Rajul Pandya, Donna Charlevoix, Eugene Cordero, David Smith, Sepi Yalda

Eugene C. Cordero

The Department of Meteorology (now Atmospheric Sciences) at the University of Utah faced reductions in state funding in 2008 that reduced support for nontenured instructors at the same time that the faculty were becoming increasingly successful obtaining federally supported research grants. A faculty retreat and subsequent discussions led to substantive curriculum changes to modernize the curriculum, enhance course offerings for undergraduate and graduate students, and improve the overall efficiency of the academic program. Maintaining discipline standards and existing teaching loads were important constraints on these changes. Key features of the curriculum revisions for undergraduate majors included eliminating a very rigid …

Trends In The Ams Education Symposium And Highlights From 2012, Rajul Pandya, Donna Charlevoix, Eugene Cordero, David Smith, Sepi Yalda

Faculty Publications, Meteorology and Climate Science

The Department of Meteorology (now Atmospheric Sciences) at the University of Utah faced reductions in state funding in 2008 that reduced support for nontenured instructors at the same time that the faculty were becoming increasingly successful obtaining federally supported research grants. A faculty retreat and subsequent discussions led to substantive curriculum changes to modernize the curriculum, enhance course offerings for undergraduate and graduate students, and improve the overall efficiency of the academic program. Maintaining discipline standards and existing teaching loads were important constraints on these changes. Key features of the curriculum revisions for undergraduate majors included eliminating a very rigid …

Using Marine Snails To Teach Biogeography And Macroevolution: The Role Of Larvae And Dispersal Ability In The Evolution And Persistence Of Species, Jonathan R. Hendricks

Faculty Publications

While some marine animals are capable of traveling great distances, many have limited mobility as adults and spend the majority of their lifetimes in a small geographical area or may even be cemented to a single place. While it might be expected that species with limited mobility would have small geographic distributions, some nevertheless occur over very large areas. This is the case for some marine snails (gastropods). A key factor that impacts the geographic distribution of marine snails is the type of larvae they have during the phase of their life history that follows hatching from an egg. Because …

University Scholar Series: Craig B. Clements, Craig B. Clements

University Scholar Series

Groundbreaking Research on Wildfire Weather

On November 28, 2012 Craig B. Clements spoke in the University Scholar Series hosted by Provost Ellen Junn at the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library. Craig Clements is an associate professor in the Department of Meteorology and Climate Science who received a $900,000 National Science Foundation CAREER grant for his work in tracking atmospheric conditions in and around wildfires. His work will better help predict wildfire behavior and conditions that could lead to increased wildfire danger.

Water Vapor And Temperature Comparisons Between Airs/Amsu-A And In Situ Aircraft Observations From 87°N To 67°S And Sensitivities To Spatial And Temporal Differences, Minghui Diao, Loayeh Jumbam, Justin Sheffield, Eric Wood, Mark Zondlo

Faculty Publications, Meteorology and Climate Science

No abstract available.

Algorithms For Predicting Secondary Structures Of Human Viruses, Hardik Shah

Master's Projects

The mechanism and role of RNA secondary structure elements in the replication and translation of human positive-strand RNA viruses remains poorly understood. These secondary structures are formed when a single RNA strand folds over and base pairs with itself, forming various types of loop structures. RNA strands fold into specific shapes. This unique shape for each nucleic acid chain is the most stable state it can adopt. The lower the energy, i.e., the fold with highest number of base pairs, the higher the stability of the structure. The Dynamic Programming technique, such as the one used in Nussinov- Jacobson algorithm, …

The Visualization Of Historical Structures And Data In A 3d Virtual City, Bryant Panyarachun

Master's Projects

Google Earth is a powerful tool that allows users to navigate through 3D representations of many cities and places all over the world. Google Earth has a huge collection of 3D models and it only continues to grow as users all over the world continue to contribute new models. As new buildings are built new models are also created. But what happens when a new building replaces another? The same thing that happens in reality also happens in Google Earth. Old models are replaced with new models. While Google Earth shows the most current data, many users would also benefit …

Easier Debugging Of Multithreaded Software, Sampada Kathare

Master's Projects

Software activation is a technique designed to avoid illegal use of a licensed software. This is achieved by having a legitimate user enter a software activation key to validate the purchase of the software. Generally, a software is a single-threaded program. From an attacker’s perspective, who does not wish to pay for this software, it is not hard to reverse engineer such a single threaded program and trace its path of execution. With tools such as OllyDbg, the attacker can look into the disassembled code of this software and find out where the verification logic is being performed and then …

Eigenvalue Analysis For Metamorphic Detection, Sayali Deshpande

Master's Projects

Metamorphic viruses change their structure on each infection while maintaining their function. Although many detection techniques have been proposed, practical and effective metamorphic detection remains a difficult challenge. In this project, we analyze a novel method for detecting metamorphic viruses. Our approach was inspired by a well-known facial recognition technique that is based on eigenvalue analysis. We compute eigenvectors using opcode sequences extracted from a set of known metamorphic viruses. These eigenvectors can then be used to score a given executable file, based on its extracted opcode sequence. We perform extensive testing to determine the effectiveness of this scoring technique …

Semantic Discovery Through Text Processing, Bieu Binh Do

Master's Projects

As the world embraces the digital era, unprecedented volumes of information are generated and consumed daily. It becomes difficult to comb through mountains of documents to locate search topics. With inherent ambiguity in human languages, conventional methods using straight text pattern match cannot resolve words having multiple meanings and often misinterpret user intent. There is a need to develop a system able to identify the target topic and return quality relevant links, ending the tedium of rummaging through piles of unrelated links that may get lost in the rubble. An example search of the words “sound investment” helps to illustrate …

Hierarchical Clustering Using Level Sets, Francesco Indaco

Master's Projects

Over the past several decades, clustering algorithms have earned their place as a go-to solution for database mining. This paper introduces a new concept which is used to develop a new recursive version of DBSCAN that can successfully perform hierarchical clustering, called Level- Set Clustering (LSC). A level-set is a subset of points of a data-set whose densities are greater than some threshold, ‘t’. By graphing the size of each level-set against its respective ‘t,’ indents are produced in the line graph which correspond to clusters in the data-set, as the points in a cluster have very similar densities. This …

Fast Melt Cooled Superconducting Alloys: (Bi1.97pb0.03sr2can‐1cuno2n+4+Δ)2 N/N’ N<24 Intergrowth, J. Kmiec, Juana Acrivos, D. Gulamova, J. Chigvinadze

Faculty Publications, Chemistry

High temperature layer superconducting cuprate (HTLSC) alloys: (Bi1.97Pb0.03Sr2Can-1CunO2n+4+δ)2 called (2s:2:n-1:n) have been grown from n-oxide stoichiometric melts in concentrated sun flux, followed by rapid cooling SFQA technology that preserves the melt tiling after annealing at 845±5oC**. Synchrotron XRD at the DOE SLAC-SSRL near the Cu K-edge has identified the mixing of n ≠ n’ alloys as observed by many in thin films last century. An ideal D17 4h Space Group structure obtains {an, bn, cn} = {3.815 Å, an+ubn, 2dP(n+3)+ucn} where dP is a perovskite sandwich, (CuO2)1/2|_Ca|(CuO2)1/2, thickness, and un are the amplitudes of periodic lattice distortions, PLD also observed …

An Approach To Solve Job Shop Scheduling Problem, Shashidhar Reddy Karnati

Master's Projects

“A biotechnology device manufacturer needs to devise effective scheduling algorithms for its testing devices. A device is a configuration of machines, each of which performs a specific task, such as washing, reading and cleaning. These devices are used to test human samples to diagnose diseases like cholera, malaria etc. Each test is a job, which is to be processed on these machines for a specific amount of time. Every job has its own pre defined sequence. These samples are to be processed simultaneously on machines owing to constraint that as soon as one machine completes processing a sample, it should …

Computational Modeling Of Protein Dynamics With Gromacs And Java, Miaoer Yu

Master's Projects

GROMACS is a widely used package in molecular dynamics simulations of biological molecules such as proteins, and nucleic acids, etc. However, it requires many steps to run such simulations from the terminal window. This could be a challenge for those with minimum amount of computer skills. Although GROMACS provides some tools to perform the standard analysis such as density calculation, atomic fluctuation calculation, it does not have tools to give us information on the specific areas such as rigidity that could predict the property of the molecules. In this project, I have developed a user friendly program to carry out …

Simple Substitution Distance And Metamorphic Detection, Gayathri Shanmugam

Master's Projects

To evade signature-based detection, metamorphic viruses transform their code before infecting a new system. Software similarity measures are potentially useful as a means of detecting metamorphic malware. We can compare a given file to a known sample of malware and compute their similarity—if they are sufficiently similar, we classify the file as malware of the same family. The goal of this project is to analyze an opcode-based software similarity measure inspired by simple substitution cipher cryptanalysis.

Stealthy Plaintext, Naidele Katrumane Manjunath

Master's Projects

Correspondence through email has become a very significant way of communication at workplaces. Information of most kinds such as text, video and audio can be shared through email, the most common being text. With confidential data being easily sharable through this method most companies monitor the emails, thus invading the privacy of employees. To avoid secret information from being disclosed it can be encrypted. Encryption hides the data effectively but this makes the data look important and hence prone to attacks to decrypt the information. It also makes it obvious that there is secret information being transferred. The most effective …

A Database-Driven Website Of Β-Thalassemia Mutations, Vanessa Gaeke

Master's Projects

β-thalassemia is a genetic disease caused by mutations of the hemoglobin gene β (HBB). Over two hundred β-thalassemia mutations are known to date. While the pathological consequence of each β-thalassemia mutation has been well documented, the effect of a mutation at the molecular level of its DNA sequence is usually not illustrated for beginners. This paper describes the cause of β-thalassemia and a database-driven website containing mutant HBB sequences altered by β-thalassemia mutations. β-thalassemia mutations and their relevant data are first collected from the HbVar Database of Pennsylvania State University and loaded into a PostgreSQL database. Wild type HBB sequences …

Improving Yioop! User Search Data Usage, Tarun Pepira Ramaswamy

Master's Projects

User data in the form of vįε̲ζβ ̀Άͪϳ̨ Κ̎β ̨ζΚ̤Ψς ̣͍ζ̤͟ ̡̤̕͘εβζ̨ Κ ̲̇̕ ̕π information about the user. This data can be utilized to provide some value-added service to the end user. Commercial search engines like Google, Bing have started taking advantage of these data and provide features like trending/popular searches, personalized search results, etc. This project aims to provide three user benefits using these user data. It provides a visualization tool of userϳ̨ navigation history across the web. This would help the users to better understand their search history. Secondly, it improves the search results in Yioop by …

Extraction Of Semantics From Primitive Concepts, Chak Li

Master's Projects

bstract Due to the need to organize a vast amount of documents available in the Internet, the automated semantic extraction representing webpages has become a popular research topic in both industry and academia. The purpose of this project is to introduce a new method to process documents to extract the original contextual representations and yet to extend additional and connect similar representations based on the semantics underneath the extracted representations in an automatic fashion. Among the purposed steps, the core of this project is to tackle the difficulty to construct a mechanism in which machines can computationally understand the lexical …

Masquerade Detection Based On Unix Commands, Amruta Mahajan

Master's Projects

In this paper, we consider the problem of masquerade detection based on a UNIX system. A masquerader is an intruder who tries to remain undetected by impersonating a legitimate user. Masquerade detection is a special case of the general intrusion detection problem. We have collected data from a large number of users. This data includes infor- mation on user commands and a variety of other aspects of user behavior that can be used to construct a profile of a given user. Hidden Markov models have been used to train user profiles, and the various attack strategies have been analyzed. The …

Javascript Game Engine For Mobile Using Html5, Nakul Vishwas Natu

Master's Projects

The goal of this project was to develop an HTML5-based mobile JavaScript game engine. Developers can use this game engine to create platform independent mobile games. It provides support for sprite animation, physics, event handling, orientation handling, collision detection and entity management. HTML5 local storage was used to achieve game persistence. The games created using this game engine can be stored on the home screen of the device as a data URL. When the user launches the data URL, the game opens up in a browser and the entire process is similar to launching a native application. HTML5 has many …

Video In The Cloud Tcp Congestion Control Optimization For Cloud Computing, Rafael Alvarez-Horine

Master's Projects

With the popularity of video streaming, a new type of media player has been created called the adaptive video player that adjusts video quality based on available network bandwidth. Merging this technology with cloud computing will change the online video landscape by allowing providers to dynamically create media servers that take advantage of all the benefits of cloud computing. This however is not a straightforward endeavor as unlike a traditional data center; a cloud-based infrastructure is subject to a greater amount of performance variability. While the adaptive video player is designed to cope with variability in general, a video server …

Algorithms For Solving The Reducts Problem In Rough Sets, Shuang Wang

Master's Projects

This work deals with finding minimal reducts of decision table based on the rough sets theory. Its goal is to develop algorithms capable of finding such reducts. Two algorithms are presented in this report: the first based on Boolean reasoning function, the second based on Genetic Algorithm. Test results on real data are given and conclusions are made.

Extending Yioop! Abilities To Search The Invisible Web, Tanmayee Potluri

Master's Projects

Yioop is an open source search engine written in PHP. Yioop can be used for personal crawls on predefined URLs or as any traditional search engine to crawl the entire Web. This project added to the Yioop search engine the ability to crawl and index various resources that could be considered a part of the Invisible Web. The invisible web refers to the information like database content, non-text files, JavaScript links, password restricted sites, URL shortening services etc. on the Web. Often, a user might want to crawl and index different kinds of data which are commonly not indexed by …

Motion Learning Using The Neural Network, Priyank Shah

Master's Projects

One of the most promising topics of research in the field of artificial intelligence is the application of data captured from human motion using sensors processed with various algorithms to achieve successful data analysis. This project aims to design and develop a method to judge human motion and allows the users to see the score while they are performing motion. The Neural Network is trained to follow human expert scores on all players' motion profiles as compared with master player. This Neural Network is trained for its best performance by changing the number of iterations and the dataset passes through …

Static Type Checker Tools For Dart, Snigdha Mokkapati

Master's Projects

This project presents the static type checkers that I developed for the optional type system of the Dart programming language. Dart is an optionally typed language and as a result has an unsound type system. In this project I have created the static type checker tools for dart. The first static type checker tool ensures mandatory typing of Dart code. This checker can be invoked by giving a new compiler option that I have added to the compiler configuration. This checker will help in catching any type errors early at compile time rather than at run time. The second static …

Secure Media Streaming For Android, Jaie Patil

Master's Projects

Digital media distribution systems must protect the confidentiality and integrity of content and ensure its authenticity, without introducing excessive overhead. Of- ten, it is desirable to sacrifice some degree of cryptographic security for improved performance. In this project, we have implemented a secure streaming server for the Android platform. We consider various encryption strategies for streaming video and analyze the tradeoff between security and efficiency.

An Evaluation Of The X10 Programming Language, Xiu Guo

Master's Projects

As predicted by Moore's law, the number of transistors on a chip has been doubled approximately every two years. As miraculous as it sounds, for many years, the extra transistors have massively benefited the whole computer industry, by using the extra transistors to increase CPU clock speed, thus boosting performance. However, due to heat wall and power constraints, the clock speed cannot be increased limitlessly. Hardware vendors now have to take another path other than increasing clock speed, which is to utilize the transistors to increase the number of processor cores on each chip. This hardware structural change presents inevitable …

Analysis Of Dpa And Dema Attacks, Cheuk Wong

Master's Projects

Side channel attacks (SCA) are attacks on the implementations of cryptographic algorithms or cryptography devices that do not employ full brute force attack or exploit the weaknesses of the algorithms themselves. There are mant types of side channel attacks, and they include timing, sound, power consumptions, electromag- netic (EM) radiations, and more. A statistical side channel attack technique that uses power consumption and EM readings was developed, and they are called Differential Power Analysis (DPA) and Differential Electromagnetic Analysis respectively. DPA takes the overall power consumption readings from the system of interest, and DEMA takes a localized EM readings from …

Yioop! Introducing Autosuggest And Spell Check, Sandhya Vissapragada

Master's Projects

This project adds autosuggest and spell-check for queries in Yioop [1], a PHP- based search engine. These features help a user by reducing typing, by catching any spelling errors, and by making it easier to repeat searches. Commercial search engines like Google, run on machine clusters and use lists of popular queries from their logs to provide relevant suggestions to users. Efficient storage of data on multiple servers is responsible for minimizing response times. Yioop typically runs on a smaller number of machines compared to commercial search engines. This project aims to implement these computationally intensive functionalities in this constrained …