Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Risk Matrix Input Data Biases, Eric D. Smith, William T. Siefert, David Drain

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Risk matrices used in industry characterize particular risks in terms of the likelihood of occurrence, and the consequence of the actualized risk. Human cognitive bias research led by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky exposed systematic translations of objective probability and value as judged by human subjects. Applying these translations to the risk matrix allows the formation of statistical hypotheses of risk point placement biases. Industry-generated risk matrix data reveals evidence of biases in the judgment of likelihood and consequence-principally, likelihood centering, a systematic increase in consequence, and a diagonal bias. Statistical analyses are conducted with linear regression, normal distribution fitting, …

Evaluation Of Best Management Practices To Reduce Nutrients Runoff In Watersheds In Arkansas, Hector German Rodriguez Diaz

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There are many non point sources (NPS) of pollution issues across the state of Arkansas. Each region of the state has different concerns. Many watersheds have been included in the Arkansas's 2008 303(d) list for NPS impairments with sediment and nutrients being the primary causes of concern. This research hypothesized that there are no cost or net returns risks when adopting best management practices (BMPs) to control nutrients runoff and that selection, timing, placement and cost have no impact on the implementation of BMPs. Using two priority watersheds, the L'Anguille River and the Lincoln Lake, as examples, the environmental benefits …

New Infrared Spectral Data For 27 Asteroids: An Investigation Of Meteorite-Asteroid Relationships By Using The Modified Gaussian Model, Katherine Marie Gietzen

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Asteroids provide unique insights into the origin and early history of the solar system. Since asteroids are considered to be fairly pristine, studying them provides opportunities to learn more about the primordial solar system, its materials, processes and history. Since the discovery in 1801 of the first asteroid, Ceres, during the era when everyone was searching for the "missing planet", astronomers have been trying to understand what they are, where they came from, why they exist and what they can tell us about how our solar system formed and evolved.

Within the asteroid population are a number of sub-populations, the …

Thin Film Integrated Capacitors With Sputtered-Anodized Niobium Pentoxide Dielectric For Decoupling Applications, Susan Jacob

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Electronics system miniaturization is a major driver for high-k materials. High-k materials in capacitors allow for high capacitance, enabling system miniaturization. Ta2O5 (k~24) has been the dominant high-k material in the electronic industry for decoupling capacitors, filter capacitors, etc. In order to facilitate further system miniaturization, this project has investigated thin film integrated capacitors with Nb2O5 dielectric. Nb2O5 has k~41 and is a potential candidate for replacing Ta2O5. But, the presence of suboxides (NbO2 and NbO) in the dielectric deteriorates the electrical properties (leakage current, thermal instability of capacitance, etc.). Also, the high oxygen solubility of niobium results in oxygen …

Using Labeled Data To Evaluate Change Detectors In A Multivariate Streaming Environment, Albert Y. Kim, Caren Marzban, Donald B. Percival, Werner Stuetzle

Statistical and Data Sciences: Faculty Publications

We consider the problem of detecting changes in a multivariate data stream. A change detector is defined by a detection algorithm and an alarm threshold. A detection algorithm maps the stream of input vectors into a univariate detection stream. The detector signals a change when the detection stream exceeds the chosen alarm threshold. We consider two aspects of the problem: (1) setting the alarm threshold and (2) measuring/comparing the performance of detection algorithms. We assume we are given a segment of the stream where changes of interest are marked. We present evidence that, without such marked training data, it might …

Analysis Of Mammoth Cave Pre-Park Communities, Matthew Brunt

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Before the creation of Mammoth Cave National Park, this area was home to numerous communities, each with a sense of identity. To prepare for the creation of the National Park, all residents living within these communities were relocated, and many of these communities were lost to the passage of time. Today, public memory of these lost communities is being fostered by the descendents of the pre-park area.

Through the use of a Historical Geographic Information System, 1920 Edmonson County manuscript census data, and statistical analysis, the demographic composition of these lost communities was explored. This project not only brought to …

Heirloom And Hybrid Tomato Yield And Quality In Organic And Conventional Production Systems, Diana J. Edlin

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Due to the recent changes in the economy of Kentucky tobacco production, some producers are seeking an alternative crop that will provide similar economic gains to tobacco without needing more acreage. Tomatoes are an existing crop in Kentucky that have been declining in acreage over the last five years. There is evidence to suggest that, through niche and local marketing, tomatoes may be able to fill the void left by tobacco. However, there is concern among producers that they will lose yield and/or quality if they switch to one of these niche production systems or cultivars.

A two year study …

Using Conservative And Biological Tracers To Better Understand The Transport Of Agricultural Contaminants From Soil Water Through The Epikarstic Zone, Brian Ham

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Agriculture contamination is very common in karst systems due to the vulnerability of these aquifers. Animal waste is often spread across crop land to enrich the soil with nitrates and phosphates. Herbicides and pesticides are also applied to the crops. The transport of these pollutants through the soil and epikarst is a difficult process to monitor due to the complex, heterogeneous behavior of the groundwater as it makes its way down to the aquifer below.

An experimental site at Crumps Cave lended a unique opportunity to monitor the vadose zone at a waterfall in the cave below. A previous dye …

Kinetic Studies Of The Sulfoxidation Of Aryl Methyl Sulfides By Trans-Dioxoruthenium(Vi) Porphyrin Complexes, Chris Abebrese

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The development of an efficient, catalytically active, biomimetic model for cytochrome P-450 enzymes has been an area of intense research activity. Ruthenium porphyrin complexes have been the center of this research and have successfully been utilized, as catalysts, in major oxidation reactions such as the hydroxylation of alkanes, the epoxidation of alkenes and aromatic rings, and the N-oxidation of amines, among others. In this project, the kinetics of two-electron sulfoxidation of para-substituted phenyl methyl sulfides to the corresponding sulfoxides with well-characterized trans-dioxoruthenium(VI) porphyrin complexes were studied by rapid stopped-flow spectroscopy. The substituent effect in sulfides and in dioxoruthenium(VI) complexes were …

Timing Stability Of Millisecond Pulsars And Prospects For Gravitational-Wave Detection, J. P.W. Verbiest, M. Bailes, W. A. Coles, G. B. Hobbs, W. Van Straten, D. J. Champion, F. A. Jenet, R. N. Manchester, N. D.R. Bhat, J. M. Sarkissian, D. Yardley, S. Burke-Spolaor, A. W. Hotan, X. P. You

Physics and Astronomy Faculty Publications and Presentations

The analysis of high-precision timing observations of an array of ∼20 millisecond pulsars (a so-called 'timing array') may ultimately result in the detection of a stochastic gravitational-wave background. The feasibility of such a detection and the required duration of this type of experiment are determined by the achievable rms of the timing residuals and the timing stability of the pulsars involved. We present results of the first long-term, high-precision timing campaign on a large sample of millisecond pulsars used in gravitational-wave detection projects. We show that the timing residuals of most pulsars in our sample do not contain significant low-frequency …

A New Approach For Anonymous Password Authentication, Yanjiang Yang, Jianying Zhou, Jian Weng, Feng Bao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Anonymous password authentication reinforces password authentication with the protection of user privacy. Considering the increasing concern of individual privacy nowadays, anonymous password authentication represents a promising privacy-preserving authentication primitive. However, anonymous password authentication in the standard setting has several inherent weaknesses, making its practicality questionable. In this paper, we propose a new and efficient approach for anonymous password authentication. Our approach assumes a different setting where users do not register their passwords to the server; rather, they use passwords to protect their authentication credentials. We present a concrete scheme, and get over a number of challenges in securing password-protected credentials …

Enabling Secure Secret Updating For Unidirectional Key Distribution In Rfid-Enabled Supply Chains, Shaoying Cai, Tieyan Li, Changshe Ma, Yingjiu Li, Robert H. Deng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In USENIX Security 08, Juels, Pappu and Parno proposed a secret sharing based mechanism to alleviate the key distribution problem in RFID-enabled supply chains. Compared to existing pseudonym based RFID protocols, the secret sharing based solution is more suitable for RFID-enabled supply chains since it does not require a database of keys be distributed among supply chain parties for secure ownership transfer of RFID tags. However, this mechanism cannot resist tag tracking and tag counterfeiting attacks in supply chain systems. It is also not convenient for downstream supply chain parties to adjust the size of RFID tag collections in recovering …

On The Untraceability Of Anonymous Rfid Authentication Protocol With Constant Key-Lookup, Bing Liang, Yingjiu Li, Tieyan Li, Robert H. Deng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In ASIACCS'08, Burmester, Medeiros and Motta proposed an anonymous RFID authentication protocol (BMM protocol [2]) that preserves the security and privacy properties, and achieves better scalability compared with other contemporary approaches. We analyze BMM protocol and find that some of security properties (especial untraceability) are not fulfilled as originally claimed. We consider a subtle attack, in which an adversary can manipulate the messages transmitted between a tag and a reader for several continuous protocol runs, and can successfully trace the tag after these interactions. Our attack works under a weak adversary model, in which an adversary can eavesdrop, intercept and …

Denial-Of-Service Attacks On Host-Based Generic Unpackers, Limin Liu, Jiang Ming, Zhi Wang, Debin Gao, Chunfu Jia

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

With the advance of packing techniques, a few generic and automatic unpackers have been proposed. These unpackers are designed to automatically unpack packed binaries without specific knowledge of the packing techniques used. In this paper, we present an automatic packer with which packed malware forges spurious unpacking behaviors that lead to a denial-of-service attack on host-based generic unpackers. We present the design, implementation, and evaluation of the proposed packer and malware produced using the proposed packer, and show the success of denial-of-service attacks on host-based generic unpackers.

A Robust Damage Assessment Model For Corrupted Database Systems, Ge Fu, Hong Zhu, Yingjiu Li

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

An intrusion tolerant database uses damage assessment techniques to detect damage propagation scales in a corrupted database system. Traditional damage assessment approaches in a intrusion tolerant database system can only locate damages which are caused by reading corrupted data. In fact, there are many other damage spreading patterns that have not been considered in traditional damage assessment model. In this paper, we systematically analyze inter-transaction dependency relationships that have been neglected in the previous research and propose four different dependency relationships between transactions which may cause damage propagation. We extend existing damage assessment model based on the four novel dependency …

Wake Up Or Fall Asleep: Value Implication Of Trusted Computing, Nan Hu, Jianhui Huang, Ling Liu, Yingjiu Li, Dan Ma

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

More than 10 years have passed since trusted computing (TC) technology was introduced to the market; however, there is still no consensus about its value. The increasing importance of user and enterprise security and the security promised by TC, coupled with the increasing tension between the proponents and the opponents of TC, make it timely to investigate the value relevance of TC in terms of both capital market and accounting performance. Based on both price and volume studies, we found that news releases related to the adoption of the TC technology had no information content. All investors, regardless of whether …

On Strategies For Imbalanced Text Classification Using Svm: A Comparative Study, Aixin Sun, Ee Peng Lim, Ying Liu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Many real-world text classification tasks involve imbalanced training examples. The strategies proposed to address the imbalanced classification (e.g., resampling, instance weighting), however, have not been systematically evaluated in the text domain. In this paper, we conduct a comparative study on the effectiveness of these strategies in the context of imbalanced text classification using Support Vector Machines (SVM) classifier. SVM is the interest in this study for its good classification accuracy reported in many text classification tasks. We propose a taxonomy to organize all proposed strategies following the training and the test phases in text classification tasks. Based on the taxonomy, …

Democracy And The Environment In Latin America, Javier Albert Escamilla

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study examines the ability of democratic and non-democratic states alike to protect the environment. Democracy has long been an important concept in the study of politics and environmental protection is an increasingly important issue in world politics. Advocates of democracy claim democratic states are better able to protect the environment than non-democracies. In contrast there are those that argue democracy's emphasis on individual rights leads to excessive resource consumption. This thesis employs a mixed methods approach to determine if democratic countries protect the environment more than their non-democratic counterparts. In short democracies do protect the environment better than non-democracies …

Uptake Of Gold Nanoparticles In An Algae - Daphnid Food Chain, Matthew Osborne-Koch

All Theses

Nanoparticle entry into the environment can result in deleterious effects to exposed organisms, disruption of ecological processes, and accumulation within the wood web. Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs), which are classified as zero-valent metals, are of significant interest due to their use in a variety of applications including electrical, biomedical, catalytic, magnetic, and optical technology. The wide range of uses for AuNPs can be attributed to a combination of the unique physical properties of the element gold (i.e. density, conductivity, stability, etc.) and the diversity of sizes, shapes, and surface compositions that can be achieved through manipulation of AuNP synthesis. While previous …

Semantic Search, Anup Sawant

All Theses

The thesis describes a Semantic approach towards web search through a stand-alone Java application. An Ontology Web Language(OWL) model is used to build a knowledge database related to different types of Organisms. The goal is to guide the Google web search engine using this OWL model. In the rst approach towards Semantic web search, an inference engine called CLIPS is used and in the second aproach, the Protege-OWL API is used. The thesis goes in detail about the design,
working and comparison of these two approaches. The thesis also deals with design approach for enhancement of the OWL model, once …

Status Of The Major Oyster Diseases In Virginia 2006-2008 A Summary Of The Annual Oyster Disease Monitoring Program, Ryan Carnegie, Eugene M. Burreson

Reports

Fall Survey sampling revealed P. marinus levels to be generally normal to high in Virginia tributaries. By 2007 P. marinus was present on every oyster reef sampled, and by the end of the 2006-2008 period the parasite was probably causing some mortality throughout Virginia waters. Data for H. nelsoni are still incomplete for 2006/7 because of funding limitations, but in 2008 H. nelsoni was observed at 17 of 31 sampled reefs, a marked expansion in distribution since 2003/4. A significant MSX disease outbreak occurred in the Great Wicomico River in 2008, as a mild winter and a long period of …

To Trust Or Not To Trust? Predicting Online Trusts Using Trust Antecedent Framework, Viet-An Nguyen, Ee Peng Lim, Jing Jiang, Aixin Sun

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper analyzes the trustor and trustee factors that lead to inter-personal trust using a well studied Trust Antecedent framework in management science. To apply these factors to trust ranking problem in online rating systems, we derive features that correspond to each factor and develop different trust ranking models. The advantage of this approach is that features relevant to trust can be systematically derived so as to achieve good prediction accuracy. Through a series of experiments on real data from Epinions, we show that even a simple model using the derived features yields good accuracy and outperforms MoleTrust, a trust …

Insights Into Malware Detection And Prevention On Mobile Phones, Qiang Yan, Yingjiu Li, Tieyan Li, Robert H. Deng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The malware threat for mobile phones is expected to increase with the functionality enhancement of mobile phones. This threat is exacerbated with the surge in population of smart phones instilled with stable Internet access which provides attractive targets for malware developers. Prior research on malware protection has focused on avoiding the negative impact of the functionality limitations of mobile phones to keep the performance cost within the limitations of mobile phones. Being different, this paper investigates the positive impact of these limitations on suppressing the development of mobile malware. We study the state-of-the-art mobile malware, as well as the progress …

Computationally Secure Hierarchical Self-Healing Key Distribution For Heterogeneous Wireless Sensor Networks, Yanjiang Yang, Jianying Zhou, Robert H. Deng, Feng Bao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Self-healing group key distribution is a primitive aimed to achieve robust key distribution in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) over lossy communication channels. However, all the existing self-healing group key distribution schemes in the literature are designed for homogenous WSNs that do not scale. In contract, heterogeneous WSNs have better scalability and performance. We are thus motivated to study self-healing group key distribution for heterogeneous WSNs. In particular, we propose the concept of hierarchical self-healing group key distribution, tailored to the heterogeneous WSN architecture; we further revisit and adapt Dutta et al.’s model to the setting of hierarchical self-healing group …

Nutrient Cycles And Marine Microbes In A Co2-Enriched Ocean, David A. Hutchins, Margaret R. Mulholland, Feixue Fu

OES Faculty Publications

The ocean carbon cycle is tightly linked with the cycles of the major nutrient elements nitrogen, phosphorus, and silicon. It is therefore likely that enrichment of the ocean with anthropogenic CO2 and attendant acidification will have large consequences for marine nutrient biogeochemistry, and for the microbes that mediate many key nutrient transformations. The best available evidence suggests that the nitrogen cycle may respond strongly to higher CO2 through increases in global N2 fixation and possibly denitrification, as well as potential decreases in nitrification. These trends could cause nitrification to become a nitrogen cycle "bottleneck," by increasing the flux of N2 …

Evaporation Estimation Of Rift Valley Lakes: Comparison Of Models, Assefa M. Melesse, Wossenu Abtew, Tibebe Dessalegne

Department of Earth and Environment

Evapotranspiration (ET) accounts for a substantial amount of the water flux in the arid and semi-arid regions of the World. Accurate estimation of ET has been a challenge for hydrologists, mainly because of the spatiotemporal variability of the environmental and physical parameters governing the latent heat flux. In addition, most available ET models depend on intensive meteorological information for ET estimation. Such data are not available at the desired spatial and temporal scales in less developed and remote parts of the world. This limitation has necessitated the development of simple models that are less data intensive and provide ET estimates …

Empirical Mode Decomposition Operator For Dewowing Gpr Data, Bradley M. Battista, Adrian Addison, Camelia C. Knapp

Faculty Publications

Signal processing tools available to ground penetrating radar data used for shallow subsurface imaging and hydrogeophysical parameter estimation are significantly handled using the same tools available to seismic reflection data. Overall, the same tools produce interpretable images from both data types, but particular noise (wow noise) in electromagnetic data must be removed before stable and accurate quantitative results can be produced. Wow noise is an inherent, nonlinear electromagnetic interference and a significant component of GPR data. Further, the nonlinear and non-stationary nature of wow noise provides a strong argument for preprocessing radar traces with time-domain operators. Time-domain operators designed for …

Coherent Phrase Model For Efficient Image Near-Duplicate Retrieval, Yiqun Hu, Xiangang Cheng, Liang-Tien Chia, Xing Xie, Deepu Rajan, Ah-Hwee Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper presents an efficient and effective solution for retrieving image near-duplicate (IND) from image database. We introduce the coherent phrase model which incorporates the coherency of local regions to reduce the quantization error of the bag-of-words (BoW) model. In this model, local regions are characterized by visual phrase of multiple descriptors instead of visual word of single descriptor. We propose two types of visual phrase to encode the coherency in feature and spatial domain, respectively. The proposed model reduces the number of false matches by using this coherency and generates sparse representations of images. Compared to other method, the …

Electrical Switching Properties Of Ternary And Layered Chalcogenide Phase-Change Memory Devices, Martin Jared Barclay

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Due to the increasing demand for products which use Non-Volatile Memory (NVM) and the near realization of the scaling limits of Flash [1, 2], a large research effort is underway. This effort is to develop new forms of NVM capable of replacing Flash [3]. At the forefront of this research is Phase-Change Random Access Memory (PCRAM). Chalcogenide based PCRAM is one of the most promising non-volatile memories for the next generation of portable electronics, due to its excellent scalability, large sensing margin, fast switching speed, and possible multi-bit per cell operation [3]. It is desirable for a phase-change random access …

A Parallel Computing Test Bed For Performing An Unsupervised Fluoroscopic Analysis Of Knee Joint Kinematics, Renu Ramanatha

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Fluoroscopic analysis of knee joint kinematics involves accurately determining the position and orientation of bones in the knee joint. This data can be derived using the static 3-D CT scan images and 2-D video fluoroscopy images together. This involves generating hypothetical digitally reconstructed radiographs (DRR) from the CT scan image with known position and orientation and comparing them to the original fluoroscopic frame. This represents a search problem in which, among all the DRRs possible from a CT image, the image that most closely matches the target fluoroscopy frame of the knee joint has to be found.

Each image in …