Systems Architecture Commons^™

Visualization Of Paleocurrents On A Web Application Using Gplates, Anjan Sapkota

MS in Computer Science Theses

Paleocurrents are flow directions derived from features of sedimentary rocks that reveal the direction of the current of wind or water that deposited the sediment. In 2015, Brand et al. created a global database of paleocurrents, which contains over 1,000,000 measurements worldwide: North America, South America, Australia, Great Britain, parts of Western Europe, China, Africa are fairly well represented; Antarctica, Eastern Europe, and Asia are modestly represented and Russia is poorly represented. The contribution of this thesis is a web application that uses the GPlates’ Application Programming Interface (API) to visualize global paleocurrents through time in an interactive way based …

Microsegmented Cloud Network Architecture Using Open-Source Tools For A Zero Trust Foundation, Sunil Arora, John Hastings

Research & Publications

This paper presents a multi-cloud networking architecture built on zero trust principles and micro-segmentation to provide secure connectivity with authentication, authorization, and encryption in transit. The proposed design includes the multi-cloud network to support a wide range of applications and workload use cases, compute resources including containers, virtual machines, and cloud-native services, including IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a service). Furthermore, open-source tools provide flexibility, agility, and independence from locking to one vendor technology. The paper provides a secure architecture with micro-segmentation and follows zero trust principles to solve multi-fold security and operational challenges.

Transitioning Our Website To Libguides Cms, Samantha Duncan, Eric Resnis

Library Faculty Presentations

In this presentation, we describe how we used data from rapid and in-depth student usability testing to assist with the redesign of the library’s website as we finally transitioned to LibGuides CMS. Using the Springy tools; LibGuides, LibGuides CMS, LibCal, and LibWizard we outlined how we were able to create and carry out this highly effective testing, resulting in a better understanding of how our students navigate our site and how to improve it. During this journey, attendees were provided with the detailed and some might say lengthy process that was undertaken to achieve our goals. We did this by …

Transforming Information Systems Management: A Reference Model For Digital Engineering Integration, John Bonar, John Hastings

Research & Publications

Digital engineering practices offer significant yet underutilized potential for improving information assurance and system lifecycle management. This paper examines how capabilities like model-based engineering, digital threads, and integrated product lifecycles can address gaps in prevailing frameworks. A reference model demonstrates applying digital engineering techniques to a reference information system, exhibiting enhanced traceability, risk visibility, accuracy, and integration. The model links strategic needs to requirements and architecture while reusing authoritative elements across views. Analysis of the model shows digital engineering closes gaps in compliance, monitoring, change management, and risk assessment. Findings indicate purposeful digital engineering adoption could transform cybersecurity, operations, service …

Setc: A Vulnerability Telemetry Collection Framework, Ryan Holeman, John Hastings, Varghese Mathew Vaidyan

Research & Publications

As emerging software vulnerabilities continuously threaten enterprises and Internet services, there is a critical need for improved security research capabilities. This paper introduces the Security Exploit Telemetry Collection (SETC) framework - an automated framework to generate reproducible vulnerability exploit data at scale for robust defensive security research. SETC deploys configurable environments to execute and record rich telemetry of vulnerability exploits within isolated containers. Exploits, vulnerable services, monitoring tools, and logging pipelines are defined via modular JSON configurations and deployed on demand. Compared to current manual processes, SETC enables automated, customizable, and repeatable vulnerability testing to produce diverse security telemetry. This …

Prompt And Accurate Grb Source Localization Aboard The Advanced Particle Astrophysics Telescope (Apt) And Its Antarctic Demonstrator (Adapt), Ye Htet, Marion Sudvarg, Jeremy Buhler, Roger Chamberlain, Wenlei Chen, James Buckley, Roger D. Chamberlain, Corrado Altomare, Matthew Andrew, Blake Bal, Richard G. Bose, Dana Braun, Eric Burns, Michael L. Cherry, Leonardo Di Venere, Jeffrey Dumonthier, Manel Errando, Stefan Funk

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

We characterize the performance of our computational pipeline for real-time gamma-ray burst (GRB) detection and localization aboard the Advanced Particle-astrophysics Telescope (APT) – a space-based observatory for MeV to TeV gamma-ray astronomy – and its smaller, balloon-borne prototype, the Antarctic Demonstrator for APT (ADAPT), whose scientific focus will be the detection of MeV transients. These instruments observe scintillation light from multiple Compton scattering and photoabsorption of gamma-ray photons across a series of CsI detector layers. We infer the incident angle of each photon's first scattering to localize its source direction to a Compton ring about the vector defined by its …

Front-End Computational Modeling And Design For The Antarctic Demonstrator For The Advanced Particle-Astrophysics Telescope, Marion Sudvarg, Ye Htet, Roger Chamberlain, Jeremy Buhler, Blake Bal, Blake Bal, Corrado Altomare, Corrado Altomare, Davide Serini, Davide Serini, Mario Nicola Mazziotta, Mario Nicola Mazziotta, Leonardo Di Venere, Leonardo Di Venere, Wenlei Chen, Wenlei Chen, James H. Buckley, Roger D. Chamberlain

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

The Advanced Particle-astrophysics Telescope (APT) is a planned space-based observatory designed to localize MeV to TeV transients such as gamma-ray bursts in real time using onboard computational hardware. The Antarctic Demonstrator for APT (ADAPT) is a prototype high-altitude balloon mission scheduled to fly during the 2025–26 season. Gamma-ray-induced scintillations in CsI tiles will be captured by perpendicular arrays of optical fibers running across both tile surfaces, as well as SiPM-based edge detectors to improve light collection and calorimetry. Signal samples are captured by analog waveform digitizer ASICs then sent to the front end of the computational pipeline, which is designed …

Federated Learning Systems For Mobile Sensing Data, Xiaopeng Jiang

Dissertations

Federated Learning (FL) has emerged as a new distributed Deep Learning (DL) paradigm that enables privacy-aware training and inference on mobile devices with help from the cloud. This dissertation presents a comprehensive exploration of FL with mobile sensing data, covering systems, applications, and optimizations.

First, a mobile-cloud FL system, FLSys, is designed to balance model performance with resource consumption, tolerate communication failures, and achieve scalability. In FLSys, different DL models with different FL aggregation methods can be trained and accessed concurrently by different apps. In addition, FLSys provides advanced privacy-preserving mechanisms and a common API for third-party app developers to …

Development Of Feature Extraction Models To Improve Image Analysis Applications In Cancer, Yu Shi

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

Cancer poses a significant global health challenge. With an estimated 20 million new cases diagnosed worldwide in 2022 and 9.7 million fatalities attributable to the disease, the economic burden of cancer is immense. It impacts healthcare systems and imposes substantial costs for its care on patients and their families. Despite advancements in early detection, prevention, and treatment that have reduced overall cancer mortality rates, the growing prevalence of cancer, particularly among younger individuals, remains a pressing issue.

Recent advancements in medical imaging technology have progressed significantly with the help of emerging computer vision and artificial intelligence (AI) technology. Despite these …

Exploring The Integration Of Blockchain In Iot Use Cases: Challenges And Opportunities, Ivannah George

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Blockchain and The Internet of Things (IoT) is a significant paradigm which has gained traction in today’s digital age as two complimentary technologies. The combination of IoT's connectivity with blockchain's security creates new opportunities and solves problems associated with centralized systems. This culminating project aims to delve deeper into the integration of blockchain technology in IoT applications based on select use cases to uncover potential benefits and significant challenges of blockchain integration across different sectors. The research objectives to be addressed are: (RO1) How emerging vulnerabilities manifest in the implementation of blockchain within current IoT ecosystems. (RO2) How current opportunities …

Smart Airports: Artificial Intelligence–Enabled Internet Of Things Networks Using Blockchain Technology, Edwin Ongola

Journal of Aviation Technology and Engineering

This article provides a perspective on how an internet of heterogeneous self-service airport terminal systems can be used for data collection, which is stored on a private or consortium blockchain depending on the ownership or operations of an airport or both. Such a setup would help to increase efficiency, reduce costs, and improve traveler experience at airport terminals. Moreover, it would allow airports to gather data directly from passengers as opposed to waiting to receive the same data from airlines. Subsequently, this data, now on a blockchain system, becomes a data source for other applications such as machine learning. In …

Microservices Architecture: Evolution, Realizing Benefits, And Addressing Challenges In The Modern Software Era -A Systematic Literature Review, Linah M. Elnaghi, Ramadan Moawad

Future Computing and Informatics Journal

This paper explores the world of modern software development and the rising popularity of microservices architecture. Microservices, a modern approach, brings benefits like scalability, Reusability, and fault tolerance. challenging traditional monolithic approaches.This survey involves a detailed comparison, unraveling the motivations behind the wide usage of microservices. This paper extracts insights from a diverse range of studies, presenting a clear and accessible synthesis of the key benefits and challenges associated with microservices architecture. Through a methodical analysis of these factors, the study aims to discern the most pivotal advantages and challenges within the domain of microservices. Steering away from complicated terminology, …

Development Of An Algorithm To Identify And Calculate The Amount Of File Slack On An Image Of A Given Drive, Nicholas Flynn

Honors Theses

As society increasingly relies on technology, the rates of cyber crime have been increasing at exponential rates. Cyber criminals are also discovering new ways to hide evidence of their crimes. This study develops a forensic analysis algorithm to evaluate the amount of file slack on an image of a drive. Slack space, leftover drive space on a disk sector after a file has been written, can be exploited to hide data. The algorithm aims to detect and calculate this slack space to help direct forensic investigations. The algorithm was evaluated on a population dataset of 100,000 files with random data …

Incorporating Intrinsic Structures Into Entity Matching And Representation Learning, Ween Jiann Lee

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

The proliferation of internet-connected devices and online services has generated vast amounts of user-generated content in various formats, such as text, visual, and spatial information. Despite the potential of advanced deep learning techniques, challenges such as fragmentation, lack of cohesive structure, and the inability to capture intrinsic data structures persist, affecting data amalgamation and quality. Our research addresses these challenges by enhancing entity matching and representation learning across graph, semi-ordered, and spatial data. These advancements have significant implications for applications in transportation, recommendation systems, and urban planning.

In entity matching, we introduce Robust BiPoly-Matching and Semi-Ordered Bidirectional Poly-Matching. Matching records …

Microkarta: Visualising Microservice Architectures, Oscar Manglaras, Alex Farkas, Peter Fule, Christoph Treude, Markus Wagner

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Conceptualising and debugging a microservice architecture can be a challenge for developers due to the complex topology of inter-service communication, which may only apparent when viewing the architecture as a whole. In this paper, we present MicroKarta, a dashboard containing three types of network diagram that visualise complex microservice architectures, and that are designed to address problems faced by developers of these architectures. Initial feedback from industry developers has been positive. This dashboard can be used by developers to explore and debug microservice architectures, and can be used to compare the effectiveness of different types of network visualisation for assisting …

Accessible Real-Time Eye-Gaze Tracking For Neurocognitive Health Assessments, A Multimodal Web-Based Approach, Daniel C. Tisdale

Master's Theses

We introduce a novel integration of real-time, predictive eye-gaze tracking models into a multimodal dialogue system tailored for remote health assessments. This system is designed to be highly accessible requiring only a conventional webcam for video input along with minimal cursor interaction and utilizes engaging gaze-based tasks that can be performed directly in a web browser. We have crafted dynamic subsystems that capture high-quality data efficiently and maintain quality through instances of user attrition and incomplete calls. Additionally, these subsystems are designed with the foresight to allow for future re-analysis using improved predictive models, as well as enable the creation …

Performance Interference Detection For Cloud-Native Applications Using Unsupervised Machine Learning Models, Eli Bakshi

Master's Theses

Contemporary cloud-native applications frequently adopt the microservice architecture, where applications are deployed within multiple containers that run on cloud virtual machines (VMs). These applications are typically hosted on public cloud platforms, where VMs from multiple cloud subscribers compete for the same physical resources on a cloud server. When a cloud subscriber application running on a VM competes for shared physical resources from other applications running on the same VM or from other VMs co-located on the same cloud server, performance interference may occur when the performance of an application degrades due to shared resource contention. Detecting such interference is crucial …

Whisper: Proximity-Based Authentication For Securely Sharing Secrets, Charles A. Vogel

Computer Science Senior Theses

Cryptography offers a wide arsenal of encryption methods to enable secure communication between two
devices that have already exchanged a shared secret. Existing techniques for exchanging a shared secret,
however, are often vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks, require special hardware for out-of-band com-
munications, or require a pre-existing Internet connection. With the constantly increasing prevalence of
Internet of Things (IoT) devices sharing sensitive information via wireless networks, the need for a method
to establish secure communication is more pressing than ever.
With this context, we present Whisper, a novel technique that combines elements of digital commu-
nication theory, cryptography, and probability …

Analysis Of Green Data Center Efforts And Energy Usage, Dillon J. Goicoechea

Honors Projects

This paper is an undergraduate level literature review and analysis of research surrounding the Green Data Center phenomenon. Review of work covering energy usage, data usage, usage predictions, and strategies for decreasing energy requirements is the main analysis of this work. The analysis shows that while data centers are becoming greener, the increase in usage of their capacities is negating those efficiency increases. The increase in the energy efficiency of data centers is crucial, however, there must be made efforts to lower computational and data usage to help achieve lower energy usage of data centers.

Hls Taking Flight: Toward Using High-Level Synthesis Techniques In A Space-Borne Instrument, Marion Sudvarg, Chenfeng Zhao, Ye Htet, Meagan Konst, Thomas Lang, Nick Song, Roger D. Chamberlain, Jeremy Buhler, James H. Buckley

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

FPGAs are widely deployed on high-energy astrophysics telescopes to preprocess and reduce sensor data read out by front-end electronics. Across instruments, these computational pipelines have similar semantics, sharing common stages such as pedestal subtraction, signal integration, zero-suppression, island detection, and centroiding. However, diverse telescope designs require unique implementations of these algorithms, and the logic is often rewritten from scratch for a new instrument. As an alternative, High-Level Synthesis (HLS) tools enable these algorithms to be implemented in a high-level language, which eases modifications and enables fast prototyping and deployment. Nonetheless, writing performant HLS code requires augmentation of the code with …

Generative Machine Learning For Cyber Security, James Halvorsen, Dr. Assefaw Gebremedhin

Military Cyber Affairs

Automated approaches to cyber security based on machine learning will be necessary to combat the next generation of cyber-attacks. Current machine learning tools, however, are difficult to develop and deploy due to issues such as data availability and high false positive rates. Generative models can help solve data-related issues by creating high quality synthetic data for training and testing. Furthermore, some generative architectures are multipurpose, and when used for tasks such as intrusion detection, can outperform existing classifier models. This paper demonstrates how the future of cyber security stands to benefit from continued research on generative models.

Side Channel Detection Of Pc Rootkits Using Nonlinear Phase Space, Rebecca Clark

Poster Presentations

Cyberattacks are increasing in size and scope yearly, and the most effective and common means of attack is through malicious software executed on target devices of interest. Malware threats vary widely in terms of behavior and impact and, thus, effective methods of detection are constantly being sought from the academic research community to offset both volume and complexity. Rootkits are malware that represent a highly feared threat because they can change operating system integrity and alter otherwise normally functioning software. Although normal methods of detection that are based on signatures of known malware code are the standard line of defense, …

Exploring Decentralized Computing Using Solid And Ipfs For Social Media Applications, Pranav Balasubramanian Natarajan

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

As traditional centralized social media platforms face growing concerns over data privacy, censorship, and lack of user control, there has been an increasing interest in decentralized alternatives. This thesis explores the design and implementation of a decentralized social media application by integrating two key technologies: Solid and the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS). Solid, led by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, enables users to store and manage their personal data in decentralized "Pods," giving them ownership over their digital identities. IPFS, a peer-to-peer hypermedia protocol, facilitates decentralized file storage and sharing, ensuring content availability and resilience against censorship. By leveraging these technologies, the …

Crash Detecting System Using Deep Learning, Yogesh Reddy Muddam

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Accidents pose a significant risk to both individual and property safety, requiring effective detection and response systems. This work introduces an accident detection system using a convolutional neural network (CNN), which provides an impressive accuracy of 86.40%. Trained on diverse data sets of images and videos from various online sources, the model exhibits complex accident detection and classification and is known for its prowess in image classification and visualization.

CNN ensures better accident detection in various scenarios and road conditions. This example shows its adaptability to a real-world accident scenario and enhances its effectiveness in detecting early events. A key …

Multithreaded Applications On The Heterogeneous Research Computing Environment., Sungbo Jung

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Bioinformatics is a domain that has experienced rapid research growth in recent years, as evidenced by the increasing number of articles in biomedical databases such as PubMed, which adds over a million publications every year. However, this also poses a challenge for researchers who need to find relevant citations for their work. Therefore, developing efficient indexing and searching methods for text data is crucial for Bioinformatics. One key technique for information retrieval is document inversion, which involves creating an inverted index to enable efficient searching through vast collections of text or documents. This Ph.D. research aims to design the research …

Multi-Script Handwriting Identification By Fragmenting Strokes, Joshua Jude Thomas

Graduate Theses and Dissertations (2019 - present)

This study tests the effectiveness of Multi-Script Handwriting Identification after simplifying character strokes, by segmenting them into sub-parts. Character simplification is performed through splitting the character by branching-points and end-points, a process called stroke fragmentation in this study. The resulting sub-parts of the character are called stroke fragments and are evaluated individually to identify the writer. This process shares similarities with the concept of stroke decomposition in Optical Character Recognition which attempts to recognize characters through the writing strokes that make them up. The main idea of this study is that the characters of different writing‑scripts (English, Chinese, etc.) may …

Data Engineering: Building Software Efficiency In Medium To Large Organizations, Alessandro De La Torre

Whittier Scholars Program

The introduction of PoetHQ, a mobile application, offers an economical strategy for colleges, potentially ushering in significant cost savings. These savings could be redirected towards enhancing academic programs and services, enriching the educational landscape for students. PoetHQ aims to democratize access to crucial software, effectively removing financial barriers and facilitating a richer educational experience. By providing an efficient software solution that reduces organizational overhead while maximizing accessibility for students, the project highlights the essential role of equitable education and resource optimization within academic institutions.

A Design Science Approach To Investigating Decentralized Identity Technology, Janelle Krupicka

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

The internet needs secure forms of identity authentication to function properly, but identity authentication is not a core part of the internet’s architecture. Instead, approaches to identity verification vary, often using centralized stores of identity information that are targets of cyber attacks. Decentralized identity is a secure way to manage identity online that puts users’ identities in their own hands and that has the potential to become a core part of cybersecurity. However, decentralized identity technology is new and continually evolving, which makes implementing this technology in an organizational setting challenging. This paper suggests that, in the future, decentralized identity …

Binder, Tyler A. Peaster, Lindsey M. Davenport, Madelyn Little, Alex Bales

ATU Scholars Symposium

Binder is a mobile application that aims to introduce readers to a book recommendation service that appeals to devoted and casual readers. The main goal of Binder is to enrich book selection and reading experience. This project was created in response to deficiencies in the mobile space for book suggestions, library management, and reading personalization. The tools we used to create the project include Visual Studio, .Net Maui Framework, C#, XAML, CSS, MongoDB, NoSQL, Git, GitHub, and Figma. The project’s selection of books were sourced from the Google Books repository. Binder aims to provide an intuitive interface that allows users …

A Holistic And Collaborative Behavioral Health Detection Framework Using Sensitive Police Narratives, Martin Keagan Wynne Brown

Dissertations

Identifying behavioral health is paramount for law enforcement officers to provide appropriate follow-up community care. In the current practice, law enforcement offices manually identify these behavioral health cases to allow the designation of the relevant follow-up resources. Police reports generated by officers' response to 911 calls remain an untapped resource for identifying such incidents. Therefore, we advocate for the incorporation of manual annotations from experts, natural language processing (NLP), active learning, advanced machine learning, and ensemble techniques to detect behavioral health cases within police reports. In this dissertation, we develop tools and frameworks to automatically detect behavioral health cases from …