Computer Sciences Commons^™

Declassification Of Faceted Values In Javascript, Shreya Gangishetty

Master's Projects

This research addresses the issues with protecting sensitive information at the language level using information flow control mechanisms (IFC). Most of the IFC mechanisms face the challenge of releasing sensitive information in a restricted or limited manner. This research uses faceted values, an IFC mechanism that has shown promising flexibility for downgrading the confidential information in a secure manner, also called declassification.

In this project, we introduce the concept of first-class labels to simplify the declassification of faceted values. To validate the utility of our approach we show how the combination of faceted values and first-class labels can build various …

Predictive Analysis For Cloud Infrastructure Metrics, Paridhi Agrawal

Master's Projects

In a cloud computing environment, enterprises have the flexibility to request resources according to their application demands. This elastic feature of cloud computing makes it an attractive option for enterprises to host their applications on the cloud. Cloud providers usually exploit this elasticity by auto-scaling the application resources for quality assurance. However, there is a setup-time delay that may take minutes between the demand for a new resource and it being prepared for utilization. This causes the static resource provisioning techniques, which request allocation of a new resource only when the application breaches a specific threshold, to be slow and …

Recovering Depth From Stereo Without Using Any Oculomotor Information, Tadamasa Sawada

MODVIS Workshop

The human visual system uses binocular disparity to perceive depth within 3D scenes. It is commonly assumed that the visual system needs oculomotor information about the relative orientation of the two eyes to perceive depth on the basis of binocular disparity. The necessary oculomotor information can be obtained from an efference copy of the oculomotor signals, or from a 2D distribution of the vertical disparity, specifically, from the vertical component of binocular disparity. It is known that oculomotor information from the efference copy and from the vertical disparity distribution can affect the perception of depth based on binocular disparity. But, …

Mapping In The Humanities: Gis Lessons For Poets, Historians, And Scientists, Emily W. Fairey

Open Educational Resources

User-friendly Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is the common thread of this collection of presentations, and activities with full lesson plans. The first section of the site contains an overview of cartography, the art of creating maps, and then looks at historical mapping platforms like Hypercities and Donald Rumsey Historical Mapping Project. In the next section Google Earth Desktop Pro is introduced, with lessons and activities on the basics of GE such as pins, paths, and kml files, as well as a more complex activity on "georeferencing" an historic map over Google Earth imagery. The final section deals with ARCGIS Online …

Structured Indoor Modeling, Chen Liu

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

In this dissertation, we propose data-driven approaches to reconstruct 3D models for indoor scenes which are represented in a structured way (e.g., a wall is represented by a planar surface and two rooms are connected via the wall). The structured representation of models is more application ready than dense representations (e.g., a point cloud), but poses additional challenges for reconstruction since extracting structures requires high-level understanding about geometries. To address this challenging problem, we explore two common structural regularities of indoor scenes: 1) most indoor structures consist of planar surfaces (planarity), and 2) structural surfaces (e.g., walls and floor) can …

Management And Security Of Multi-Cloud Applications, Lav Gupta

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Single cloud management platform technology has reached maturity and is quite successful in information technology applications. Enterprises and application service providers are increasingly adopting a multi-cloud strategy to reduce the risk of cloud service provider lock-in and cloud blackouts and, at the same time, get the benefits like competitive pricing, the flexibility of resource provisioning and better points of presence. Another class of applications that are getting cloud service providers increasingly interested in is the carriers' virtualized network services. However, virtualized carrier services require high levels of availability and performance and impose stringent requirements on cloud services. They necessitate the …

High Performance Wireless Sensor-Actuator Networks For Industrial Internet Of Things, Dolvara Gunatilaka

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Wireless Sensor-Actuator Networks (WSANs) enable cost-effective communication for Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). To achieve predictability and reliability demanded by industrial applications, industrial wireless standards (e.g., WirelessHART) incorporate a set of unique features such as a centralized management architecture, Time Slotted Channel Hopping (TSCH), and conservative channel selection. However, those features also incur significant degradation in performance, efficiency, and agility. To overcome these key limitations of existing industrial wireless technologies, this thesis work develops and empirically evaluates a suite of novel network protocols and algorithms.

The primary contributions of this thesis are four-fold. (1) We first build an experimental testbed …

Toward Controllable And Robust Surface Reconstruction From Spatial Curves, Zhiyang Huang

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Reconstructing surface from a set of spatial curves is a fundamental problem in computer graphics and computational geometry. It often arises in many applications across various disciplines, such as industrial prototyping, artistic design and biomedical imaging. While the problem has been widely studied for years, challenges remain for handling different type of curve inputs while satisfying various constraints. We study studied three related computational tasks in this thesis. First, we propose an algorithm for reconstructing multi-labeled material interfaces from cross-sectional curves that allows for explicit topology control. Second, we addressed the consistency restoration, a critical but overlooked problem in applying …

Real-Time Reliable Middleware For Industrial Internet-Of-Things, Chao Wang

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation contributes to the area of adaptive real-time and fault-tolerant systems research, applied to Industrial Internet-of-Things (IIoT) systems. Heterogeneous timing and reliability requirements arising from IIoT applications have posed challenges for IIoT services to efficiently differentiate and meet such requirements. Specifically, IIoT services must both differentiate processing according to applications' timing requirements (including latency, event freshness, and relative consistency of each other) and enforce the needed levels of assurance for data delivery (even as far as ensuring zero data loss). It is nontrivial for an IIoT service to efficiently differentiate such heterogeneous IIoT timing/reliability requirements to fit each application, …

Comparison Between Two Group Signature Schemes, Hao Yang

Rose-Hulman Undergraduate Research Publications

Zerocoin is a cryptographic extension to Bitcoin. During its development, the developers decided to make use of group signature schemes to store and verify the coins. In order to compare the performance of Simple Authentication Scheme and the Dynamic Signature Scheme and figure out which one is the optimal choice for the Zerocoin scheme, I implemented them in Java and analyzed them theoretically. This paper will discuss the performance difference between two schemes, the Java implementation of them and the analysis.

Simplicity Diffexpress: A Bespoke Cloud-Based Interface For Rna-Seq Differential Expression Modeling And Analysis, Cintia C. Palu, Marcelo Ribeiro-Alves, Yanxin Wu, Brendan Lawlor, Pavel V. Baranov, Brian Kelly, Paul Walsh

Department of Computer Science Publications

One of the key challenges for transcriptomics-based research is not only the processing of large data but also modeling the complexity of features that are sources of variation across samples, which is required for an accurate statistical analysis. Therefore, our goal is to foster access for wet lab researchers to bioinformatics tools, in order to enhance their ability to explore biological aspects and validate hypotheses with robust analysis. In this context, user-friendly interfaces can enable researchers to apply computational biology methods without requiring bioinformatics expertise. Such bespoke platforms can improve the quality of the findings by allowing the researcher to …

Module: Robot Senses, Mohammad Azhar

Open Educational Resources

Learning Objectives:

Students will be able to:

• Describe the basics of Sensors

• Learn how to program the LEGO Robot to make decision using touch sensors

Module: Robot Locomotion Mini Hackathon, Mohammad Azhar

Open Educational Resources

Learning Objectives:

Students will be able to:

• Describe the basics of Robots.

• Describe basic hardware and software of the LEGO Robot.

• Write sequential code for LEGO Robot to move.

Shared-Environment Call-By-Need, George W. Stelle

Computer Science ETDs

Call-by-need semantics formalize the wisdom that work should be done at most once. It frees programmers to focus more on the correctness of their code, and less on the operational details. Because of this property, programmers of lazy functional languages rely heavily on their compiler to both preserve correctness and generate high-performance code for high level abstractions. In this dissertation I present a novel technique for compiling call-by-need semantics by using shared environments to share results of computation. I show how the approach enables a compiler that generates high-performance code, while staying simple enough to lend itself to formal reasoning. …

Fluid Transport In Porous Media For Engineering Applications, Eric M. Benner

Chemical and Biological Engineering ETDs

This doctoral dissertation presents three topics in modeling fluid transport through porous media used in engineering applications. The results provide insights into the design of fuel cell components, catalyst and drug delivery particles, and aluminum- based materials. Analytical and computational methods are utilized for the modeling of the systems of interest. Theoretical analysis of capillary-driven transport in porous media show that both geometric and evaporation effects significantly change the time dependent behavior of liquid imbibition and give a steady state flux into the medium. The evaporation–capillary number is significant in determining the time-dependent behavior of capillary flows in porous media. …

Self-Driving Cars: Evaluation Of Deep Learning Techniques For Object Detection In Different Driving Conditions, Ramesh Simhambhatla, Kevin Okiah, Shravan Kuchkula, Robert Slater

SMU Data Science Review

Deep Learning has revolutionized Computer Vision, and it is the core technology behind capabilities of a self-driving car. Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) are at the heart of this deep learning revolution for improving the task of object detection. A number of successful object detection systems have been proposed in recent years that are based on CNNs. In this paper, an empirical evaluation of three recent meta-architectures: SSD (Single Shot multi-box Detector), R-CNN (Region-based CNN) and R-FCN (Region-based Fully Convolutional Networks) was conducted to measure how fast and accurate they are in identifying objects on the road, such as vehicles, pedestrians, …

Code4her Spring 2019, Aidan White

Honors Projects

CODE4her is a mentorship program for girls in grades 5-8. Participants are paired with a BGSU student who acts as their mentor for the duration of the session. The goal of the organization is to give the girls a welcoming environment where the participants are able to learn about computer science.

On Properties Of Distance-Based Entropies On Fullerene Graphs, Modjtaba Ghorbani, Matthias Dehmer, Mina Rajabi-Parsa, Abbe Mowshowitz, Frank Emmert-Streib

Publications and Research

In this paper, we study several distance-based entropy measures on fullerene graphs. These include the topological information content of a graph I_a(G), a degree-based entropy measure, the eccentric-entropy If_s(G), the Hosoya entropy H(G) and, finally, the radial centric information entropy H_ecc. We compare these measures on two infinite classes of fullerene graphs denoted by A_12n+4 and B_12n+6. We have chosen these measures as they are easily computable and capture meaningful graph properties. To demonstrate the utility of these measures, we investigate the Pearson correlation between them on the fullerene graphs.

Depressiongnn: Depression Prediction Using Graph Neural Network On Smartphone And Wearable Sensors, Param Bidja

Honors Scholar Theses

Depression prediction is a complicated classification problem because depression diagnosis involves many different social, physical, and mental signals. Traditional classification algorithms can only reach an accuracy of no more than 70% given the complexities of depression. However, a novel approach using Graph Neural Networks (GNN) can be used to reach over 80% accuracy, if a graph can represent the depression data set to capture differentiating features. Building such a graph requires 1) the definition of node features, which must be highly correlated with depression, and 2) the definition for edge metrics, which must also be highly correlated with depression. In …

Increasing The Effectiveness Of Impossible Spaces In Virtual Environments Using Moving Textures, Dylan Devenny

Honors Theses

This study looks to examine a method of overcoming the limitations caused by the size of a physical tracking area in virtual reality environments known as impossible spaces and attempt to improve its efficiency by altering the texture flow of the virtual environment. The experiment involves running participants through a series of small buildings consisting of two rooms in which the percentage of overlap between the two rooms and the ratio of texture movement to user movement (corresponding to textural ow conditions) differs from trial to trial and asking participants to make a judgement of whether or not the environment …

Building Of Mira’S Ghost Cleansing Services, Ashley Vargas

Honors College Theses

In this thesis, I built a PC game called Mira’s Cleansing Services. It is a sidescroller game that follows the story of a female exorcist for-hire who is also a high school student. Using ABC Scrum, a modified version of Scrum for game development, I developed the game using Game Maker. Additionally, I created all the art and music in different software. Because of time constraints and because I was working alone, I only developed the first level of the game. However, I plan to continue developing the game after this semester to eventually complete and publish it. My ultimate …

Assessing Code Obfuscation Of Metamorphic Javascript, Kaushik Murli

Master's Projects

Metamorphic malware is one of the biggest and most ubiquitous threats in the digital world. It can be used to morph the structure of the target code without changing the underlying functionality of the code, thus making it very difficult to detect using signature-based detection and heuristic analysis. The focus of this project is to analyze Metamorphic JavaScript malware and techniques that can be used to mutate the code in JavaScript. To assess the capabilities of the metamorphic engine, we performed experiments to visualize the degree of code morphing. Further, this project discusses potential methods that have been used to …

Low-Cost 8mm/Super 8 Film Digitization Using A Canon 9000f Ii Flatbed Scanner And Photoshop: A Case Study, Kenneth Eckert

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

For some fifty years, 8mm/Super 8 movie film was a widespread format for home movies and amateur hobbyists; yet the films and projection or telecine transfer equipment are now aging and obscure, presenting a difficulty for archivists and filmmakers. Online DIY solutions usually involve photographing the film with a DSLR and macro bellows, requiring a high degree of expertise and expense. This case study examines typical problems and proposes a simpler and low-cost solution involving using a Canon flatbed scanner with a transparency adapter and improvised film holder, and more importantly, describes technical solutions and script code to straighten and …

Indoor Localization Using A Smartphone: Approaches, Issues, And Challenges, Lee J. Easson

Honors Theses

Localization has gained priority in an increasingly inter-connected world. The majority of industries and sectors require some means of tracking the location of objects and/or people anywhere on the Earth, whether indoors or outdoors. GPS is an already-implemented and viable solution for outdoor localization. However, indoor localization is more challenging to implement and thus has become a broad area of research. Despite the challenges of tracking location in places where satellite GPS signals are unreliable or unreachable (i.e. within a building or structure), there has been considerable progress made in indoor localization research. Although current indoor localization technology can achieve …

Species Classification Using Dna Barcoding And Profile Hidden Markov Models, Sphoorti Poojary

Master's Projects

Traditional classification systems for living organisms like the Linnaean taxonomy involved classification based on morphological features of species. This traditional system is being replaced by molecular approaches which involve using gene sequences. The COI gene, also known as the ”DNA barcode” since it is unique in every species, can be used to uniquely identify organisms and thus, classify them. Classifying using gene sequences has many advantages, including correct identification of cryptic species(individuals which appear similar but belong to different species) and species which are extremely small in size. In this project, I worked on classifying COI sequences of unknown species …

Image Compression Using Neural Networks, Kunal Rajan Deshmukh

Master's Projects

Image compression is a well-studied field of Computer Vision. Recently, many neural network based architectures have been proposed for image compression as well as enhancement. These networks are also put to use by frameworks such as end-to-end image compression.

In this project, we have explored the improvements that can be made over this framework to achieve better benchmarks in compressing images. Generative Adversarial Networks are used to generate new fake images which are very similar to original images. Single Image Super-Resolution Generative Adversarial Networks

(SI-SRGAN) can be employed to improve image quality. Our proposed architecture can be divided into four …

College Of Engineering Senior Design Competition Spring 2019, University Of Nevada, Las Vegas

Fred and Harriet Cox Senior Design Competition Projects

Part of every UNLV engineering student’s academic experience, the senior design project stimulates engineering innovation and entrepreneurship. Each student in their senior year chooses, plans, designs, and prototypes a product in this required element of the curriculum. A capstone to the student’s educational career, the senior design project encourages the student to use everything learned in the engineering program to create a practical, real world solution to an engineering challenge. The senior design competition helps focus the senior students in increasing the quality and potential for commercial application for their design projects. Judges from local industry evaluate the projects on …

Effects Of Halogen Bonding On 13c Nmr Shifts Of Iodotolan, James Long

Honors Theses

Halogen bonding is the ability of heavier halogens to have noncovalent interactions similar to hydrogen bonding. By mixing two compounds that should halogen bond together and analyzing this mixture with carbon NMR spectroscopy, we attempted to test the strength and extent of halogen bonding in 4-iodotolan. After observing the changes in the 4-iodotolans chemical shifts, the halogen bond appears to be too weak to affect the chemical shifts in a substantial manner; however, the C-I bonded carbon shows a slight but consistent increase in its shift which could be an avenue for future research.

Examining Augmented Virtuality Impairment Simulation For Mobile App Accessibility Design, Tsu Wei, Kenny (Zhu Shuwei, Kenny) Choo, Rajesh Krishna Balan, Rajesh Krishna Balan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

With mobile apps rapidly permeating all aspects of daily living with use by all segments of the population, it is crucial to support the evaluation of app usability for specific impaired users to improve app accessibility. In this work, we examine the effects of using our augmented virtuality impairment simulation system–Empath-D–to support experienced designer-developers to redesign a mockup of commonly used mobile application for cataract-impaired users, comparing this with existing tools that aid designing for accessibility. We show that the use of augmented virtuality for assessing usability supports enhanced usability challenge identification, finding more defects and doing so more accurately …

Worker Demographics And Earnings On Amazon Mechanical Turk: An Exploratory Analysis, Kotaro Hara, Kristy Milland, Benjamin V. Hanrahan, Chris Callison-Burch, Abigail Adams, Saiph Savage, Jeffrey P. Bigham

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Prior research reported that workers on Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT) are underpaid, earning about $2/h. But the prior research did not investigate the difference in wage due to worker characteristics (e.g., country of residence). We present the first data-driven analysis on wage gap on AMT. Using work log data and demographic data collected via online survey, we analyse the gap in wage due to different factors. We show that there is indeed wage gap; for example, workers in the U.S. earn $3.01/h while those in India earn $1.41/h on average.