UNT Theses and Dissertations - 81 Matching Results

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The Influence of Social Network Graph Structure on Disease Dynamics in a Simulated Environment

Description: The fight against epidemics/pandemics is one of man versus nature. Technological advances have not only improved existing methods for monitoring and controlling disease outbreaks, but have also provided new means for investigation, such as through modeling and simulation. This dissertation explores the relationship between social structure and disease dynamics. Social structures are modeled as graphs, and outbreaks are simulated based on a well-recognized standard, the susceptible-infectious… more
Date: December 2010
Creator: Johnson, Tina V.
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Partner: UNT Libraries
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Process-Voltage-Temperature Aware Nanoscale Circuit Optimization

Description: Embedded systems which are targeted towards portable applications are required to have low power consumption because such portable devices are typically powered by batteries. During the memory accesses of such battery operated portable systems, including laptops, cell phones and other devices, a significant amount of power or energy is consumed which significantly affects the battery life. Therefore, efficient and leakage power saving cache designs are needed for longer operation of battery pow… more
Date: December 2010
Creator: Thakral, Garima
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Partner: UNT Libraries
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Exploring Privacy in Location-based Services Using Cryptographic Protocols

Description: Location-based services (LBS) are available on a variety of mobile platforms like cell phones, PDA's, etc. and an increasing number of users subscribe to and use these services. Two of the popular models of information flow in LBS are the client-server model and the peer-to-peer model, in both of which, existing approaches do not always provide privacy for all parties concerned. In this work, I study the feasibility of applying cryptographic protocols to design privacy-preserving solutions for … more
Date: May 2011
Creator: Vishwanathan, Roopa
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Partner: UNT Libraries
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Physical-Layer Network Coding for MIMO Systems

Description: The future wireless communication systems are required to meet the growing demands of reliability, bandwidth capacity, and mobility. However, as corruptions such as fading effects, thermal noise, are present in the channel, the occurrence of errors is unavoidable. Motivated by this, the work in this dissertation attempts to improve the system performance by way of exploiting schemes which statistically reduce the error rate, and in turn boost the system throughput. The network can be studied us… more
Date: May 2011
Creator: Xu, Ning
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Partner: UNT Libraries
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Joint Schemes for Physical Layer Security and Error Correction

Description: The major challenges facing resource constraint wireless devices are error resilience, security and speed. Three joint schemes are presented in this research which could be broadly divided into error correction based and cipher based. The error correction based ciphers take advantage of the properties of LDPC codes and Nordstrom Robinson code. A cipher-based cryptosystem is also presented in this research. The complexity of this scheme is reduced compared to conventional schemes. The securities… more
Date: August 2011
Creator: Adamo, Oluwayomi Bamidele
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Partner: UNT Libraries
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Scene Analysis Using Scale Invariant Feature Extraction and Probabilistic Modeling

Description: Conventional pattern recognition systems have two components: feature analysis and pattern classification. For any object in an image, features could be considered as the major characteristic of the object either for object recognition or object tracking purpose. Features extracted from a training image, can be used to identify the object when attempting to locate the object in a test image containing many other objects. To perform reliable scene analysis, it is important that the features extr… more
Date: August 2011
Creator: Shen, Yao
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Partner: UNT Libraries
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Indoor Localization Using Magnetic Fields

Description: Indoor localization consists of locating oneself inside new buildings. GPS does not work indoors due to multipath reflection and signal blockage. WiFi based systems assume ubiquitous availability and infrastructure based systems require expensive installations, hence making indoor localization an open problem. This dissertation consists of solving the problem of indoor localization by thoroughly exploiting the indoor ambient magnetic fields comprising mainly of disturbances termed as anomalies … more
Date: December 2011
Creator: Pathapati Subbu, Kalyan Sasidhar
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Partner: UNT Libraries
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Incremental Learning with Large Datasets

Description: This dissertation focuses on the novel learning strategy based on geometric support vector machines to address the difficulties of processing immense data set. Support vector machines find the hyper-plane that maximizes the margin between two classes, and the decision boundary is represented with a few training samples it becomes a favorable choice for incremental learning. The dissertation presents a novel method Geometric Incremental Support Vector Machines (GISVMs) to address both efficiency… more
Date: May 2012
Creator: Giritharan, Balathasan
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Partner: UNT Libraries
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Metamodeling-based Fast Optimization of Nanoscale Ams-socs

Description: Modern consumer electronic systems are mostly based on analog and digital circuits and are designed as analog/mixed-signal systems on chip (AMS-SoCs). the integration of analog and digital circuits on the same die makes the system cost effective. in AMS-SoCs, analog and mixed-signal portions have not traditionally received much attention due to their complexity. As the fabrication technology advances, the simulation times for AMS-SoC circuits become more complex and take significant amounts of … more
Date: May 2012
Creator: Garitselov, Oleg
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Sentence Similarity Analysis with Applications in Automatic Short Answer Grading

Description: In this dissertation, I explore unsupervised techniques for the task of automatic short answer grading. I compare a number of knowledge-based and corpus-based measures of text similarity, evaluate the effect of domain and size on the corpus-based measures, and also introduce a novel technique to improve the performance of the system by integrating automatic feedback from the student answers. I continue to combine graph alignment features with lexical semantic similarity measures and employ mach… more
Date: August 2012
Creator: Mohler, Michael A. G.
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Partner: UNT Libraries
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Modeling Synergistic Relationships Between Words and Images

Description: Texts and images provide alternative, yet orthogonal views of the same underlying cognitive concept. By uncovering synergistic, semantic relationships that exist between words and images, I am working to develop novel techniques that can help improve tasks in natural language processing, as well as effective models for text-to-image synthesis, image retrieval, and automatic image annotation. Specifically, in my dissertation, I will explore the interoperability of features between language and v… more
Date: December 2012
Creator: Leong, Chee Wee
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Partner: UNT Libraries
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Source and Channel Coding Strategies for Wireless Sensor Networks

Description: In this dissertation, I focus on source coding techniques as well as channel coding techniques. I addressed the challenges in WSN by developing (1) a new source coding strategy for erasure channels that has better distortion performance compared to MDC; (2) a new cooperative channel coding strategy for multiple access channels that has better channel outage performances compared to MIMO; (3) a new source-channel cooperation strategy to accomplish source-to-fusion center communication that reduc… more
Date: December 2012
Creator: Li, Li
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Evaluating Appropriateness of Emg and Flex Sensors for Classifying Hand Gestures

Description: Hand and arm gestures are a great way of communication when you don't want to be heard, quieter and often more reliable than whispering into a radio mike. In recent years hand gesture identification became a major active area of research due its use in various applications. The objective of my work is to develop an integrated sensor system, which will enable tactical squads and SWAT teams to communicate when there is absence of a Line of Sight or in the presence of any obstacles. The gesture se… more
Date: May 2013
Creator: Akumalla, Sarath Chandra
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Partner: UNT Libraries
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Extrapolating Subjectivity Research to Other Languages

Description: Socrates articulated it best, "Speak, so I may see you." Indeed, language represents an invisible probe into the mind. It is the medium through which we express our deepest thoughts, our aspirations, our views, our feelings, our inner reality. From the beginning of artificial intelligence, researchers have sought to impart human like understanding to machines. As much of our language represents a form of self expression, capturing thoughts, beliefs, evaluations, opinions, and emotions which are… more
Date: May 2013
Creator: Banea, Carmen
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Finding Meaning in Context Using Graph Algorithms in Mono- and Cross-lingual Settings

Description: Making computers automatically find the appropriate meaning of words in context is an interesting problem that has proven to be one of the most challenging tasks in natural language processing (NLP). Widespread potential applications of a possible solution to the problem could be envisaged in several NLP tasks such as text simplification, language learning, machine translation, query expansion, information retrieval and text summarization. Ambiguity of words has always been a challenge in these… more
Date: May 2013
Creator: Sinha, Ravi Som
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Partner: UNT Libraries
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Layout-accurate Ultra-fast System-level Design Exploration Through Verilog-ams

Description: This research addresses problems in designing analog and mixed-signal (AMS) systems by bridging the gap between system-level and circuit-level simulation by making simulations fast like system-level and accurate like circuit-level. The tools proposed include metamodel integrated Verilog-AMS based design exploration flows. The research involves design centering, metamodel generation flows for creating efficient behavioral models, and Verilog-AMS integration techniques for model realization. The … more
Date: May 2013
Creator: Zheng, Geng
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Partner: UNT Libraries
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Automated Real-time Objects Detection in Colonoscopy Videos for Quality Measurements

Description: The effectiveness of colonoscopy depends on the quality of the inspection of the colon. There was no automated measurement method to evaluate the quality of the inspection. This thesis addresses this issue by investigating an automated post-procedure quality measurement technique and proposing a novel approach automatically deciding a percentage of stool areas in images of digitized colonoscopy video files. It involves the classification of image pixels based on their color features using a new… more
Date: August 2013
Creator: Kumara, Muthukudage Jayantha
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Partner: UNT Libraries
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Detection of Temporal Events and Abnormal Images for Quality Analysis in Endoscopy Videos

Description: Recent reports suggest that measuring the objective quality is very essential towards the success of colonoscopy. Several quality indicators (i.e. metrics) proposed in recent studies are implemented in software systems that compute real-time quality scores for routine screening colonoscopy. Most quality metrics are derived based on various temporal events occurred during the colonoscopy procedure. The location of the phase boundary between the insertion and the withdrawal phases and the amount … more
Date: August 2013
Creator: Nawarathna, Ruwan D.
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Partner: UNT Libraries
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Statistical Strategies for Efficient Signal Detection and Parameter Estimation in Wireless Sensor Networks

Description: This dissertation investigates data reduction strategies from a signal processing perspective in centralized detection and estimation applications. First, it considers a deterministic source observed by a network of sensors and develops an analytical strategy for ranking sensor transmissions based on the magnitude of their test statistics. The benefit of the proposed strategy is that the decision to transmit or not to transmit observations to the fusion center can be made at the sensor level re… more
Date: December 2013
Creator: Ayeh, Eric
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Partner: UNT Libraries
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Geostatistical Inspired Metamodeling and Optimization of Nanoscale Analog Circuits

Description: The current trend towards miniaturization of modern consumer electronic devices significantly affects their design. The demand for efficient all-in-one appliances leads to smaller, yet more complex and powerful nanoelectronic devices. The increasing complexity in the design of such nanoscale Analog/Mixed-Signal Systems-on-Chip (AMS-SoCs) presents difficult challenges to designers. One promising design method used to mitigate the burden of this design effort is the use of metamodeling (surrogate… more
Date: May 2014
Creator: Okobiah, Oghenekarho
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Partner: UNT Libraries
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Monitoring Dengue Outbreaks Using Online Data

Description: Internet technology has affected humans' lives in many disciplines. The search engine is one of the most important Internet tools in that it allows people to search for what they want. Search queries entered in a web search engine can be used to predict dengue incidence. This vector borne disease causes severe illness and kills a large number of people every year. This dissertation utilizes the capabilities of search queries related to dengue and climate to forecast the number of dengue cases. … more
Date: May 2014
Creator: Chartree, Jedsada
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Partner: UNT Libraries
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A Computational Methodology for Addressing Differentiated Access of Vulnerable Populations During Biological Emergencies

Description: Mitigation response plans must be created to protect affected populations during biological emergencies resulting from the release of harmful biochemical substances. Medical countermeasures have been stockpiled by the federal government for such emergencies. However, it is the responsibility of local governments to maintain solid, functional plans to apply these countermeasures to the entire target population within short, mandated time frames. Further, vulnerabilities in the population may ser… more
Date: August 2014
Creator: O'Neill, Martin Joseph, II
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Partner: UNT Libraries
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Modeling Epidemics on Structured Populations: Effects of Socio-demographic Characteristics and Immune Response Quality

Description: Epidemiologists engage in the study of the distribution and determinants of health-related states or events in human populations. Eventually, they will apply that study to prevent and control problems and contingencies associated with the health of the population. Due to the spread of new pathogens and the emergence of new bio-terrorism threats, it has become imperative to develop new and expand existing techniques to equip public health providers with robust tools to predict and control health… more
Date: August 2014
Creator: Reyes Silveyra, Jorge A.
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Partner: UNT Libraries
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Procedural Generation of Content for Online Role Playing Games

Description: Video game players demand a volume of content far in excess of the ability of game designers to create it. For example, a single quest might take a week to develop and test, which means that companies such as Blizzard are spending millions of dollars each month on new content for their games. As a result, both players and developers are frustrated with the inability to meet the demand for new content. By generating content on-demand, it is possible to create custom content for each player based… more
Date: August 2014
Creator: Doran, Jonathon
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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