Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

An Efficient Privacy-Preserving Outsourced Computation Over Public Data, Ximeng Liu, Baodong Qin, Robert H. Deng, Yingjiu Li

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper, we propose a new efficient privacy preserving outsourced computation framework over public data, called EPOC. EPOC allows a user to outsource the computation of a function over multi-dimensional public data to the cloud while protecting the privacy of the function and its output. Specifically, we introduce three types of EPOC in order to tradeoff different levels of privacy protection and performance. We present a new cryptosystem called Switchable Homomorphic Encryption with Partial Decryption (SHED) as the core cryptographic primitive for EPOC.We introduce two coding techniques, called message pre-coding and message extending and coding respectively, for messages encrypted …

Characteristics Of Mesospheric Gravity Waves Over Antarctica Observed By Angwin (Antarctic Gravity Wave Instrument Network) Imagers Using 3-D Spectral Analyses, Takashi S. Matsuda, Takuji Nakamura, Mitsumu K. Ejiri, Masaki Tsutsumi, Yoshihiro Tomikawa, Michael J. Taylor, Yucheng Zhao, Pierre-Dominique Pautet, Damian J. Murphy, Tracy Moffat-Griffin

Publications

We have obtained horizontal phase velocity distributions of the gravity waves around 90 km from four Antarctic airglow imagers, which belong to an international airglow imager/instrument network known as ANGWIN (Antarctic Gravity Wave Instrument Network). Results from the airglow imagers at Syowa (69°S, 40°E), Halley (76°S, 27°W), Davis (69°S, 78°E), and McMurdo (78°S, 167°E) were compared, using a new statistical analysis method based on 3-D Fourier transform (Matsuda et al., 2014) for the observation period between 7 April and 21 May 2013. Significant day-to-day and site-to-site differences were found. The averaged phase velocity spectrum during the observation period showed preferential …

Laplacian Distribution And Domination, Domingos M. Cardoso, David P. Jacobs, Vilmar Trevisan

Publications

No abstract provided.

Incorporating Sea Level Change Scenarios Into Norfolk Harbor Channels Deepening And Elizabeth River Southern Branch Navigation Improvements Study : Final Report On The “Hydrodynamic Modeling”, Zhuo Liu, Harry V. Wang, Yinglong J. Zhang, Fei Ye

Reports

The Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) team has applied a 3D unstructured-grid hydrodynamic model SCHISM in the study of the impact of channel dredging on hydrodynamics in the lower Chesapeake Bay project area. This report is a companion report to that of Zhang et al. (2017; doi:10.21220/V5MF0F) and focuses on the impact of channel dredging specifically under the projected future sea-level change (SLC) of 1 meter rise by 2100. This is an average of the high end of semi-empirical, global sea-level rise (SLR) projections adopted by the Virginia Port Authority (VPA) and the Army Corps of Engineers, Norfolk District, …

Evaluating Student Perceptions And Learning Outcomes: Differences Between Sla-Able And Non-Sla-Able Introductory Programming Courses, Christina M. Frederick, Matthew B. Pierce, Andrew Griggs, Lulu Sun

Publications

Engineering, computer science and subsequently knowledge of programming language is an increasingly vital skill in today’s workforce. First year engineering students are introduced to programming in addition to rigorous course loads in their first year. Second Language Acquisition (SLA) has been applied to programming course content delivery and has shown promise as an effective means of better educating new students. Results will be presented from a NSF funded study conducted over the past two years. SLA was applied to an introductory engineering course that teaches basic programming skills in a Blended learning environment (SLA-aBLe). This study examined four semesters worth …

Influence Of Velocity Fluctuations On The Kelvin-Helmholtz Instability And Its Associated Mass Transport, Katariina Nykyri, Xuanye Ma, Andrew Dimmock, Claire Foullon, Antonius Otto, Adnane Osmane

Publications

Kelvin-Helmholtz instability (KHI) and associated magnetic reconnection and diffusion processes provide plasma transport from solar wind into the magnetosphere. The efficiency of this transport depends on the magnetosheath and magnetospheric plasma and field properties at the vicinity of the magnetopause. Our recent statistical study using data from the Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms spacecraft indicates that the amplitude of the magnetosheath velocity fluctuations perpendicular to the magnetopause can be substantial. We have performed a series of local macroscale 2.5-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic simulations of the KHI during strongly northward interplanetary magnetic field and with the initial plasma parameters …

A Weighted Möbius Function, Derek Garton

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Publications and Presentations

Fix an odd prime ℓ and let G be the poset of isomorphism classes of finite abelian ℓ-groups, ordered by inclusion. If ξ:G→R^≥0 is a discrete probability distribution on G and A ∈ G, define the Ath moment of ξ to be . The question of determining conditions that ensure ξ is completely determined by its moments has been of recent interest in many problems of Cohen–Lenstra type. Furthermore, recovering ξ from its moments requires a new Möbius-type inversion formula on G. In this paper, we define this function, relate it to the classical Möbius …

Solar Powered Single-Axis Heliostat Active Solar Tracking Device, Mason Kyle Roberts

Physics

As a means of cooking food, the burning of biomass accounts for over 4 million premature deaths in third world countries (“Household Air Pollution and Health”). The focus of this project was to explore an alternative that could utilize focused sunlight to cook food. A solar tracker was designed to be affixed to a parabolic, reflective, tilted single axis heliostat to follow the sun throughout the day and focus the reflected light to the bottom of a cooking surface. This surface became hot enough to for the preparation of food or boiling/sterilization of water.

A goal for each project was …

Identification And Characterization Of Preferred Dna-Binding Sites For The Thermus Thermophilus Transcriptional Regulator Fadr, Minwoo Lee, Hyejin Um, Michael W. Van Dyke

Faculty Articles

One of the primary transcriptional regulators of fatty acid homeostasis in many prokaryotes is the protein FadR. To better understand its biological function in the extreme thermophile Thermus thermophilus HB8, we sought to first determine its preferred DNA-binding sequences in vitro using the combinatorial selection method Restriction Endonuclease Protection, Selection, and Amplification (REPSA) and then use this information to bioinformatically identify potential regulated genes. REPSA determined a consensus FadR-binding sequence 5´-TTRNACYNRGTNYAA-3´, which was further characterized using quantitative electrophoretic mobility shift assays. With this information, a search of the T. thermophilus HB8 genome found multiple operons potentially regulated by FadR. …

Conduction Plus Convection Heat Flow Modeling For The Linga Complex, Peruvian Coastal Batholith, Luciano Uriel González Olivares

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

Factors affecting the thermal evolution of the Linga magmatic intrusion in the Ica-Pisco area of the Peruvian Coastal Batholith were studied using field work, petrography, geochemistry data, and computer modeling. Field work and petrography involved collecting samples for geochemical analysis and documenting widespread propylitic and potassic hydrothermal alteration. Major element geochemistry was used to estimate rock density, viscosity, liquidus temperature, and water content. The δ18O values of seven fresh samples showed a slightly increasing west-east and old-young trend of approximately 7-8‰, indicating an increasing crustal component. The δ18O and δD values for eleven altered samples indicated that alteration came mostly …

Sugarmate: Non-Intrusive Blood Glucose Monitoring With Smartphones, Weixi Gu, Yuxun Zhou, Zimu Zhou, Xi Liu, Han Zou, Pei Zhang, Costas J. Spanos, Lin Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Inferring abnormal glucose events such as hyperglycemia and hypoglycemia is crucial for the health of both diabetic patients and non-diabetic people. However, regular blood glucose monitoring can be invasive and inconvenient in everyday life. We present SugarMate, a first smartphone-based blood glucose inference system as a temporary alternative to continuous blood glucose monitors (CGM) when they are uncomfortable or inconvenient to wear. In addition to the records of food, drug and insulin intake, it leverages smartphone sensors to measure physical activities and sleep quality automatically. Provided with the imbalanced and often limited measurements, a challenge of SugarMate is the inference …

Characterization Of Hydrophobic Interactions Of Polymers With Water And Phospholipid Membranes Using Molecular Dynamics Simulations, Mihaela Drenscko

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Polymers and lipid membranes are both essential soft materials. The structure and hydrophobicity/hydrophilicity of polymers, as well as the solvent they are embedded in, ultimately determines their size and shape. Understating the variation of shape of the polymer as well as its interactions with model biological membranes can assist in understanding the biocompatibility of the polymer itself. Computer simulations, in particular molecular dynamics, can aid in characterization of the interaction of polymers with solvent, as well as polymers with model membranes. In this thesis, molecular dynamics serve to describe polymer interactions with a solvent (water) and with a lipid membrane. …

A Realization Of Modernity: Case Studies In Connectivity And Time, Mari Gorman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My stated goal in applying to The Graduate Center was to explore my previous research in diverse fields of study. This research, the result of a formal investigation of acting, was and still is centrally focused on the subject of relationship itself, relationships being what actors create. In pursuit of a greater understanding of the essential nature of relationship in practical terms, a self-organizing complex system that constitutes universal relationship was unexpectedly discovered. As such, this system has been shown to offer solutions to many outstanding problems in diverse areas of study. The Liberal Studies program track, Approaches to Modernity …

Machine Learning Algorithms For Automated Satellite Snow And Sea Ice Detection, George Bonev

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The continuous mapping of snow and ice cover, particularly in the arctic and poles, are critical to understanding the earth and atmospheric science. Much of the world's sea ice and snow covers the most inhospitable places, making measurements from satellite-based remote sensors essential. Despite the wealth of data from these instruments many challenges remain. For instance, remote sensing instruments reside on-board different satellites and observe the earth at different portions of the electromagnetic spectrum with different spatial footprints. Integrating and fusing this information to make estimates of the surface is a subject of active research.

In response to these challenges, …

Personality And Project Success: Insights From A Large-Scale Study With Professionals, Xin Xia, David Lo, Lingfeng Bao, Abhishek Sharma, Shanping Li

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

A software project is typically completed as a result of a collective effort done by individuals of different personalities. Personality reflects differences among people in behaviour patterns, communication, cognition and emotion. It often impacts relationships and collaborative work, and software engineering teamwork is no exception. Some personalities are more likely to click while others to clash. A number of studies have investigated the relationship between personality and collaborative work success. However, most of them are done in a laboratory setting, do not involve professionals, or consider non software engineering tasks. Additionally, they only answer a limited set of questions, and …

Convergence Of Media Attention Across 129 Countries, Jisun An, Hassan Aldarbesti, Haewoon Kwak

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The objective of this study is to assess the longitudinal trends of media similarity and dissimilarity on the international scale. As news value has well-established political, cultural, and economic consequences, the degree to which media coverage and content is converging across countries has implications for international relations. To study this convergence, we use the daily data of the 100 topics that were over-reported in each country, compared to other countries, from March 7 to October 9, 2016. The results of this analysis indicate that two complementary patterns–globalization and domestication–explain the media attention across the countries. We conclude that this attention …

Involute Analysis: Virtual Discourse, Memory Systems And Archive In The Involutes Of Thomas De Quincey, Kimberley A. Garcia

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Thomas De Quincey’s involutes inform metaphysical thought on memory and language, particularly concerning multiplicity and the virtual, repetition and difference. When co-opting the mathematic and mechanic involute in Suspiria de Profundis, De Quincey generates an interdisciplinary matrix for the semiotics underpinning his philosophy of language and theory of memory and experience. Involutes entangle and reproduce. De Quincey’s involute exposes the concrete and actual through which all experience accesses the abstract or virtual. The materiality of their informatics and technics provides a literary model and theoretical precursor to a combination of archive and systems theory. The textuality of involute system(s)—both …

Control Of Light-Matter Interaction In 2d Semiconductors, Zheng Sun

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this thesis we discuss the control of light matter interaction in low dimensional nanostructure cavity light confining structures. These structures have controllable dispersion properties through design which can be exploited to modify the interaction of light and matter. We will discuss two different types of light confining microcavities: a dielectric cavity and a metal cavity. The specific design of the cavity gives rise to the confinement of the electric field in the center where the nano-materials are placed. In this work, the main material was on the new class of two- dimensional semiconductors of transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs). Due …

Is Perpendicular Magnetic Anisotropy Essential To All-Optical Ultrafast Spin Reversal In Ferromagnets?, Thomas George, Y. Bai, G.P. Zhang

Chemistry & Biochemistry Faculty Works

All-optical spin reversal presents a new opportunity for spin manipulations, free of a magnetic field. Most of all-optical-spin-reversal ferromagnets are found to have a perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA), but it has been unknown whether PMA is necessary for spin reversal. Here we theoretically investigate magnetic thin films with either PMA or in-plane magnetic anisotropy (IMA). Our results show that spin reversal in IMA systems is possible, but only with a longer laser pulse and within a narrow laser parameter region. Spin reversal does not show a strong helicity dependence where the left- and right-circularly polarized light lead to the identical …

Living Shoreline Design Guidelines For Shore Protection In Virginia’S Estuarine Environments, C. Scott Hardaway Jr., Donna A. Milligan, Christine A. Wilcox, Karen Duhring

Reports

The Chesapeake Bay has about 10 million people living along its shores (Chesapeake Bay Foundation, 2017) and about 150,000 new people move into the Bay watershed each year. For communities along the shore, the continual shore retreat may be a problem. When land along the shore shows signs of erosion, property owners tend to address it.

In the past, shore stabilization strategies generally were stone revetments or wood bulkheads. Though these strategies are effective at shore stabilization, they can create a disconnect between the upland and the water and typically provide few natural habitats along the shoreline. In the past …

Assessment Of Hydrodynamic And Water Quality Impacts For Channel Deepening In The Thimble Shoals, Norfolk Harbor, And Elizabeth River Channels : Final Report On The “Hydrodynamic Modeling”, Yinglong J. Zhang, Harry V. Wang, Fei Ye, Zhengui Wang

Reports

For over twenty years, the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and the Virginia Port Authority (VPA), representing the Commonwealth Secretary of Transportation, have collaborated on projects key to port development that also preserve the environmental integrity of both Hampton Roads and the Elizabeth River. The USACE and the VPA are working to investigate channel deepening in this region to provide access to a new generation of cargo ships (e.g., Panamax-class). The main goal of this project is to investigate the feasibility for Norfolk Harbor channel deepening in the lower James and Elizabeth Rivers and assess the environmental impact …

Henrico County, Virginia - Shoreline Inventory Report: Methods And Guidelines, Marcia Berman, Karinna Nunez, Sharon Kileen, Tamia Rudnicky, Julie Bradshaw, Karen Duhring, Kallie Brown, Jessica Hendricks, David Weiss, Carl Hershner

Reports

No abstract provided.

Micro-Review Synthesis For Multi-Entity Summarization, Thanh-Son Nguyen, Hady W. Lauw, Panayiotis Tsaparas

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Location-based social networks (LBSNs), exemplified by Foursquare, are fast gaining popularity. One important feature of LBSNs is micro-review. Upon check-in at a particular venue, a user may leave a short review (up to 200 characters long), also known as a tip. These tips are an important source of information for others to know more about various aspects of an entity (e.g., restaurant), such as food, waiting time, or service. However, a user is often interested not in one particular entity, but rather in several entities collectively, for instance within a neighborhood or a category. In this paper, we address the …

Personalized Microtopic Recommendation On Microblogs, Yang Li, Jing Jiang, Ting Liu, Minghui Qiu, Xiaofei Sun

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Microblogging services such as Sina Weibo and Twitter allow users to create tags explicitly indicated by the # symbol. In Sina Weibo, these tags are called microtopics, and in Twitter, they are called hashtags. In Sina Weibo, each microtopic has a designate page and can be directly visited or commented on. Recommending these microtopics to users based on their interests can help users efficiently acquire information. However, it is non-trivial to recommend microtopics to users to satisfy their information needs. In this article, we investigate the task of personalized microtopic recommendation, which exhibits two challenges. First, users usually do not …

Clsters: A General System For Reducing Errors Of Trajectories Under Challenging Localization Situations, Hao Wu, Weiwei Sun, Baihua Zheng, Li Yang, Wei Zhou

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Trajectory data generated by outdoor activities have great potential for location based services. However, depending on the localization technique used, certain trajectory data could contain large errors. For example, the error of trajectories generated by cellular-based localization techniques is around 100m which is ten times larger than that of GPS-based trajectories. Hence, enhancing the utility of those large-error trajectories becomes a challenge. In this paper we show how to improve the quality of trajectory data having large errors. Some existing works reduce the error through hardware which requires information such as the time of arrival (TOA), received signal strength indication …

Audiosense: Sound-Based Shopper Behavior Analysis System, Amit Sharma, Youngki Lee

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper presents AudioSense, the system to monitor user-item interactions inside a store hence enabling precisely customized promotions. A shopper's smartwatch emits sound every time the shopper picks up or touches an item inside a store. This sound is then localized, in 2D space, by calculating the angles of arrival captured by multiple microphones deployed on the racks. Lastly, the 2D location is mapped to specific items on the rack based on the rack layout information. In our initial experiments conducted with a single rack with 16 compartments, we could localize the shopper's smartwatch with a median estimation error of …

On-Demand Time Blurring To Support Side-Channel Defense, Weijie Liu, Debin Gao, Michael K. Reiter

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Side-channel attacks are a serious threat to multi-tenant public clouds. Past work showed how secret information in one virtual machine (VM) can be leaked to another, co-resident VM using timing side channels. Recent defenses against timing side channels focus on reducing the degree of resource sharing. However, such defenses necessarily limit the flexibility with which resources are shared. In this paper, we propose a technique that dynamically adjusts the granularity of platform time sources, to interfere with timing side-channel attacks. Our proposed technique supposes an interface by which a VM can request the temporary coarsening of platform time sources as …

Vurle: Automatic Vulnerability Detection And Repair By Learning From Examples, Ma Siqi, Ferdian Thung, David Lo, Cong Sun, Robert H. Deng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Vulnerability becomes a major threat to the security of many systems. Attackers can steal private information and perform harmful actions by exploiting unpatched vulnerabilities. Vulnerabilities often remain undetected for a long time as they may not affect typical systems’ functionalities. Furthermore, it is often difficult for a developer to fix a vulnerability correctly if he/she is not a security expert. To assist developers to deal with multiple types of vulnerabilities, we propose a new tool, called VuRLE, for automatic detection and repair of vulnerabilities. VuRLE (1) learns transformative edits and their contexts (i.e., code characterizing edit locations) from examples of …

Numerical Simulations Of The Biogeochemical Impact Of Atmospheric Nitrogen Deposition On Surface Waters Of The Western North Atlantic, Pierre St-Laurent, Marjorie A.M. Friedrichs

Data

The impacts of atmospheric nitrogen deposition on the chlorophyll and nitrogen dynamics of surface waters in the western North Atlantic (25-45N, 65-80W) were examined with a biogeochemical ocean model forced with a regional atmospheric chemistry model. The model simulations cover the period 2004 to 2008 and are fully described in the following reference: St-Laurent, P., et al., Impacts of atmospheric nitrogen deposition on surface waters of the western North Atlantic mitigated by multiple feedbacks, J. Geophys. Res. Oceans, vol.122, doi:10.1002/2017jc013072.

Summary Tables: 2017 Henrico County, Virginia Shoreline Inventory, Marcia Berman, Karinna Nunez, Sharon Kileen, Tamia Rudnicky, Julie G. Bradshaw, Karen Duhring, Kallie Brown, Jessica Hendricks, David Weiss, Carl Hershner

Reports

The Shoreline Inventory Summary Tables quantify observed conditions based on river systems, such as the combined length of linear features (e.g. shoreline miles surveyed, miles of bulkhead and revetment), the total number of point features (e.g. docks, boathouses, boat ramps) & total acres of polygon features (tidal marshes).