The topic of this dissertation is the automation of the process of extracting understandable patterns and rules from data. An unprecedented amount of data is available to anyone with a computer connected to the Internet. The disciplines of Data...
Exocytosis of intracellular granules is critical for conversion of inactive, circulating neutrophils to fully activated cells. The p38 MAPK pathway plays a central role in neutrophil exocytosis, although its mechanism of action is unknown. We used...
Rootkits are stealthy, malicious software that allow an attacker to gain and maintain control of a system, attack other systems, destroy evidence, and decrease the chance of detection. Existing detection methods typically rely on a priori knowledge...
Estimating and analysis of deformation, either rigid or non-rigid, is an active area of research in various medical imaging and computer vision applications. Its importance stems from the inherent inter- and intra-variability in biological and...
In this dissertation research, we aim to solve problems of two types of survival data, clustered survival data with potentially informative cluster size and sojourn time data. The methods for these two types of data are different. However, both...
Pattern perception--Data processing; Pattern recognition systems; Land mines--Detection; Data mining
For complex detection and classification problems, involving data with large intra-class variations and noisy inputs, no single source of information can provide a satisfactory solution. As a result, combination of multiple classifiers is playing...
Due to the overwhelming increase in open source code, off-the-shelf software packages, third party and vendor codes, along with the ease of getting information about hacking network security systems and attacking the well known holes in security...
Twitter; Museum visitors--Services for--Technological innovations; Museums--Technological innovations; Online social networks; Museums--Marketing
With the evolution of social networks and technological innovations, services such as Twitter provide a platform for increased dialogue and participation. Micro-blogging features enable individuals and organizations to communicate directly,...
Electronic commerce--Corrupt practices--Prevention; Internet advertising--Corrupt practices; Internet fraud
Online search advertising is currently the greatest source of revenue for many Internet giants such as Google™, Yahoo!™, and Bing™. The increased number of specialized websites and modern profiling techniques have all contributed to an...
Symmetric piezoresistive microcantilever beams have been demonstrated in previous research to be capable of sensing the presence of surrounding gas. This occurs as the damping effect of the gas changes the beam resonance behavior. Device...
Autistic children--Rehabilitation; Social skills in children; Autistic children--Behavior modification; Group work in education; Peer-group tutoring of students
Social reciprocity deficits are a core feature of the autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and a major source of impairment regardless of cognitive or language ability (Carter, Davis, Klin, & Volkmar, 2005). Since these impairments do not naturally...
In recent years, a number of computational and statistical problems for identifying SNP-SNP interactions in high dimensional survival data have been studied, and several data mining approaches have been proposed. However, the relative performance...
The immune system is of profound importance for host survival due to its ability to clear many acquired diseases. In case of infections and cancer, disease arises due to under-performance of immune system. Whereas in autoimmunity and...
Recent advances in high throughput methodologies offer researchers the ability to understand complex systems via high dimensional and multi-relational data. One example is the realm of molecular biology where disparate data (such as gene sequence,...
Digital images have primarily been viewed using desktop applications. These types of programs attempt to load all of an image's graphical data into memory in order to display the image in its entirety. The method is effective for images that are...
Music teachers--Kentucky; Vocational guidance; School music--Instruction and study--Kentucky
This phenomenological study examines the experiences of current music teachers to determine what influences them to pursue a career teaching at the elementary level. Eight elementary music teachers from rural counties in Kentucky were interviewed...
Hurricane Katrina, 2005--Psychological aspects; Writing--Psychological aspects; Psychic trauma in literature; Crisis in literature
The discourses of "trauma" and "post-trauma" have become pervasive in representations of life as it is lived in contemporary globalized culture. As new media technologies make the world more accessible, we become accustomed to...
High-throughput sequencing has provided a myriad of genetic data for thousands of organisms. Computational analysis of one data type, expressed sequence tags (ESTs) yields insight into gene expression, alternative splicing, tissue specificity gene...
Remote terminal units (RTUs) are perimeter supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) devices that measure and control actual physical devices. Cyber security was largely ignored in SCADA for many years, and the cyber security issues that now...
This dissertation is concerned with investigating robust approaches for the control of pneumatic muscle systems. Pneumatic muscle is a novel type of actuator. Besides having a high ratio of power to weight and flexible control of movement, it also...
