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Title: Analysis of Maltese Cross Specimens to Determine Three-Dimensional Yield Surfaces
Creator: Chaudesaygues, Ludwig
Date: 2011-11-29, 2011-12
Description: Yield behavior of extremely porous solid foams under multiaxial states of stress is of significant importance because, unlike pressure...
Show moreYield behavior of extremely porous solid foams under multiaxial states of stress is of significant importance because, unlike pressure independent yield response of the majority of engineering materials, solid foams exhibit quadratic as well as linear dependence on hydrostatic stress component in their yield behavior. Therefore, there exists a critical need to analyze and use specimen geometries that allow biaxial and triaxial experiments through which yield surface can be probed under varying amounts of mean stress. This study investigates, through FE analysis, the feasibility of Maltese-Cross (MC) specimen geometry as a potential candidate for using in biaxial and triaxial experiments. Although solid foams have a pressure dependent yield behavior, the current study adopted a linear elastic-hardening J2 flow rule to keep the analysis reasonably simple and focus on the fundamental effect of specimen geometry on strain field and, more importantly, the extraction of yield point from multiaxial force-displacement data. One must recognize that in multiaxial experiments, particularly in triaxial loading, forces and displacements experienced by the nominal gage section cannot be directly measured for practical reasons. Instead, far field forces and displacements have to be used to calculate average measures of stress and strain within the gage section. This study shows through FE analyses that MC specimens can be used to determine the onset of macroscopic yielding under varying amount of mean stress component, provided that certain stress/strain paths, which cause premature deformation localization out of the gage section, are avoided.
M.S. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, December 2011
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Title: NUMERICAL OBSERVER FOR MOTION QUALITY ASSESSMENT
Creator: Massanes, Francesc
Date: 2011-04-25, 2011-05
Description: The objective of this work is to develop mathematical models (using machine learning regression) that can mimic human ability to perceive...
Show moreThe objective of this work is to develop mathematical models (using machine learning regression) that can mimic human ability to perceive motion of a small object in an image sequence or a video. The motivation for this work comes from the diagnostic cardiac imaging where a small deformation of a cardiac wall motion represents a signi cant diagnostic marker. First a brief overview of the state of the art in image and video quality assessment is given. This overview also points out a need for a new task based quality metrics which can better quantify, subjective, image sequence quality under various degradations, like blur and noise. Next a study is designed to measure human observers motion perception under various degradation models. Later, the results from this study are analyzed to detect which image sequence features are the most relevant for motion perception and the development of a mathematical model aiming to emulate humans. The chosen features are based on so called visual attention and estimated object motion. Since the computation requirement to calculate visual attention and estimated object motion are considerable we also present a fast parallel implementations based on graphical processing units using NVIDIA Compute Uni ed Device Architecture. The preliminary results indicate that proposed machine learning regression models with the use of the visual attention and estimated object motion can accurately predict human motion perception.
M.S. in Electrical Engineering, May 2011
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Title: Thermostatic control of electric heating appliances
Creator: Prochazka, R. V
Date: 2009, 1917
Publisher: Armour Institute of Technology
Description: http://www.archive.org/details/thermostaticcont00proc
Thesis (B.S.)--Armour Institute of Technology, 1917 Bibliography: leaves 26-27 B.S. in...
Show morehttp://www.archive.org/details/thermostaticcont00proc
Thesis (B.S.)--Armour Institute of Technology, 1917 Bibliography: leaves 26-27 B.S. in Electrical Engineering, 1917
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Title: DIFFERENTIAL SENSITIVITY OF BAXΔ2 POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE CELLS TO ANTI-TUMOR AGENT BORTEZOMIB IN COLON CANCER
Creator: Chen, Wenjing
Date: 2015, 2015-05
Description: Tumor suppressor BaxΔ2 is a functional Bax isoform that is found in microsatellite unstable (MSI) colon cancer. However, BaxΔ2 proteins are...
Show moreTumor suppressor BaxΔ2 is a functional Bax isoform that is found in microsatellite unstable (MSI) colon cancer. However, BaxΔ2 proteins are not stable and are prone to be degraded by proteasomes in tumor cells. Bortezomib, a proteasome inhibitor, is an FDA approved anti-cancer drug mainly used for the treatment of myeloma and lymphoma. We tested if Bortezomib can block BaxΔ2 degradation and potentially be beneficial for the treatment of BaxΔ2 positive colon cancer. In this project, we compared the efficacy of Bortezomib-induced cell death in BaxΔ2-positive and BaxΔ2-negative colon cancer cells. We found that BaxΔ2-positive cells were highly sensitive to Bortezomib-induced cell death in comparison with that in BaxΔ2-negative cells. The half maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) of cell viability for BaxΔ2-positive cells is 11.1 nM, while it is 453.8 nM for BaxΔ2-negative cells. The results indicate that Bortezomib has a selectivity towards BaxΔ2-expressive cells and could be a drug candidate for the treatment of BaxΔ2-positive colon cancer.
M.S. in Biology, May 2015
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Title: IMPACT OF WORK FLOW DISRUPTIONS, PROJECT CHARACTERISTICS AND FOREMEN CHARACTERISTICS ON IMPROVISATIONAL DECISIONS AND ACTIONS ON CONSTRUCTION SITES
Creator: Kleps, Stephen M.
Date: 2013, 2013-12
Description: Disruptions on construction sites are a constant issue and unfortunately can have negative impacts on the workflow and productivity of the...
Show moreDisruptions on construction sites are a constant issue and unfortunately can have negative impacts on the workflow and productivity of the impacted crews. As a result of these disruptions, foremen must quickly generate improvised solutions to the disruptions to keep the work of their crew progressing. Yet the mechanics of how exactly this improvisational decision making is occurring has not been previously studied. To address this void in the literature, this study examined the factors that may influence a foremen's ability to improvise, such as the type of disruption, the jobsite characteristics, and the personality, experience, and education of the foremen, in relation to the level of improvisation occurring. To accomplish this, this study collected data from 50 foremen within the electrical construction industry to measure to what degree they improvised and with what speed they improvised in response to their daily disruptions, resulting in 244 recorded disruption incidents. In analyzing these incidents with multilevel modeling analysis techniques, it was determined that the type of disruption did not have as large of an effect on the degree and speed of the resulting improvisation as originally hypothesized. In addition, it was found that factors such as the level of cooperation on the job site, the time pressure on the foremen, and the level of collaboration on the job site influenced the degree and speed of the improvisation. Yet the factors that explained the largest total variance in both the degree and speed of improvisation were the personality traits of the foremen. Thus, these findings emphasize the importance of foremen on job sites, while also documenting how improvisation is occurring on job sites.
PH.D in Civil Engineering, December 2013
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Title: Some observations on the baking test as commercially applied to wheat and flour
Creator: Pirrie, Peter Gustave
Date: 2009, 1913
Publisher: Armour Institute of Technology
Description: http://www.archive.org/details/someobservations00pirr
Thesis (B.S.)--Armour Institute of Technology; Includes index

Title: Test of a potassium chlorate signal cell
Creator: Reid, John S., Jr
Date: 2009, 1911
Publisher: Armour Institute of Technology
Description: http://www.archive.org/details/testofpotassiumc00reid
Thesis (B.S.)--Armour Institute of Technology

Title: Thermal Resistance of Salmonella in Desiccation and Rehydration
Creator: Ahuja, Rameet
Date: 2011-12-06, 2011-12
Description: Transfer of salmonellae from a desiccated existence in dry food ingredients or processing environments to food products having higher water...
Show moreTransfer of salmonellae from a desiccated existence in dry food ingredients or processing environments to food products having higher water activities (e.g., peanut butter used in pie, chocolate in cake) leads to partial or full re-hydration of the bacteria. This study characterized the thermal behavior of Salmonella in response to desiccation and the subsequent rehydration. The thermal resistance of the desiccated S. enterica ser Tennessee was inversely correlated to aw: for example, desiccation at 11 to 97% equilibrated relative humidity (ERH) resulted in 0.5 to 3.3 log reduction, respectively, after 60ºC treatment for 10 min. Cells stored at lower ERH showed a lower survival rate, but higher thermal resistance. Once cells established their initial physiological response to desiccation, continual storage at 11% ERH up to three weeks did not further change the thermal resistance of Salmonella. Rehydration of the desiccated cells (11% ERH) to higher ERH conditions (84 to 97%) led to greater than 5 log reduction after heating cells at 60ºC for 10 min, in contrast, the same heat treatment resulted in approximate 3 log reduction for cells stored constantly at 84-97% ERH. There was no significant difference in regard to thermal sensitivity between cells rehydrated from 11% ERH to 33-55% ERH and that stored constantly at each ERH, only about 0.3-0.5 log CFU reduction in both cases. The study showed that rehydration moderately reduced cell viability, but greatly increased thermal sensitivity when a drastic aw shift occurred.
M.S. in Food Safety and Technology, December 2011
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Title: 360-DEGREE FEEDBACK RATING CONSISTENCY: THE IMPACT OF IMPORTANCE
Creator: Levin, Kelly E.
Date: 2013, 2013-12
Description: The purpose of this study was to investigate the link between performance dimension importance and rating consistency in 360-degree feedback...
Show moreThe purpose of this study was to investigate the link between performance dimension importance and rating consistency in 360-degree feedback systems. 360- degree feedback surveys were conducted on 208 managerial level employees from various organizations across the United States. In partial support of the hypotheses, dimension importance showed some impact on consistency of performance ratings across rater groups. The link between importance and consistency was stronger for the peer rating group than for the direct report or other groups. Discussion of results and implications for practice and future research are provided. In conclusion, this study provides the first research to empirically examine the link between dimension importance and rating consistency
M.S. in Psychology, December 2013
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Title: UNDERSTANDING THE MEMBRANE ACTIVITY OF ACYL LYSINE OLIGOMERS
Creator: Lingaraju, Mahesh
Date: 2012-07-10, 2012-07
Description: In the past two decades, Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) have attracted considerable interest because of their potential therapeutic use as...
Show moreIn the past two decades, Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) have attracted considerable interest because of their potential therapeutic use as antibiotics, antivirals, and antitumoural drugs. However, there are a number of serious challenges on the way toward bringing AMPs onto the market which include their rapid in vivo degradation, high production costs, reduced activity in physiological conditions, etc. To overcome these problems and yet to capitalize on the immense potential of AMPs, extensive efforts to develop their non-natural mimics have been recently made. A better understanding of the structure-activity relationships of AMPs is essential to the creation of a successful peptidomimetic compound. It has been widely accepted that AMPs kill pathogens by disrupting the cell membrane or invading the cytoplasm and inhibiting core metabolic functions. Thus, the pathogenic membrane plays a crucial role either as an immediate target or as a barrier that must be traversed. Herein, we have investigated the role of charge and hydrophobicity in the interplay between membrane-active molecules (Oligomers of acyl lysine) and model bacterial or host cell membranes using constant-pressure insertion assays, synchrotron X-ray reflectivity (XR) and grazing incident-angle X-ray diffraction (GIXD). The outer surface of a membrane was approximated by a planar lipid monolayer at the air-liquid interface, whose composition was modified in accordance with the cell being modelled. The presented results have helped us to arrive at a general mechanism by which the OAKs seem to interact with lipids which is strongly dependent upon the charge density of the monolayer, charge and hydrophilicity of the molecule and presence of freely accessible hydrophobic regions. The results indicate the molecules fail to interact with the acyl chains when they poorly negotiate with the head group or when they lack accessible hydrophobic regions. Overall, presented results advance current understanding of the mechanism of action of flexible AMP mimics on bacterial membranes and will no doubt aid in the rational design and optimization of non-natural mimics of antimicrobial peptides that will be effective against multidrug resistant bacteria and cancer cells. Nevertheless, future work is required to further understand the critical factors leading to potent anti-infective activity of antimicrobials.
M.S. in Molecular Biochemistry and Biophysics, July 2012
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Title: Selecting a Compensation Strategy to Control Project Duration: Empirical Comparison of Lump Sum and Reimbursable Strategies (Working Paper)
Creator: Chen, Juan, Menches, Cindy L.
Date: 2012-05-01, 2012-05-01
Description: Reducing project duration is a significant concern for many industries in the speed-to-market era. Numerous studies have examined the effects...
Show moreReducing project duration is a significant concern for many industries in the speed-to-market era. Numerous studies have examined the effects of project delivery methods on speeding up the process of construction. However, no study has quantitatively compared the effect of using different compensation strategies on schedule duration and schedule reduction. Using the data obtained from 175 international construction projects, this paper focuses on examining the influence of compensation strategy (lump sum versus reimbursable) on project duration while specifically taking into account the industry sector (heavy industrial versus light industrial). The results of the study provide empirical evidence that using a reimbursable compensation strategy can potentially shorten the procurement duration, construction duration, and overall project duration of heavy industrial projects. However, reimbursable contracting did not appear to reduce the project duration on light industrial projects.
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Title: EFFECT OF SUCROSE AND HIGH PRESSURE PROCESSING ON FUNCTIONAL AND PHYCISOCHEMICAL PROPERTIES OF EGG WHITE PROTEINS
Creator: Liu, Hui
Date: 2013-04-25, 2013-05
Description: Egg white is widely used in food applications because of its nutritional benefits and versatile functionalities. Traditional treatment like...
Show moreEgg white is widely used in food applications because of its nutritional benefits and versatile functionalities. Traditional treatment like thermal pasteurization utilized for safety concern is disadvantageous to the egg white proteins due to the functionality impairment. High pressure processing (HPP) technology is known as a non-thermal food preserving method that can be operated at ambient temperatures. Sucrose is an essential ingredient that affects the functional behavior of egg white in numerous baking and pastry applications. The current study investigated the effect of sucrose and HPP on the functional and physicochemical properties of egg white proteins and verified the efficacy of HPP on microbial inactivation in egg white. Sucrose addition and HPP treatment were combined to study the foaming and physicochemical properties. Homogenized egg white samples were treated at selected HPP conditions (300-500 MPa) for 5-15 min, with an initial temperature of 4°C. Sucrose was added at 0-48% (w/v) to samples before or after HPP treatment. Foaming properties including foaming capacity and foam stability were measured immediately after whipping process. Turbidity and viscosity analyses were conducted within 24 hr after HPP treatment. The efficacy of HPP (500 MPa for 5 min) on microbial inactivation was verified using a pathogenic strain Salmonella enterica serotype Enteritidis (H7037) isolated from egg yolk implicated in a salmonellosis outbreak and a nonpathogenic Escherichia coli K12 strain (ATCC23716). All trials were completed in triplicate. Both addition of sucrose and HPP treatment decreased the foaming capacity but increased the foam stability of egg white proteins. Adding sucrose before HPP protected protein from turbidity and maintained foaming capacity, while adding sucrose after HPP greatly improved foam stability (p<0.05). Increasing HPP x holding time from 5 to 15 min did not affect the foaming properties significantly (p>0.05). A 5-log reduction of both strains was achieved after HPP treatment at 500 MPa for 5 min. These results exhibited that HPP can be used as a processing technology for the egg white safety control and that HPP could modify egg white foaming quality in food baking applications.
M.S. in Food Safety and Technology, May 2013
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Title: Power Measurement for Road Bicycles: Towards a Universal Solution (sequence unknown), IPRO 324 - Deliverables: IPRO 324 IPRO Day Presentation F09
Creator: Adrianzen, Luis, Allen, Ross, Antonio, Chris, Callan, Mark, Claxton, Sara, Diesse, Patrick, Gaylord, Matthew, Herbert, Greg, Shaffer, Dan, Wegrzyn, Celeste
Date: 2009-12
Description: The goal of the IPRO is to try to find an inexpensive, but accurate way of measuring the power output of a rider on a bicycle. Problems with...
Show moreThe goal of the IPRO is to try to find an inexpensive, but accurate way of measuring the power output of a rider on a bicycle. Problems with systems currently available are: some products are not compatible with all bike systems causing the need to purchase new parts, the cost of the available products is expensive, and some of the available measuring systems are not very accurate.
Deliverables for IPRO 324: Power Measurement for Road Bicycles: Towards a Universal Solution for the fall 2009 semester
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Title: DEVELOPMENT OF A VERSATILE WIRELESS NETWORKING TESTBED AND ITS APPLICATIONS
Creator: Paladugu, Ravi Kiran
Date: 2011-07-26, 2011-07
Description: Wireless networks have been an essential part of communication and a very hot research interest in the last century. It is a truly...
Show moreWireless networks have been an essential part of communication and a very hot research interest in the last century. It is a truly revolutionary paradigm shift, enabling multimedia communications between people and devices from any location. Wireless networking is becoming increasingly ubiquitous, there has been a major development in communication hardware and protocol stack for better quality of service, increased throughput, reduced latency, reduced energy consumption, security, etc. As wireless networks continue to develop, usage has grown day-by-day and it becomes a critical part of home, business and industrial infrastructure. To meet all these increasing demands, growing wireless networks and standards researchers are providing new networking technologies. However, these technologies must be tested before they can be released for mainstream use. As academic research in wireless networking relies heavily on simulation, the accuracy depends on the fidelity of the models used in simulation. Even the well-known simulators used in academic research, like ns-3 and qualnet, fails to provide accurate behavior of the signal propagation and wireless channels. Without high confidence in the accuracy of wireless network simulation tools, it is difficult to make concrete progress in cross-layer protocol optimization research. In this thesis, we built a versatile wireless networking testbed, which can support variety of applications. This testbed supports Multi-Radio Multi-Channel (MRMC) wireless mesh networks and can implement various multi radio routing protocols. We have made several modifications to the wireless interface device drivers to improve the performance of multichannel protocols. Furthermore, we will discuss the details of our testbed and its implementation.
M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, July 2011
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Title: Green Building Design Concept & Integration (sequence unknown), IPRO 335 - Deliverables: IPRO 335 Midterm Presentation F09
Creator: Avanessian, Aris, Banda, Justine, Bergerson, Joshua, Burke, Jeffrey, Christo, Robert, Dexter, Eric, Kim, Kibum, Mey, Andrew, Okunaga, Jonathan, Razeq, Ali, Schaefer, Jacqueline, Thovar Leon, Adrian, Um, Hye
Date: 2009-12
Description: The scope of this IPRO project spans structural, architectural, foundation, HVAC, lighting and electric system designs, as well as building...
Show moreThe scope of this IPRO project spans structural, architectural, foundation, HVAC, lighting and electric system designs, as well as building cost estimating and professional ethics. The IPRO team will become informed about and apply principles associated with green design concepts, energy sustainability, post occupancy comfort, acoustic design issues, smart building concepts, health issues (abatement of mold- and allergy-causing agents), and safety considerations.
Deliverables for IPRO 335: Green Building Design Concept & Integration for the fall 2009 semester
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Title: GROWTH AND SURVIVAL OF SALMONELLA IN PARTIALLY SPROUTED PUMPKIN, SUNFLOWER, AND CHIA SEEDS SUBSEQUENTLY DRIED FOR DIRECT CONSUMPTION
Creator: Wang, Can
Date: 2017, 2017-05
Description: Products based on dried, partially sprouted seeds have been associated with foodborne salmonellosis. Typically, sprouted seeds have been a...
Show moreProducts based on dried, partially sprouted seeds have been associated with foodborne salmonellosis. Typically, sprouted seeds have been a major concern with respect to foodborne illness, but little is known about the risks associated with dried partial sprouted seed products. Previous studies suggest that low-temperature, highhumidity storage conditions may provide an alternative means to inactivate Salmonella for those processors opposed to traditional thermal processing. The objective of this study was to determine the growth of Salmonella during germination of pumpkin, sunflower, and chia seeds, and the survival of Salmonella during drying and storage under variable temperature and relative humidity (RH) conditions. Pumpkin, sunflower, and chia seeds were dry inoculated at 5 log CFU/g with 4 serotype mixture of Salmonella using a dry transfer method, and then soaked in sterile water at 25 and 37°C for 24 h. Salmonella and total aerobic mesophilic plate counts (APC) were determined on xylose lysine deoxycholate (XLD) and tryptic soy agar supplemented with 0.6% yeast extract (TSAYE), respectively. Seeds using this procedure were drained and dried at 25, 51 and 60°C. The water activity (aw) and microbial population of seeds were monitored during drying. Seeds soaked and dried at 25oC were utilized for subsequently storage studies. Portions of dried chia seeds were ground into powder, then pumpkin, sunflower and chia seeds and chia seeds powder were stored at either 37 or 45oC at three different RH levels. The aw and microbial population of seed samples were monitored during storage. During the seed soaking, Salmonella and APC increased approximately 3 log CFU/g. Some decreases were observed at the end of the growth period, as may be expected after stationary phase. Drying at 60oC to a aw of 0.1 resulted in over 6-log CFU/g loss in bacterial population in partially sprouted pumpkin and sunflower seeds, and 5-log CFU/g loss in partially sprouted chia seeds. However, seeds dried at 25oC bring the aw to 0.5 had only approximately a 1-log CFU/g loss in bacterial population. The highest temperature (45oC) and RH (76%) storage condition had the greatest inactivation effect. At 45oC and 76%RH, Salmonella in pumpkin and sunflower seeds were below detection limit after 4 d and 7 d respectively. Salmonella populations in chia seeds and chia seeds powder were still detectable after 7 d regardless of the treatment condition. Salmonella is capable of survival during the manufacture of partially sprouted seeds including both drying and storage steps. Mild thermal treatment coupled with high RH storage condition holds promise for Salmonella inactivation in pumpkin and sunflower seeds but is less effective for chia seeds and chia seeds powder. Dried, partially sprouted seeds that are used as ingredients or consumed directly without further processing are a high-risk food product. Such products must be treated to eliminate foodborne pathogens that may cause foodborne illness.
M.S. in Food Science, May 2017
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Title: EFFECT OF HIGH PRESSURE PROCESSING ON MIGRATION CHARACTERISTICS IN POLYPROPYLENE FILM
Creator: Zhao, Kun
Date: 2013-04-15, 2013-05
Description: High pressure processing (HPP) is readily gaining prominence worldwide as an alternative method of food preservation due to its benefits of...
Show moreHigh pressure processing (HPP) is readily gaining prominence worldwide as an alternative method of food preservation due to its benefits of improved quality, freshness and nutrient retention. The use of polymer-based flexible packaging materials has allowed application of HPP to prepackaged food products, without significant loss of physical and mechanical properties. However, there is limited data existing on migration properties in the materials before and/or after HPP. Therefore, it’s necessary to evaluate potential migration issues in pre-packed foods during HPP (Song and Koontz, 2012). This research was conducted to determine the migration properties in cast polypropylene (CPP) films during and after HPP (71°C and 700MPa) and a comparable thermal processing (TP, 71°C and 0.1MPa), using headspace (HS) gas chromatography (GC) coupled with mass spectrometer (MS) technique to quantify selected surrogate compounds (chloroform (CF), toluene (TOL), methyl salicylate (MS) and phenyl cyclohexane (PC)) in FDA-suggested food simulants (Miglyol and 10% Ethanol), and using dynamic mechanical analyser (DMA) to test glass transition temperature (Tg) of films. In general, HPP significantly decreased the migration of selected surrogates from CPP film into Miglyol or 10% Ethanol when compared to TP. For Miglyol, after 5min-HPP migration recoveries of CF, TOL, MS and PC were 53, 61, 24, and 16% respectively, while all compounds reached 100% after 5min-TP. For 10% Ethanol, recoveries of four compounds were 22.6, 12.6, 11.2, and 8.4% after HPP treatment, but were 51.0, 25.5, 21.2, and 9.2% with TP treatment. During storage at room temperature after processing, migration recoveries increased for both HPP/TP treated and non- xii processed samples; however, concentration of surrogated in HPP treated films were near or lower than those from non-processed and/or TP treated films. This research will help the U.S Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the food industry to determine whether any safety issues related to chemical migration should be addressed concerning the use of HPP in production of prepackaged foods. The results may be used in the food contact notification and petition review processes of approving new packaging materials and components for use in HPP applications (Song and Koontz, 2011).
M.S. in Food Safety and Technology, May 2013
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Title: Improving Efficiency Through Advanced Technology for Electrical Construction (sequence unknown), IPRO 338 - Project Plan: IPRO 338 Project Plan F09
Creator: Kyung Cho, Bum, Crites, Sarah, Czapla, Sarah, Guerrero, Jose, Kim, Yoosuk, Malawski, Frank, Maloney, Michael, Pedrina, Kaleo, Qiu, Li, Yi, Jennifer
Date: 2009-12
Description: The team is to improve the efficiency of electrical contracting projects through new software and technology, communications, and project...
Show moreThe team is to improve the efficiency of electrical contracting projects through new software and technology, communications, and project management techniques, especially through Building Information Modeling (BIM) utilization.
Sponsorship: Electrical Contractor's Association
Project Plan for IPRO 338: Improving Efficiency Through Advanced Technology for Electrical Construction for the fall 2009 semester
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Title: MICROCALCIFICATION DETECTION WITH DEEP BELIEF NETWORK
Creator: Liu, Lu
Date: 2012-04-24, 2012-05
Description: In this thesis, deep belief net (DBN) is applied for detection of microcalcification (MC) clusters in digital mammograms. DBN is a relatively...
Show moreIn this thesis, deep belief net (DBN) is applied for detection of microcalcification (MC) clusters in digital mammograms. DBN is a relatively new type of neural network in machine learning which can learn complex structures from data by using a deep architecture. Based on a database of 200 clinical mammograms, a 3-level unsupervised network followed by a supervised back-propagation fine-tuning classifier is trained and tested. For each location in the image, the classifier is applied to decide whether there is an MC, and subsequently all the detected MCs are grouped into clusters. Free-response receiver operating characteristic (FROC) curves are used to evaluate the performance. The performance of DBN is compared to a well-known support vector machine (SVM) detector. Experimental results show that DBN can outperform SVM. In particular, DBN can achieve a detection rate of 83% at the cost of only one false positive cluster per image. These promising results show that DBN can be adopted in the study of object detection in medical image.
M.S. in Electrical Engineering, May 2012
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Title: DEVELOPMENT AND ANALYSIS OF A SECURE AND EFFICIENT VEHICULAR AD HOC NETWORK
Creator: Hao, Yong
Date: 2012-07-06, 2012-07
Description: Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) enable vehicles to communicate with each other by equipping every vehicle with an on board unit (OBU). Many...
Show moreVehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) enable vehicles to communicate with each other by equipping every vehicle with an on board unit (OBU). Many interesting and promising functionalities can be achieved in the VANETs, such as safety related application and data downloading application. In this thesis, we focus on the security and privacy provision as well as efficiency improvement of above two applications in the VANETs. In the safety related application, each vehicle periodically broadcasts messages including its current position, direction and velocity (which can be generated by a global positioning system (GPS) device) to inform its geographic data to its neighbors. Privacy is an important issue in VANETs. Meanwhile, some important security functionalities such as message authentication, integrity and non-repudiation should be integrated into the VANETs. In this thesis, we propose a distributed key management protocol based on group signature to provide security and privacy for vehicles. Distributed key management is expected to facilitate the revocation of malicious vehicles, verification efficiency, maintenance of the system and heterogeneous security policies, compared with the centralized key management assumed by the existing group signature schemes. In our framework, each road side unit (RSU) acts as the key distributor for the group, where a new issue incurred is that the semi-trust RSUs may be compromised. Therefore, we develop security protocols which are able to detect compromised RSUs and their malicious accomplices. Moreover, we address the issue of large computation overhead due to the group signature implementation. A practical cooperative message authentication protocol (CMAP) is thus proposed to alleviate the verification burden for vehicles. In the CMAP, on average, each vehicle just needs to verify a very small amount of received geographic messages. Compared with the existing probabilistic verification protocol, CMAP can save at least 40 % computation resource for vehicles. In the data downloading application, we propose a secure cooperative data downx loading framework for payment services in VANETs. In our framework, vehicles download data when they pass by an RSU and then share the data after they travel out of the RSU’s coverage. A fundamental issue of our framework is how vehicles share data with each other. Thus, we develop an application layer data sharing protocol (DSP) in which vehicles share their downloaded data one by one in sequence according to their positions. A better performance can be achieved by the proposed protocol because it is able to avoid medium access control (MAC) layer collisions and the hidden terminal effect. Analytical models are derived to quantitatively evaluate the impact of the distance between RSUs on the amount of data that vehicles can download in a drive through. The simulation results show that our protocol can download 87.4% more data for vehicles than the existing scheme “VC-MAC” when the distance between two consecutive RSUs reaches 10 kilometers. Moreover, we also address security and privacy issues in the process of data downloading and sharing. Both applicants’ exclusive access to the applied data and vehicles’ privacy are ensured by our framework. Compared with the communication overhead in the intuitive method, the communication overhead in our framework will be reduced to 50%. We also propose a security protocol to detect sybil attacks in privacy preserved VANETs. In the above two applications, vehicles’ location information is utilized to facilitate the efficiency. However, if malicious vehicles launch the sybil attack by forging several fake entities and claim they are at some certain positions. The overall performance of the applications will be compromised greatly. So, we propose a security protocol to detect sybil attacks by examining the rationality of vehicles’ positions. The attack detection utilizes the characteristics of communication. No extra hardware and little communication and computation overhead will be introduced to vehicles. Moreover, a smart attacker scenario in which a malicious vehicle may adjust its communication range to avoid detection and the malicious vehicles’ collusion scenario are also considered.
Ph.D. in Computer Engineering, July 2012
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