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Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program

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Auto-Adapting Circuit Topology for Efficient Wireless Power Transfer via Magnetic Resonances

2022-08 , Radcliff, Johnathan McKinley

As the world moves away from using wired connections to transmit data, wireless power transfer (WPT) offers another opportunity for "cutting the cord." Technologies such as magnetic induction and radiative transmission already allow for energy to flow without a physical medium. However, these solutions are not without their limitations: magnetic induction's short range keeps devices tethered to their charging docks, inhibiting mobility; radiative transfer is highly inefficient and has safety concerns due to high-energy radiofrequency exposure. Recently, WPT via magnetic resonance coupling has been proposed to replace these technologies in short-to-midrange applications due to its high efficiency and high-power throughput. Multitudes of research studies have proven its viability but fail to regard its implementation in real-world usage. In this paper, a wireless energy system is proposed that can automatically alter its circuit parameters as coil distance or alignment changes to maximize energy efficiency. Experimentation verifies this functionality and discovers a maximum end-to-end efficiency of 80.8% and an average operating efficiency of 68.7% over all distances between 0 and 1000 cm.

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Mutual Information Analysis Reveals Millisecond Level Precision Across Flight Muscles in Manduca sexta

2020-12 , Niebur, Tobias

Motor control has long been thought to be primarily encoded in spike rate, however recent work has highlighted the importance of spike timing. Despite possessing a good understanding of spike timing precision in sensory systems, the same understanding has not been established for their motor counterparts. We utilize EMG and motor output recordings from the flight system of the hawkmoth Manduca sexta to characterize the level of spike timing precision in the motor system. We show through two complementary information theoretic methods, including a novel noise corruption method, that the scale of temporal precision in all muscle activations is on the millisecond-scale, comparable to many sensory systems. Additionally, we establish that the novel method is capable of resolving precise precision values in systems that traditional methods struggle to characterize. This indicates that this precision must arise within the circuit.

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Ultra-Sensitive Broadband Receiver for Longwave Radio Reception

2020-05 , Gurses, Baris Volkan

Longwaves, or low-frequency (LF) radio waves, are electromagnetic waves whose frequencies are less than 500 kHz. Due to their propagation at low frequencies, these waves experience low attenuation over great distances and can penetrate conductive material via skin effect. LF waves radiated in the atmosphere also reflect off the ionosphere and ground to propagate globally in the so-called Earth-ionosphere waveguide. These phenomena allow LF waves to be used in various scientific and engineering applications, including ionospheric remote sensing, lightning geolocation, navigation, submarine communications, and imaging through conductive media. LF waves are detected by sensitive LF receivers for data acquisition. LF receivers are categorized as magnetic-field receivers or electric-field receivers based on their method of coupling the waves propagating in the environment. magnetic-field receivers receive the signals through inductive coupling, while electric-field receivers detect the signals through conductive coupling. Magnetic-field receivers are conventionally utilized in most of LF application. However, their sensitivities are limited by the sensitivity of their antennas. In this thesis, we describe a novel broadband ultra-sensitive electric field receiver. We describe the working principles of the receiver, including its design methodology and trade-offs. We show the performance of the receiver characterized both through empirical measurements and numerical models. We show the unprecedented sensitivity of this receiver compared to the state-of-the-art. We also demonstrate possible applications of this receiver enabled by its ultra-low sensitivity.

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Reviewing the Effects of Poverty and Food Scarcity on the Prevalence of Type II Diabetes Mellitus in the Metro Atlanta Area

2017-08 , Sledge, Kyle Emerson

Type II diabetes is a medical condition that is prominent in both society and medical research. In the metro Atlanta region, over nine percent of the population has contracted the disease. It is not a random disorder but the result of individual factors and local environments. One of the most influential factors is diet, which is directly impacted by what foods are available locally. Healthy food acquisition can be almost impossible in food deserts, or areas of the country that contain either no or extremely limited locations to purchase healthy food. These deserts litter the metropolitan area of Atlanta, and are often intermixed inside more rural or low-income areas. This paper identifies these Atlanta food deserts and analyzes them for a correlation to the prevalence of type II diabetes. The data confirmed my hypothesis that there were correlations between these clearly identifiable sites in greater Atlanta and elevated levels of incidence of type II diabetes. Clayton and DeKalb counties had the largest proportions of their populations inside food deserts at 45.1% and 21.8% respectively, and had increased percentages of their population with type II diabetes: Clayton County surveyed with 10.6% of its population having the disorder, and 8.9% of DeKalb’s inhabitants had acquired the disease at some point. The data suggest that food deserts have adversely affected the health of thousands of people. On the other hand, there are sectors that can be targeted and changed to directly increase the quality of living for over 17% of the metro Atlanta populace that are currently living inside of them.

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Towards a Quantum Steganographic Capacity of Lossy Bosonic Channels

2020-12 , Raman, Vignesh

Quantum steganography is the extension of steganography to the quantum setting, wherein a quantum protocol (e.g.: a quantum error-correcting code) is used to hide classical or quantum information. Because of the unique nature of quantum states and channels, quantum steganography can be stronger than classical steganography. A lot of effort has been devoted to characterizing how much information can be embedded into various quantum channels with or without noise, and recently, several quantum steganography protocols have been developed and analyzed that improve on earlier work by exploiting a concept known in information theory as channel resolvability. This paper first provides a concise background survey of specific topics from relevant disciplines in classical as well as quantum information theory, and then presents a formulation of the problem concerning the characterization of the steganographic capacity for a specific type of quantum channel called the lossy bosonic channel.

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An Empirical Analysis of IoT Malware Infection Techniques

2020-05 , Joaquin, Nicholas

The rise of insecure Internet of Things (IoT) on the Internet is problematic because they are easily compromised. IoT vendors are trying to push products to market as quickly as possible resulting in a significant amount of security issues. This work explores the attacks vectors used by malware to gain privilege control of IoT devices. We achieve this by performing two experiments – a static binary analysis that checks for specific patterns and identifies a binary to a publicly disclosed vulnerability, and a dynamic binary analysis focusing on linking program behavior to malicious actions. We further extend upon this by analyzing ELF section metadata of “tagged” binaries to determine if we can link specific ELF section sizes and entropies to malicious binaries. Through our work, we see that a large portion of vulnerabilities occurs due to improperly validated inputs, followed by weak credentials and improperly secured files. Moreover, we have also found that we are unable to link ELF section metadata to malicious binaries, as a result of anti-analysis efforts by malware authors. Our intention with this work is to understand how malware attacks IoT devices, thereby highlighting the specific security areas that must be prioritized in IoT device development.

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Seeing Red: American Tourism to the Eastern Bloc, 1960-1975

2019-05 , Haskin, Kayleigh Georgina

Theoretical literature asserts that tourism should lead to better interactions between nations with different ideas and cultures. However, empirical studies find that this is often not the case, and certain pre-trip factors are more influential in changing tourists’ opinions than the experience itself. This study examines one of these potential factors: the role that the news media plays in shaping public opinion about foreign countries prior to travel. Using a case study of American tourists to the Eastern Bloc from 1960-1975, this paper suggests that media portrayal contributed to the negative views Americans held of the Soviet Union and the lack of opinion change after travel. Using the counterexample of Hungary, this paper also suggests that this portrayal was unique to the Soviet Union, and not reflective of the Eastern Bloc as a whole. Finally, it offers a potential new avenue for future research on opinion change in tourists—the consideration of pre-trip domestic factors, such as the news media and the overarching geopolitical context.

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Christendom v. Clericus: The Punishment of Clerical Necromancers During the Period 1100-1500 CE

2020-12 , McManus-Viana, Kayla

“The power of Christ compels you!” is probably the most infamous line from the 1973 film The Exorcist. The movie, as the title suggests, follows the journey of a priest as he attempts to excise a demon from within the body of a young girl. These types of sensational pop culture depictions are what inform the majority of people’s conceptions of demons and demonic magic nowadays. Historically, however, human conceptions of demons and magic were more nuanced than those depicted in The Exorcist and similar works. Demons were not only beings to be feared but sources of power to be exploited. Necromancy, a form of demonic magic, was one avenue in which individuals could attempt to gain control over a demon. During the period this thesis explores, 1100-1500 CE, only highly educated men, like clerics, could complete the complicated rituals associated with necromancy. Thus, this study examines the rise of the learned art of clerical necromancy in conjunction with the re-emergence of higher learning in western Europe that developed during the period from 1100-1500 CE. By examining stories of allegations of necromancy against popes and regular clergy, this thesis attempts to add to the body of existing literature on demonic magic by expanding our understanding of how clerical necromancers were punished for their foray into demonic magic (as necromancy and other forms of magic were deemed “heretical,” or banned, in the eyes of the Catholic Church). The findings suggest that allegations of clerical necromancy were often part of a “common toolbox of accusations” lodged against an opponent, often personally or politically motivated, and did not stem from true concerns over clerics attempting magic. Moreover, if one was accused of necromancy, the punishment one received was often positively correlated to the amount of political power one possessed or had access to.

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Biomolecular Recognition Event Detection via Applied Electrical Engineering Theories

2020-05 , Thompson, David P.

Multiple methods are used today to recognize biomolecular interactions, often utilizing thermodynamic and chemical procedures. These methods have been well established over decades of use. However, they tend to require numerous interactions and therefore may miss interactions such as those between a single ligand and receptor cell. Application of electrostatic and electrical engineering theories may provide a novel approach to identification of biomolecular recognition events. At a very basic level every molecule is comprised of individual atoms where each atom has a specific electrical charge. Observing these charges from points at short distances outside the molecule generates an electrostatic field pattern. This pattern may provide a unique potential signature to any given molecule and therefore biomolecular interactions as well. Electrical engineering, through applied radar signaling theory, provides methods to detect specific electromagnetic patterns against a background of noise. If we can identify and characterize a unique electrostatic potential pattern for a given interaction, then utilization of radar theory through matched filters may one day permit recognizing individual biomolecular events, eliminating the current requirement of numerous interactions for biomolecular recognition.

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3D Reconstruction of Live Chickens in Poultry Houses

2018-05 , Muni, Aneri Dhirendra

Poultry houses require daily monitoring to ensure animal health and proper house operation. One task involves observing the average growth rate of the house to adjust the daily feed. In addition to being labor intensive and time consuming, it is difficult for the farm owners to find consistent labor to fill these jobs. This project looks at the possibility of estimating the weight of a chicken based on the volume of the chicken as captured by a 3D model. We present a system capable of reconstructing dynamic scenes, i.e. chickens in a poultry house, by fusing together depth scans captured using a Microsoft Kinect. Like DynamicFusion, our approach involves discretizing the live depth frame into nodes and estimating individual 6D transformations before fusing them together to reconstruct scene geometry. This approach doesn’t use any prior model of template, making it applicable to a wide range of dynamic objects and scenes.

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