Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Approximate Disassembly Using Dynamic Programming, Abhishek Shah

Master's Projects

Most commercial anti-virus software uses signature based techniques to detect whether a file is infected by a virus or not. However, signature based detection systems are unable to detect metamorphic viruses, since such viruses change their internal structure from generation to generation. Previous work has shown that hidden Markov models (HMMs) can be used to detect metamorphic viruses. In this technique, the code is disassembled and the resulting opcode sequences are used for training and detection. Due to the disassembly step, this process is not efficient enough to use when a decision has to be made in real time.

In …

Web-Based Ide For Interfacing View Controller, Tejasvi Palvai

Master's Projects

The main idea of this project is to develop a web-based IDE, which helps users to avoid installing or configuring the Desktop IDE. It also enables users to create XHTML pages using the drag and drop mechanism in Struts. Struts extends the Java Servlet API to encourage developers to adopt the MVC (Model-View- Controller) architecture. In this project, a web application for interfacing the view and controller parts of the MVC architecture was developed. This web-based IDE connects the View and Controller components when the user drags and drops HTML elements in the UI of the IDE. With this project, …

Computational Mirna Target Prediction In Animals, Leyan Tang

Master's Projects

miRNAs are a class of small RNA molecules about 22 nucleotides long that regulate gene expression at the post-transcriptional level. The discovery of the second miRNA 10 years ago was as much a surprise in its own way as the very structure of DNA discovered a half century earlier[1]. How could these small molecules regulate so many genes? During the past decade the complex cascade of regulation has been investigated and reported in detail[2]. The regions of the genome called untranslated regions, or UTRs, proved true to their name: they were indeed untranslated, but certainly not unimportant: they act as …

Synthesis And Electrical Properties Of Functional Block Copolymer/Inorganic Nanocomposite Materials, Hongying Chen

Dissertations

Sulfonated poly[styrene-b-ethylene-co-butylene-b-styrene] (sSEBS) block copolymers/inorganic nanocomposite materials were synthesized via in situ formation of inorganic fillers and characterized particularly for their dielectric properties and proton conductivities.

In preparation of sSEBS/SrTiO₃ nanocomposites, titanium (IV) isopropoxide [Ti(OPrⁱ)₄] complex was diffused into sSEBS film, followed by subsequent hydrolysis of [Ti(OPr i)4], diffusion of strontium cations in sSEBS domains, and in situ formation of crystalline SrTiO₃. sSEBS with sulfonation degree of 38.1% and 65.0% were employed, and relevant sSEBS/SrTiO₃ composites contain SrTiO₃ of 10-15 wt%. Elemental composition characterization with ESEM/EDX indicated uniform distribution of …

Measurement System For High Pressure Characterizations Of Materials, Matthew K. Jacobsen

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Thermoelectric materials have long been investigated for possible use as power sources. This application was recently put to use in the Voyager space program, powering the deep space probes. Despite the usefulness of these materials, the use of pressure to investigate the material properties has only recently become interesting. As such, the work in this document was to developing a system for concurrently measuring the necessary properties. This system is capable of measuring the electrical resistivity, thermal conductivity, and Seebeck coefficient in the pressure range from 0 - 10 GPa. The results for zinc, almandine garnet, and nickel are presented …

Speciation And Spectroscopy Of The Uranyl And Tetravalent Plutonium Nitrate Systems: Fundamental Studies And Applications To Used Fuel Reprocessing, Nicholas A. Smith

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This dissertation explores the use of UV-Visible spectroscopy and Time Resolved Laser Induced Fluorescence spectroscopy as near real time process monitors of uranium and plutonium concentrations in aqueous reprocessing trains. The molar absorptivities and linear ranges of these metals were investigated under total nitrate and acid concentrations similar to those found in current reprocessing systems. Concurrent to this, a new multiple wavelength monitor was derived that is capable of determining the total nitrate concentration spectroscopically. This method uses the uranium absorbance spectrum to calculate the nitrate concentration in solution. When used as part of an Advanced Safeguard suite, this technique …

Functional Reactive Musical Performers, Justin M. Phillips

Master's Theses

Computers have been assisting in recording, sound synthesis and other fields of music production for quite some time. The actual performance of music continues to be an area in which human players are chosen over computer performers. Musical performance is an area in which personalization is more important than consistency. Human players play with each other, reacting to phrases and ideas created by the players that they are playing with. Computer performers lack the ability to react to the changes in the performance that humans perceive naturally, giving the human players an advantage over the computer performers.

This thesis creates …

An Investigation Of Process Parameters To Optimize The Fiber Diameter Of Electrospun Vascular Scaffolds Through Experimental Design, Steffi Wong

Biomedical Engineering

No abstract provided.

Analysis Of A Database Insider Threat Model, Andrea Samuel

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

According to Silicon.com's CIO Insight - Beware the Insider Security Threat, insiders are bigger threats to corporate security than external threats such as denial of service attacks or malware. Statistics show that 70% of fraud is perpetrated by staff and that the main data security threat comes from poorly trained or disgruntled employees who are authorized to have access to data and file stores [4]. This research project focuses specifically on the problem of insider threat in relational database systems. The project involves simulating research conducted in Qussai Yaseen and Brajendra Panda's research paper, Predicting and Preventing Insider Threat in …

A Framework For Virtual Device Driver Development And Virtual Device-Based Performance Modeling, Zachary Jones

All Dissertations

Operating system virtualization tools such as VMWare, XEN, and Linux KVM export only minimally capable SVGA graphics adapters. This paper describes the design and implementation of system
that virtualizes high-performance graphics cards of arbitrary design to support the construction of authentic device drivers. Drivers written for the virtual cards can be used verbatim, without special function calls or kernel modifications, as drivers for real cards, should real cards of the same design exist. While this allows for arbitrary design, it is not able to model performance characteristics. We describe a new kernel system that allows for arbitrarily changing the performance …

Conceptual Model Testing And Development For Neptunium And Radium Sorption To Srs Sediments, Todd Miller

All Theses

Models which can estimate environmental transport of contaminants are required to ensure minimal risk to the public. These models require accurate transport parameters in order to correctly predict how these contaminants will move in the subsurface. This work aimed to determine more accurately the distribution coefficients for neptunium, strontium, and radium for the Savannah River Site (SRS) Performance Assessment (PA). All neptunium sorption studies were performed at a pH value of 5.50 and an ionic strength of 0.01M as NaCl with neptunium concentrations ranging from 0.01 to 50 ppb. Two different sediments were examined, SRS Subsurface Clayey and SRS Subsurface …

A Synthetic Analysis Of Integrated Data Fusion: Combining Hydrologic And Geophysical Data Collected During A Tracer Test To Estimate Aquifer Flow And Transport Parameters, Dylan Fowler

All Theses

Integrated data fusion (IDF), also known as coupled inversion, is becoming a more widely used method for estimating hydrologic parameters from geophysical data. IDF is being used in this research as an approach to inversion that couples mathematical models of groundwater flow, solute transport, and electrical resistivity for the direct estimation of hydraulic conductivity, porosity, and dispersivity from transient resistivity data collected during a tracer test. In this work, synthetic field resistivity data are generated using only a single current electrode pair and many potential electrodes. This data is then used within the IDF framework to a) estimate hydraulic conductivity …

Dielectronic Recombination For Aluminum-Like Ions And Photoabsorption Cross Sections For Magnesium Ions At The K-Edge, Shahin Ahmed Abdel-Azim Abdel Naby

Dissertations

Accurate and reliable recombination data are needed for modeling the ions in the finitedensity plasmas that may take place in solar flares and in divertors of magnetically confined fusion devices such as the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). Dielectronic recombination (DR) is the dominant recombination mechanism in photoionized and collisionally-ionized plasmas. DR rate coefficients for M-shell argon ions have been calculated using a configuration-average approach. DR rate coefficients for the aluminumlike isoelectronic sequence are instead calculated using the state-of-the-art multiconfiguration Breit-Pauli (MCBP) atomic structure and collision code AUTOSTRUCTURE. Good agreement is obtained with the measurements from the Heidelberg heavy-ion Test …

Inner-Shell Photodetachment Of Transition Metal Negative Ions, Ileana Dumitriu

Dissertations

This thesis focuses on the study of inner-shell photodetachment of transition metal negative ions, specifically Fe¯ and Ru¯. Experimental investigations have been performed with the aim of gaining new insights into the physics of negative atomic ions and providing valuable absolute cross section data for astrophysics. The experiments were performed using the X-ray radiation from the Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and the merged-beam technique for photoion spectroscopy.

Negative ions are a special class of atomic systems very different from neutral atoms and positive ions. The fundamental physics of the interaction of transition metal negative ions with photons …

Active Bundles For Protecting Confidentiality Of Sensitive Data Throughout Their Lifecycle, Lotfi Ben Othmane

Dissertations

Protecting confidentiality of shared sensitive data requires satisfying conflicting needs for disseminating data and preventing unauthorized data disclosures. We propose a solution named the active bundles scheme for protecting sensitive data from their disclosures to unauthorized parties during their dissemination. The scheme protects data throughout their entire lifecycle, from data creation through their dissemination to their evaporation or apoptosis (a partial or complete self-destruction, respectively).

An active bundle packages together sensitive data, metadata, and a virtual machine (VM) specific to the bundle. Metadata contain information related to the use of data, including data access control and dissemination policies. A VM …

Appearance Based Stage Recognition Of Drosophila Embryos, Gopi Chand Nutakki

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Stages in Drosophila development denote the time after fertilization at which certain specific events occur in the developmental cycle. Stage information of a host embryo, as well as spatial information of a gene expression region is indispensable input for the discovery of the pattern of gene-gene interaction. Manual labeling of stages is becoming a bottleneck under the circumstance of high throughput embryo images. Automatic recognition based on the appearances of embryos is becoming a more desirable scheme. This problem, however, is very challenging due to severe variations of illumination and gene expressions. In this research thesis, we propose an appearance …

Two-Phase Partitioning System Using Elvax 40w Polymer For The Biodegradation Of Aqueous Phenols, Amit Suresh Ghode

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

A solid-liquid two phase partitioning system (TPPS) is a new technology platform for destroying toxic organic compounds. TPPS have traditionally been operated by using an immiscible organic phase which partitions organic compounds into the aqueous phase. TPPS using an immiscible organic phase suffers from several limitations such as the organic phase could be biodegradable and hence only certain compatible microbial strains could be used. This therefore, eliminates the desired use of mixed microbial populations for efficient degradation. A solid-liquid two phase partitioning system, in which solid polymeric beads replace liquid organic phase, appears to have benefits over the traditional liquid-liquid …

Establishment Of Permanent Plots And Analysis Of Woody Vegetation In The Tennessee River Gorge, Marion And Hamilton Counties, Tennessee, Gerald Woodworth

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

The Tennessee River Gorge (TRG) is a large river canyon 8 km west of Chattanooga, Tennessee, on the Cumberland Plateau. In 1984, the Tennessee Natural Heritage Program (TNHP) described 21 vegetation communities within the TRG. Permanent vegetation plots for the long-term study of 13 of these communities were established in summer 2009 in order to fulfill three goals. The first goal was to provide baseline data for long-term monitoring through establishing and surveying 100 plots. The second goal was to perform a temporal comparison of each community to its original description from 1984. The third goal was performing a comparison …

Development And Validation Of A Rapid Multi-Class Method For The Confirmation Of Fourteen Prohibited Medicinal Additives In Pig And Poultry Compound Feed By Liquid Chromatography Tandem Mass Spectrometry, Mark Cronly, Patrice Behan, Barry Foley, Liam Regan, Marella Gallagher, Sean Earley, Paula Shearan, Edward Malone

Articles

A confirmatory method has been developed to allow for the analysis of fourteen prohibited medicinal additives in pig and poultry compound feed. These compounds are prohibited for use as feed additives although some are still authorised for use in medicated feed. Feed samples are extracted by acetonitrile with addition of sodium sulphate. The extracts undergo a hexane wash to aid with sample purification. The extracts are then evaporated to dryness and reconstituted in initial mobile phase. The samples undergo an ultracentrifugation step prior to injection onto the LC-MS/MS system and are analysed in a run time of 26 minutes. The …

A Brief History And Research Of The Supernova Remnant Cassiopeia A, Michelle Wilbur

Physics

No abstract provided.

Exoplanet Transit Detection With Terrestrial Amateur Equipment: Using The Cal Poly Observatory, San Luis Obispo, Joshua Thompson

Physics

Using amateur level equipment and freeware analysis tools, the Cal Poly Observatory (CPO) wished to test whether or not it could actually observe the astronomical phenomena called exoplanetary transits. Using a variety of equipment and tests, the CPO was able to confirm it could clearly observe the transits of several well-known transiting planets, including HD189733b and HAT-P-6. With these tests and observations completed, future student researchers can continue Cal Poly’s transit search and contribute to the global pursuit for exoplanets.

Liquid Helium Refill Shifts At The Cryogenic Underground Observatory For Rare Events, Robin L. Reil

Physics

No abstract provided.

Could Alice Find The Elusive Higgs?, Tyler Williams

Physics

The Higgs boson is the theoretical mechanism for creating the mass of particles. Although it has never been seen, the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the most likely place for it to be created in the laboratory. The ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) detector is focused on the study of heavy ion collisions at the LHC and was not designed to find the Higgs boson; however, there is a chance it could be detected there. Although the luminosity (collision rate) for PbPb collisions is much lower than that for pp collisions, PbPb collisions have a higher probability to …

F5c: A Variant Of Faugere's F5 Algorithm With Reduced Gröbner Bases, Christian Eder, John E. Perry

Faculty Publications

The F5 algorithm for computing Gröbner bases achieves a high level of efficiency through the careful analysis of signatures assigned to each computed polynomial. However, it computes and uses many polynomials that turn out to be redundant. Eliminating these redundant polynomials is a non-trivial task, because they correspond to signatures required for reduction. This paper revisits the theory underlying F5 and describes F5C, a new variant that prunes redundant polynomials, then re-computes signatures to preserve correctness. This strategy successfully reduces both overhead and execution time. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Study On Intumescent Flame Retarded Polystyrene Composites With Improved Flame Retardancy, Hongdian Lu, Charles A. Wilkie

Chemistry Faculty Research and Publications

The flame retardancy and thermal stability of ammonium polyphosphate/tripentaerythritol (APP/TPE) intumescent flame retarded polystyrene composites (PS/IFR) combined with organically-modified layered inorganic materials (montmorillonite clay and zirconium phosphate), nanofiber (multiwall carbon nanotubs), nanoparticle (Fe₂O₃) and nickel catalyst were evaluated by cone calorimetry, microscale combustion calorimetry (MCC) and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). Cone calorimetry revealed that a small substitution of IFR by most of these fillers (≤2%) imparted substantial improvement in flammability performance. The montmorillonite clay exhibited the highest efficiency in reducing the peak heat release rate of PS/IFR composite, while zirconium phosphate modified with C₂₁H_{26 …}

Measurement Of High-Q2 Charged Current Deep Inelastic Scattering Cross Sections With A Longitudinally Polarised Positron Beam At Hera, H. Abramowicz, I. Abt, L. Adamczyk, M. Adamus, R. Aggarwal, S. Antonelli, P. Antonioli, A. Antonov, M. Arneodo, V. Aushev, Y. Aushev, O. Bachynska, A. Bamberger, A. N. Barakbaev, G. Barbagli, G. Bari, F. Barreiro, D. Bartsch, M. Basile, O. Behnke, J. Behr, U. Behrens, L. Bellagamba, A. Bertolin, S. Bhadra, M. Bindi, C. Blohm, V. Bokhonov, T. Bołd, E. G. Boos, K. Borras, Margarita C. K. Mattingly

Faculty Publications

Measurements of the cross sections for charged current deep inelastic scattering in e+p collisions with a longitudinally polarised positron beam are presented. The measurements are based on a data sample with an integrated luminosity of 132 pb-1 collected with the ZEUS detector at HERA at a centre-of-mass energy of 318 GeV. The total cross section is presented at positive and negative values of the longitudinal polarisation of the positron beams. The single-differential cross-sections dσ/dQ2, dσ/dx and dσ/dy are presented for Q2>200 GeV2. The reduced cross-section σ̃ is presented in the kinematic range 200

Inclusive Dijet Cross Sections In Neutral Current Deep Inelastic Scattering At Hera, H. Abramowicz, I. Abt, L. Adamczyk, M. Adamus, R. Aggarwal, S. Antonelli, P. Antonioli, A. Antonov, M. Arneodo, V. Aushev, Y. Aushev, O. Bachynska, A. Bamberger, A. N. Barakbaev, G. Barbagli, G. Bari, F. Barreiro, D. Bartsch, M. Basile, O. Behnke, J. Behr, U. Behrens, L. Bellagamba, A. Bertolin, S. Bhadra, M. Bindi, C. Blohm, V. Bokhonov, T. Bołd, E. G. Boos, K. Borras, Margarita C. K. Mattingly

Faculty Publications

Single- and double-differential inclusive dijet cross sections in neutral current deep inelastic ep scattering have been measured with the ZEUS detector using an integrated luminosity of 374 pb-1. The measurement was performed at large values of the photon virtuality, Q2, between 125 and 20 000 GeV2. The jets were reconstructed with the kT cluster algorithm in the Breit reference frame and selected by requiring their transverse energies in the Breit frame, ET,Bjet, to be larger than 8 GeV. In addition, the invariant mass of the dijet system, Mjj, was required to be greater than 20 GeV. The cross sections are …

Time Cost Evaluation For Executing Rfid Authentication Protocols, Kevin Chiew, Yingjiu Li, Tieyan Li, Robert H. Deng, Manfred Aigner

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

There are various reader/tag authentication protocols proposed for the security of RFID systems. Such a protocol normally contains several rounds of conversations between a tag and a reader and involves cryptographic operations at both reader and tag sides. Currently there is a lack of benchmarks that provide a fair comparison platform for (a) the time cost of cryptographic operations at the tag side and (b) the time cost of data exchange between a reader and a tag, making it impossible to evaluate the total time cost for executing a protocol. Based on our experiments implemented on IAIK UHF tag emulators …

Conservation From The Bottom-Up: Human, Financial, And Natural Capital As Determinants Of Resilient Livelihoods In Kigoma Rural, Tanzania, Yared J. Fubusa

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Rhetoric of "community-based conservation" has gained prominence among development specialists and environmentalists, yet such projects are often implemented from the top-down in Africa. This dissertation contends that only a bottom-up approach can foster resilient livelihoods and environmental stewardship.

This study focused on determinants of household resilience within a poverty-stricken agricultural community near Gombe Stream National Park (GSNP) in western Tanzania. The research purpose was to explore: 1) relationships between villagers and GSNP management; 2) how groups and individuals view priority livelihood problems and solutions; 3) various attributes of households; and 4) perceived trends for household resilience and how these are …

Architecture, Modeling, And Analysis Of A Plasma Impedance Probe, Magathi Jayaram

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Variations in ionospheric plasma density can cause large amplitude and phase changes in the radio waves passing through this region. Ionospheric weather can have detrimental effects on several communication systems, including radars, navigation systems such as the Global Positioning Sytem (GPS), and high-frequency communications. As a result, creating models of the ionospheric density is of paramount interest to scientists working in the field of satellite communication.

Numerous empirical and theoretical models have been developed to study the upper atmosphere climatology and weather. Multiple measurements of plasma density over a region are of marked importance while creating these models. The lack …