Other Computer Sciences Commons^™

Measuring Network Interference And Mitigating It With Dns Encryption, Seyed Arian Akhavan Niaki

Doctoral Dissertations

The Internet has emerged as one of the most important tools of communication. With around 4.5 billion active users as of July 2020, it provides people the opportunity to access a vast treasure trove of information and express their opinions online. How- ever, some countries consider the Internet as a critical communication medium and attempt to deploy network interference strategies. National governments, in particular, are notorious for their attempts to impose restrictions on online communication. Further, certain Internet service providers (ISPs) have been known to throttle specific applications and violate net neutrality principles.

Alongside the proliferation of network interference ...

Using Graph Theoretical Methods And Traceroute To Visually Represent Hidden Networks, Jordan M. Sahs

Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Within the scope of a Wide Area Network (WAN), a large geographical communication network in which a collection of networking devices communicate data to each other, an example being the spanning communication network, known as the Internet, around continents. Within WANs exists a collection of Routers that transfer network packets to other devices. An issue pertinent to WANs is their immeasurable size and density, as we are not sure of the amount, or the scope, of all the devices that exists within the network. By tracing the routes and transits of data that traverses within the WAN, we can identify ...

Coded Distributed Function Computation, Pedro J. Soto

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A ubiquitous problem in computer science research is the optimization of computation on large data sets. Such computations are usually too large to be performed on one machine and therefore the task needs to be distributed amongst a network of machines. However, a common problem within distributed computing is the mitigation of delays caused by faulty machines. This can be performed by the use of coding theory to optimize the amount of redundancy needed to handle such faults. This problem differs from classical coding theory since it is concerned with the dynamic coded computation on data rather than just statically ...

Towards A Computational Model Of Narrative On Social Media, Anne Bailey

Dartmouth College Undergraduate Theses

This thesis describes a variety of approaches to developing a computational model of narrative on social media. Our goal is to use such a narrative model to identify efforts to manipulate public opinion on social media platforms like Twitter. We present a model in which narratives in a collection of tweets are represented as a graph. Elements from each tweet that are relevant to potential narratives are made into nodes in the graph; for this thesis, we populate graph nodes with tweets’ authors, hashtags, named entities (people, locations, organizations, etc.,), and moral foundations (central moral values framing the discussion). Two ...

Jlootbox: An Agent-Based Model Of Social Influence And Gambling In Online Video Games, Lila Zayed

Honors Capstones

Loot boxes are digital treasure chests that players spend real money to purchase, wherein the contents are randomly generated. Since players spend money on the pretense they might receive something valuable, many comparisons have been drawn to gambling behavior as the reward is up to chance. To explore this phenomenon, agent-based modeling will be used to simulate this behavior. Agent-based modeling allows us to create heterogenous agents who follow simple rules so that we may observe emergent behavior in a population. An agent-based model was created using Repast Simphony for this end.

Parameters included the player’s internal decision strategy ...

Ransomware And Malware Sandboxing, Byron Denham

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The threat of ransomware that encrypts data on a device and asks for payment to decrypt the data affects individual users, businesses, and vital systems including healthcare. This threat has become increasingly more prevalent in the past few years. To understand ransomware through malware analysis, care must be taken to sandbox the ransomware in an environment that allows for a detailed and comprehensive analysis while also preventing it from being able to further spread. Modern malware often takes measures to detect whether it has been placed into an analysis environment to prevent examination. In this work, several notable pieces of ...

Circuit-Variant Moving Target Defense For Side-Channel Attacks On Reconfigurable Hardware, Tristen H. Mullins

Theses and Dissertations

With the emergence of side-channel analysis (SCA) attacks, bits of a secret key may be derived by correlating key values with physical properties of cryptographic process execution. Power and Electromagnetic (EM) analysis attacks are based on the principle that current flow within a cryptographic device is key-dependent and therefore, the resulting power consumption and EM emanations during encryption and/or decryption can be correlated to secret key values. These side-channel attacks require several measurements of the target process in order to amplify the signal of interest, filter out noise, and derive the secret key through statistical analysis methods. Differential power ...

Stumbling Into Virtual Worlds. How Resolution Affects Users’ Immersion In Virtual Reality And Implications For Virtual Reality In Therapeutic Applications, Brianna Martinson

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Studies of how users experience Virtual Reality (VR) have thus far failed to address the extent to which rendering resolution and rendering frame rate affect users’ sense of immersion in VR, including applications of VR involving simulators, treatments for psychological and mental disorders, explorations of new and nonexistent structures, and ways to better understand the human body in medical applications.

This study investigated if rendering resolution affected users’ sense of immersion in VR. This was conducted by comparing the responses of two groups, relative to two measures of participant immersion: (a) participant’s sense of presence and (b) participant’s ...

An Application Of Machine Learning To Analysis Of Packed Mac Malware, Kimo Bumanglag

Masters Theses & Doctoral Dissertations

The macOS operating system is increasingly targeted by malware. Software written for macOS, both benign and malicious, is in the Mach-O executable format. Malware authors may frustrate analysts through obfuscation methods such as packing. The field of malware research on Windows is well-established but is less so on the macOS platform. Thus far, no research has been identified that studies how machine learning can be used to detected packed Mach-O malware. This research applies supervised machine learning techniques to the classification of packed Mach-O malware. This research will answer three research questions. First, whether machine learning can classify packed Mach-O ...

Video Games, Grief, And The Character Link System, Nam Nguyen

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Grief can encompass more than just the loss of real-life people. It can be felt with the loss of a pet, changes in daily structure, and even the loss of video game characters. The topic of grief related to video games and video game characters comes at a time when games as a service (GaaS) continue to increase in popularity and the phenomenon where these games also inevitably terminate service. To combat this unique form of grief, the Character LINK System was created as a tool that uses simple natural language processing (NLP) techniques to offer support to the bereaved ...

Quantum Federated Learning: Training Hybrid Neural Networks Collaboratively, Anneliese Brei

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis explores basic concepts of machine learning, neural networks, federated learning, and quantum computing in an effort to better understand Quantum Machine Learning, an emerging field of research. We propose Quantum Federated Learning (QFL), a schema for collaborative distributed learning that maintains privacy and low communication costs. We demonstrate the QFL framework and local and global update algorithms with implementations that utilize TensorFlow Quantum libraries. Our experiments test the effectiveness of frameworks of different sizes. We also test the effect of changing the number of training cycles and changing distribution of training data. This thesis serves as a synoptic ...

Control And Calibration Strategies For Quantum Simulation, Paul M. Kairys

Doctoral Dissertations

The modeling and prediction of quantum mechanical phenomena is key to the continued development of chemical, material, and information sciences. However, classical computers are fundamentally limited in their ability to model most quantum effects. An alternative route is through quantum simulation, where a programmable quantum device is used to emulate the phenomena of an otherwise distinct physical system. Unfortunately, there are a number of challenges preventing the widespread application of quantum simulation arising from the imperfect construction and operation of quantum simulators. Mitigating or eliminating deleterious effects is critical for using quantum simulation for scientific discovery. This dissertation develops strategies ...

Changeling Vr, Elouise Oyzon

Frameless

Changeling VR is an interactive virtual reality narrative game. As we progress through the game, each level is seen through the Point of View of a different character whose emotional core is expressed through different aesthetics, mechanics and interactions.

Computer Simulations And Network-Based Profiling Of Binding And Allosteric Interactions Of Sars-Cov-2 Spike Variant Complexes And The Host Receptor: Dissecting The Mechanistic Effects Of The Delta And Omicron Mutations, Gennady M. Verkhivker, Steve Agajanian, Ryan Kassab, Keerthi Krishnan

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

In this study, we combine all-atom MD simulations and comprehensive mutational scanning of S-RBD complexes with the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) host receptor in the native form as well as the S-RBD Delta and Omicron variants to (a) examine the differences in the dynamic signatures of the S-RBD complexes and (b) identify the critical binding hotspots and sensitivity of the mutational positions. We also examined the differences in allosteric interactions and communications in the S-RBD complexes for the Delta and Omicron variants. Through the perturbation-based scanning of the allosteric propensities of the SARS-CoV-2 S-RBD residues and dynamics-based network centrality and ...

Considering The Context To Build Theory In Hci, Hri, And Hmc: Explicating Differences In Processes Of Communication And Socialization With Social Technologies, Andrew Gambino, Bingjie Liu

Human-Machine Communication

The proliferation and integration of social technologies has occurred quickly, and the specific technologies with which we engage are ever-changing. The dynamic nature of the development and use of social technologies is often acknowledged by researchers as a limitation. In this manuscript, however, we present a discussion on the implications of our modern technological context by focusing on processes of socialization and communication that are fundamentally different from their interpersonal corollary. These are presented and discussed with the goal of providing theoretical building blocks toward a more robust understanding of phenomena of human-computer interaction, human-robot interaction, human-machine communication, and interpersonal ...

Ubjective Information And Survival In A Simulated Biological System, Tyler S. Barker, Massimiliano Pierobon, Peter J. Thomas

CSE Journal Articles

Information transmission and storage have gained traction as unifying concepts to characterize biological systems and their chances of survival and evolution at multiple scales. Despite the potential for an information-based mathematical framework to offer new insights into life processes and ways to interact with and control them, the main legacy is that of Shannon’s, where a purely syntactic characterization of information scores systems on the basis of their maximum information efficiency. The latter metrics seem not entirely suitable for biological systems, where transmission and storage of different pieces of information (carrying different semantics) can result in different chances of ...

Analysis Of An Existing Method In Refinement Of Protein Structure Predictions Using Cryo-Em Images, Maytha Alshammari, Jing He, Willy Wriggers, Jiangwen Sun

College of Sciences Posters

Protein structure prediction produces atomic models from its amino acid sequence. Three-dimensional structures are important for understanding the function mechanism of proteins. Knowing the structure of a given protein is crucial in drug development design of novel enzymes. AlphaFold2 is a protein structure prediction tool with good performance in recent CASP competitions. Phenix is a tool for determination of a protein structure from a high-resolution 3D molecular image. Recent development of Phenix shows that it is capable to refine predicted models from AlphaFold2, specifically the poorly predicted regions, by incorporating information from the 3D image of the protein. The goal ...

Leaderboard Design Principles Influencing User Engagement In An Online Discussion, Brian S. Bovee

Masters Theses & Doctoral Dissertations

Along with the popularity of gamification, there has been increased interest in using leaderboards to promote engagement with online learning systems. The existing literature suggests that when leaderboards are designed well they have the potential to improve learning, but qualitative investigations are required in order to reveal design principles that will improve engagement. In order to address this gap, this qualitative study aims to explore students' overall perceptions of popular leaderboard designs in a gamified, online discussion. Using two leaderboards reflecting performance in an online discussion, this study evaluated multiple leaderboard designs from student interviews and other data sources regarding ...

Performance Analysis And Improvement For Scalable And Distributed Applications Based On Asynchronous Many-Task Systems, Nanmiao Wu

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

As the complexity of recent and future large-scale data and exascale systems architectures grows, so do productivity, portability, software scalability, and efficient utilization of system resources challenges presented to both industry and the research community. Software solutions and applications are expected to scale in performance on such complex systems. Asynchronous many-task (AMT) systems, taking advantage of multi-core architectures with light-weight threads, asynchronous executions, and smart scheduling, are showing promise in addressing these challenges.

In this research, we implement several scalable and distributed applications based on HPX, an exemplar AMT runtime system. First, a distributed HPX implementation for a parameterized benchmark ...

Dissecting Mutational Allosteric Effects In Alkaline Phosphatases Associated With Different Hypophosphatasia Phenotypes: An Integrative Computational Investigation, Fei Xiao, Ziyun Zhou, Xingyu Song, Mi Gan, Jie Long, Gennady M. Verkhivker, Guang Hu

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

Hypophosphatasia (HPP) is a rare inherited disorder characterized by defective bone mineralization and is highly variable in its clinical phenotype. The disease occurs due to various loss-of-function mutations in ALPL, the gene encoding tissue-nonspecific alkaline phosphatase (TNSALP). In this work, a data-driven and biophysics-based approach is proposed for the large-scale analysis of ALPL mutations-from nonpathogenic to severe HPPs. By using a pipeline of synergistic approaches including sequence-structure analysis, network modeling, elastic network models and atomistic simulations, we characterized allosteric signatures and effects of the ALPL mutations on protein dynamics and function. Statistical analysis of molecular features computed for the ALPL ...