Performance Analysis
Pharmacokinetics
Philosophy
Physics
Political Science
Psychology

To return to the comprehensive topic list, as well as a list of authors, go to the theses index page.

Performance Analysis

Susan Housand, 2002

"A Fault-Injection Approach to Predicting Dependability in E-commerce Systems"

As systems grow in complexity the underlying cause of application failure becomes more difficult to pinpoint. We evaluate the impact of realistic failures on e-commerce services using a methodology that identifies and characterizes system-level faults. We present a framework for deriving quantitative dependability metrics for e-commerce systems. This framework identifies where system dependability is weakest and how it can be improved. Our novel approach to analyzing the dependability of e-commerce systems uses software fault injection to simulate faulty operational environments, where targeted applications are tested for their response to low-level failure. Collected failure data is analyzed and combined to provide an indirect method for measuring dependability.

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Pharmacokinetics

Franklin Adler, 1992

"Physiologically Based Pharmokinetic Modeling: A Multi-Compartmental Simulation Program for the Macintosh"

Physiologically based pharmokinetic computer models are tools that greatly aid in understanding the body as a dynamic system while alleviating concerns about conducting lengthy laboratory experiments that are costly, impractical, or dangerous. This project intends to provide such a tool in the field of pharmokinetics.

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Philosophy

Christine A. Halverson, 1989

"MAT's FACE: Intelligent Interface Design"

Discussion of philosophical and practical issues in the design of a computer interface for an intelligent tutoring system.

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Physics

Dihuyen Ho, 1990

"Spectra: A Computer Simulation of Infrared Absorbtion Spectra"

The user manipulates molecules and data in Hypercard. The program then calculates the spectrum and outputs it to the screen.

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Political Science

Walter Sanford, 1989

"Candidate: An Interactive Computer Simulation Using Hypercard to Encourage Moral Development in Children"

Hypercard Stack which simulates a political candidate's campaign management.

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Psychology

Amy Palke, 2004

"Brainathlon: Enhancing Brainwave Control Through Brain-Controlled Game Play"

The field of brain-computer interface research has been rapidly expanding in recent years and has a wide range of interesting and compelling uses. EEG-based brain-computer interfaces currently allow users to type, play games, create music or control prosthetic limbs.

This thesis describes the development of Brainathlon, an open source software game that is controlled by the players' brainwave activity. An electroencephalogram (EEG) monitors the player's brainwaves. These waves are fed into the computer, analyzed and used to control the game play. The game provides users with real-time feedback on current brain activity and rewards activity in congurable frequency ranges. This feedback leads to enhanced conscious control of brainwave activity.

The software we developed includes a reusable library of EEG monitoring, filtering and analysis tools that can be used to create future EEG-based applications. The software was built to work with ModularEEG, an open source brainwave monitoring device. The reusable Brainathlon libraries will provide software developers with a toolkit to facilitate the creation of low cost brain-computer interface applications for the ModularEEG device.

Marilyn Shoemaker, 1987

"The Natural Language Problem: An Introduction from a Cognitive Science Perspective"

Discussion of natural language processing from the perspectives of artificial intelligence, cognitive, psychology, linguistics, and philosophy.

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