Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University proudly showcases the work of undergraduate honors students by sharing this collection exclusively with the ASU community.
Barrett accepts high performing, academically engaged undergraduate students and works with them in collaboration with all of the other academic units at Arizona State University. All Barrett students complete a thesis or creative project which is an opportunity to explore an intellectual interest and produce an original piece of scholarly research. The thesis or creative project is supervised and defended in front of a faculty committee. Students are able to engage with professors who are nationally recognized in their fields and committed to working with honors students. Completing a Barrett thesis or creative project is an opportunity for undergraduate honors students to contribute to the ASU academic community in a meaningful way.
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- Creators: Computer Science and Engineering Program
- Creators: Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law
Description
NGExtract 2 is a complete transistor (MOSFET) parameter extraction solution based upon the original computer program NGExtract by Rahul Shringarpure written in February 2007. NGExtract 2 is written in Java and based around the circuit simulator NGSpice. The goal of the program is to be used to produce accurate transistor models based around real-world transistor data. The program contains numerous improvements to the original program:
• Completely rewritten with performance and usability in mind
• Cross-Platform vs. Linux Only
• Simple installation procedure vs. compilation and manual library configuration
• Self-contained, single file runtime
• Particle Swarm Optimization routine
NGExtract 2 works by plotting the Ids vs. Vds and Ids vs. Vgs curves of a simulation model and the measured, real-world data. The user can adjust model parameters and re-simulate to attempt to match the curves. The included Particle Swarm Optimization routine attempts to automate this process by iteratively attempting to improve a solution by measuring its sum-squared error against the real-world data that the user has provided.
• Completely rewritten with performance and usability in mind
• Cross-Platform vs. Linux Only
• Simple installation procedure vs. compilation and manual library configuration
• Self-contained, single file runtime
• Particle Swarm Optimization routine
NGExtract 2 works by plotting the Ids vs. Vds and Ids vs. Vgs curves of a simulation model and the measured, real-world data. The user can adjust model parameters and re-simulate to attempt to match the curves. The included Particle Swarm Optimization routine attempts to automate this process by iteratively attempting to improve a solution by measuring its sum-squared error against the real-world data that the user has provided.
ContributorsVetrano, Michael Thomas (Author) / Allee, David (Thesis director) / Gorur, Ravi (Committee member) / Bakkaloglu, Bertan (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor)
Created2013-05
Description
Gamification is the process of adding game mechanics to non game activities, thus creating a more engaging environment. Loyals provides a gamification API which can be consumed to add Loyals (achievements) to any website, application, or mobile app. Loyals are used in two major ways: (1) to create an interactive environment where users are rewarded for completing tasks and (2) as contextual information useful for analyzing user interaction with the application. The interactive environment inspires users to continue using an application while the contextual information can be used for improving the application to draw in new loyal visitors, ad targeting, creating user profiles, and much more.
ContributorsClaxton, Joshua Allen (Author) / Chen, Yinong (Thesis director) / Collofello, James (Committee member) / Irwin, Don (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor)
Created2013-05
Description
To facilitate the development of the Semantic Web, we propose in this thesis a general automatic ontology-building algorithm which, given a pool of potential terms and a set of relationships to include in the ontology, can utilize information gathered from Google queries to build a full ontology for a certain domain. We utilized this ontology-building algorithm as part of a larger system to tag computer tutorials for three systems with different kinds of metadata, and index the tagged documents into a search engine. Our evaluation of the resultant search engine indicates that our automatic ontology-building algorithm is able to build relatively good-quality ontologies and utilize this ontology to effectively apply metadata to documents.
ContributorsWalliman, Garret Greg (Author) / Davulcu, Hasan (Thesis director) / Liu, Huan (Committee member) / Bazzi, Rida (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor)
Created2013-05
Description
Bad Samaritans are bystanders who omit from preventing some foreseeable harm when doing so could have been accomplished with little risk. Although failing to intervene to prevent a harm often renders Bad Samaritans morally culpable, under current common law in the United States they could not be held criminally liable for any harm that resulted to the victims of that harm. In this paper I argue for the criminalization of individuals who fall under this label; I argue for the adoption of Bad Samaritan laws. To accomplish this, I first argue for the conclusion that omissions can causally contribute to harm. From here I am able to reach three further conclusions relative to Bad Samaritan legislation. These three conclusions are that Bad Samaritan laws are justified, that the punishment for the violation of a Bad Samaritan law should be proportional to the degree culpability for the harm caused, and that if "commission by omission" statutes are justified, then so too are Bad Samaritan laws.
ContributorsCallahan, Ty William (Author) / Sigler, Mary (Thesis director) / Murphy, Jeffrie (Committee member) / Botham, Thad (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Chemical Engineering Program (Contributor) / Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law (Contributor) / School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies (Contributor)
Created2013-05
Description
Over the past several years, the three major mobile platforms have seen
tremendous growth and success; as a result, the platforms have been the target
of many malicious attacks. These attacks often request certain permissions in
order to carry out the malicious activities, and uninformed users usually grant
them. One prevalent example of this type of malware is one that requests
permission to the device’s SMS service, and once obtained, uses the SMS
service to accrue charges to the user. This type of attack is one of the most
prevalent on the Android application marketplace, and requires a long-term
solution. Replication of an attack is necessary to fully understand efficient
prevention methods, and due to the open-source nature of Android development,
to determine the likely mechanics of the attack as feasible.
This study uses the Hacker News application, an open source application
that is available for download through GitHub as a basis for creating a malware
application to study the SMS attack and explore prevention methods. From the
results and knowledge gained from both research and experimentation, a
proposition for a more secure operating system architecture was defined to
prevent and mitigate various attacks on mobile systems with a focus on SMS
attacks.
tremendous growth and success; as a result, the platforms have been the target
of many malicious attacks. These attacks often request certain permissions in
order to carry out the malicious activities, and uninformed users usually grant
them. One prevalent example of this type of malware is one that requests
permission to the device’s SMS service, and once obtained, uses the SMS
service to accrue charges to the user. This type of attack is one of the most
prevalent on the Android application marketplace, and requires a long-term
solution. Replication of an attack is necessary to fully understand efficient
prevention methods, and due to the open-source nature of Android development,
to determine the likely mechanics of the attack as feasible.
This study uses the Hacker News application, an open source application
that is available for download through GitHub as a basis for creating a malware
application to study the SMS attack and explore prevention methods. From the
results and knowledge gained from both research and experimentation, a
proposition for a more secure operating system architecture was defined to
prevent and mitigate various attacks on mobile systems with a focus on SMS
attacks.
ContributorsRomo, James Tyler (Co-author) / Rezende, Bryan (Co-author) / Whitaker, Jeremy (Co-author) / Ahn, Gail-Joon (Thesis director) / Wilkerson, Kelly (Committee member) / Conquest, Kevin (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor)
Created2013-05
Description
The area of real-time baseball statistics presents several challenges that can be addressed using mobile devices. In order to accurately record real-time statistics, it is necessary to present the user with a concise interface that can be used to quickly record the necessary data during in-game events. In this project, we use a mobile application to address this by separating out the required input into pre-game and in-game inputs. We also explore the use of a mobile application to leverage crowd sourcing techniques, which address the challenge of accuracy and precision in subjective real-time statistics.
ContributorsVan Egmond, Eric David (Author) / Tadayon-Navabi, Farideh (Thesis director) / Wilkerson, Kelly (Committee member) / Gorla, Mark (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor)
Created2013-05
Description
Due to its difficult nature, organic chemistry is receiving much research attention across the nation to develop more efficient and effective means to teach it. As part of that, Dr. Ian Gould at ASU is developing an online organic chemistry educational website that provides help to students, adapts to their responses, and collects data about their performance. This thesis creative project addresses the design and implementation of an input parser for organic chemistry reagent questions, to appear on his website. After students used the form to submit questions throughout the Spring 2013 semester in Dr. Gould's organic chemistry class, the data gathered from their usage was analyzed, and feedback was collected. The feedback obtained from students was positive, and suggested that the input parser accomplished the educational goals that it sought to meet.
ContributorsBeerman, Eric Christopher (Author) / Gould, Ian (Thesis director) / Wilkerson, Kelly (Committee member) / Mosca, Vince (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor)
Created2013-05
Description
Polar ice masses can be valuable indicators of trends in global climate. In an effort to better understand the dynamics of Arctic ice, this project analyzes sea ice concentration anomaly data collected over gridded regions (cells) and builds graphs based upon high correlations between cells. These graphs offer the opportunity to use metrics such as clustering coefficients and connected components to isolate representative trends in ice masses. Based upon this analysis, the structure of sea ice graphs differs at a statistically significant level from random graphs, and several regions show erratically decreasing trends in sea ice concentration.
ContributorsWallace-Patterson, Chloe Rae (Author) / Syrotiuk, Violet (Thesis director) / Colbourn, Charles (Committee member) / Montgomery, Douglas (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor)
Created2013-05
Description
This publication addresses the development of civic engagement programs in the past few decades. While successful in increasing what was perceived as a serious lack of civic engagement among youth, the movement has failed to address a key aspect of civic engagement: political engagement. Although trends have shown that the youth are much more interested in alternative forms of engagement, it is important for the success of democracy and sustaining political structures that the youth are given tools to become engaged in traditional forms of government. This paper, by analyzing data from various academic papers, will look into successful policy initiatives to increase political engagement at universities. Furthermore, the paper will look into current programs at Arizona State University (ASU) based on a criterion created from the academic resources to gauge ASU's standings. The paper will conclude with a proposal for a future ASU program. The program will be an expansion of the current ASU Experience course required of freshmen to implement a political engagement preparatory curriculum.
ContributorsJeong, Yijee (Author) / Woodall, Gina (Thesis director) / Simhony, Avital (Committee member) / Jones, Ruth (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law (Contributor)
Created2013-05
Description
Fiddlevent is an event searching website written in Ruby on Rails. Fiddlevent enables any person to go online and find local events that interest him. Fiddlevent also enables merchants to post their events online. Fiddlevent explores all challenges of website development, such as project management, database design, user interface design, deployment and the software development lifecycle. Fiddlevent aims to utilize best practices for website and software development.
ContributorsThornton, Christopher Gordon (Author) / Balasooriya, Janaka (Thesis director) / Nakamura, Mutsumi (Committee member) / Hurst, Charles (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor)
Created2013-05