Faculty Publications and Creative Works 2005

Faculty Publications & Creative Works is an annual compendium of scholarly and creative activities of University of New Mexico faculty during the noted calendar year. Published by the Office of the Vice President for Research and Economic Development, it serves to illustrate the robust and active intellectual pursuits conducted by the faculty in support of teaching and research at UNM. In 2005, UNM faculty produced over 1,887 works, including 1,887 scholarly papers and articles, 57 books, 127 book chapters, 58 reviews, 68 creative works and 4 patented works. We are proud of the accomplishments of our faculty which are in part reflected in this book, which illustrates the diversity of intellectual pursuits in support of research and education at the University of New Mexico

SciTech News Volume 71, No. 2 (2017)

Columns and Reports From the Editor 3 Division News Science-Technology Division 5 Chemistry Division 8 Engineering Division 9 Aerospace Section of the Engineering Division 12 Architecture, Building Engineering, Construction and Design Section of the Engineering Division 14 Reviews Sci-Tech Book News Reviews 16 Advertisements IEEE

Multi-agent real-time decision making in water resources systems

Thesis: Ph. D. in Computational Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 2018.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (pages 77-83).Optimal utilization of natural resources such as water, wind and land over extended periods of time requires a carefully designed framework coupling decision making and a mathematical abstraction of the physical system. On one hand, the choice of the decision-strategy can set limits/bounds on the maximum benefit that can be extracted from the physical system. On the other hand the mathematical formulation of the physical system determines the limitations of such strategies when applied to real physical systems. The nuances of decision making and abstraction of the physical system are illustrated with two classical water resource problems: optimal hydropower reservoir operation and competition for a common pool groundwater source. Reservoir operation is modeled as a single agent stochastic optimal control problem where the operator (agent) negotiates a firm power contract before operations begin and adjusts the reservoir release during operations. A probabilistic analysis shows that predictive decision strategies such as stochastic dynamic programming and model predictive control give better performance than standard deterministic operating rules. Groundwater competition is modeled as a multi-agent dynamic game where each farmer (agent) aims to maximize his/her personal benefit. The game analysis shows that uncooperative competition for the resource reduces economic efficiency somewhat with respect to the cooperative socially optimum behavior. However, the efficiency reduction is relatively small compared to what might be expected from incorrect assumptions about uncertain factors such as future energy and crop prices. Spatially lumped and distributed models of the groundwater system give similar pictures of the inefficiencies that result from uncooperative behavior. The spatially distributed model also reveals the important roles of the geometry and density of the pumping well network. Overall, the game analysis provides useful insight about the factors that make cooperative groundwater management beneficial in particular situations.by Reetik Kumar Sahu.Ph. D. in Computational Science and Engineerin

Faculty Publications and Creative Works 1999

One of the ways in which we recognize our faculty at the University of New Mexico is through Faculty Publications & Creative Works. An annual publication, it highlights our faculty\u27s scholarly and creative activities and achievements and serves as a compendium of UNM faculty efforts during the 1999 calendar year. Faculty Publications & Creative Works strives to illustrate the depth and breadth of research activities performed throughout our University\u27s laboratories, studios and classrooms. We believe that the communication of individual research is a significant method of sharing concepts and thoughts and ultimately inspiring the birth of new ideas. In support of this, UNM faculty during 1999 produced over 2,292 works, including 1,837 scholarly papers and articles, 78 books, 82 book chapters, 175 reviews, 113 creative works and 7 patented works. We are proud of the accomplishments of our faculty which are in part reflected in this book, which illustrates the diversity of intellectual pursuits in support of research and education at the University of New Mexico

Faculty Publications and Creative Works 2004

Faculty Publications & Creative Works is an annual compendium of scholarly and creative activities of University of New Mexico faculty during the noted calendar year. Published by the Office of the Vice President for Research and Economic Development, it serves to illustrate the robust and active intellectual pursuits conducted by the faculty in support of teaching and research at UNM

A method for ontology and knowledgebase assisted text mining for diabetes discussion forum

Social media offers researchers vast amount of unstructured text as a source to discover hidden knowledge and insights. However, social media poses new challenges to text mining and knowledge discovery due to its short length, temporal nature and informal language. In order to identify the main requirements for analysing unstructured text in social media, this research takes a case study of a large discussion forum in the diabetes domain. It then reviews and evaluates existing text mining methods for the requirements to analyse such a domain. Using domain background knowledge to bridge the semantic gap in traditional text mining methods was identified as a key requirement for analysing text in discussion forums. Existing ontology engineering methodologies encounter difficulties in deriving suitable domain knowledge with the appropriate breadth and depth in domain-specific concepts with a rich relationships structure. These limitations usually originate from a reliance on human domain experts. This research developed a novel semantic text mining method. It can identify the concepts and topics being discussed, the strength of the relationships between them and then display the emergent knowledge from a discussion forum. The derived method has a modular design that consists of three main components: The Ontology building Process, Semantic Annotation and Topic Identification, and Visualisation Tools. The ontology building process generates domain ontology quickly with little need for domain experts. The topic identification component utilises a hybrid system of domain ontology and a general knowledge base for text enrichment and annotation, while the visualisation methods of dynamic tag clouds and cooccurrence network for pattern discovery enable a flexible visualisation of these results and can help uncover hidden knowledge. Application of the derived text mining method within the case study helped identify trending topics in the forum and how they change over time. The derived method performed better in semantic annotation of the text compared to the other systems evaluated. The new text mining method appears to be “generalisable” to other domains than diabetes. Future study needs to confirm this ability and to evaluate its applicability to other types of social media text sources

Modélisation formelle des systèmes de détection d'intrusions

L’écosystème de la cybersécurité évolue en permanence en termes du nombre, de la diversité, et de la complexité des attaques. De ce fait, les outils de détection deviennent inefficaces face à certaines attaques. On distingue généralement trois types de systèmes de détection d’intrusions : détection par anomalies, détection par signatures et détection hybride. La détection par anomalies est fondée sur la caractérisation du comportement habituel du système, typiquement de manière statistique. Elle permet de détecter des attaques connues ou inconnues, mais génère aussi un très grand nombre de faux positifs. La détection par signatures permet de détecter des attaques connues en définissant des règles qui décrivent le comportement connu d’un attaquant. Cela demande une bonne connaissance du comportement de l’attaquant. La détection hybride repose sur plusieurs méthodes de détection incluant celles sus-citées. Elle présente l’avantage d’être plus précise pendant la détection. Des outils tels que Snort et Zeek offrent des langages de bas niveau pour l’expression de règles de reconnaissance d’attaques. Le nombre d’attaques potentielles étant très grand, ces bases de règles deviennent rapidement difficiles à gérer et à maintenir. De plus, l’expression de règles avec état dit stateful est particulièrement ardue pour reconnaître une séquence d’événements. Dans cette thèse, nous proposons une approche stateful basée sur les diagrammes d’état-transition algébriques (ASTDs) afin d’identifier des attaques complexes. Les ASTDs permettent de représenter de façon graphique et modulaire une spécification, ce qui facilite la maintenance et la compréhension des règles. Nous étendons la notation ASTD avec de nouvelles fonctionnalités pour représenter des attaques complexes. Ensuite, nous spécifions plusieurs attaques avec la notation étendue et exécutons les spécifications obtenues sur des flots d’événements à l’aide d’un interpréteur pour identifier des attaques. Nous évaluons aussi les performances de l’interpréteur avec des outils industriels tels que Snort et Zeek. Puis, nous réalisons un compilateur afin de générer du code exécutable à partir d’une spécification ASTD, capable d’identifier de façon efficiente les séquences d’événements.Abstract : The cybersecurity ecosystem continuously evolves with the number, the diversity, and the complexity of cyber attacks. Generally, we have three types of Intrusion Detection System (IDS) : anomaly-based detection, signature-based detection, and hybrid detection. Anomaly detection is based on the usual behavior description of the system, typically in a static manner. It enables detecting known or unknown attacks but also generating a large number of false positives. Signature based detection enables detecting known attacks by defining rules that describe known attacker’s behavior. It needs a good knowledge of attacker behavior. Hybrid detection relies on several detection methods including the previous ones. It has the advantage of being more precise during detection. Tools like Snort and Zeek offer low level languages to represent rules for detecting attacks. The number of potential attacks being large, these rule bases become quickly hard to manage and maintain. Moreover, the representation of stateful rules to recognize a sequence of events is particularly arduous. In this thesis, we propose a stateful approach based on algebraic state-transition diagrams (ASTDs) to identify complex attacks. ASTDs allow a graphical and modular representation of a specification, that facilitates maintenance and understanding of rules. We extend the ASTD notation with new features to represent complex attacks. Next, we specify several attacks with the extended notation and run the resulting specifications on event streams using an interpreter to identify attacks. We also evaluate the performance of the interpreter with industrial tools such as Snort and Zeek. Then, we build a compiler in order to generate executable code from an ASTD specification, able to efficiently identify sequences of events

PROGRAM, THE NEBRASKA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES: One Hundred-Thirty-First Annual Meeting, APRIL 23-24, 2021. ONLINE

AFFILIATED SOCIETIES OF THE NEBRASKA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, INC. 1.American Association of Physics Teachers, Nebraska Section: Web site: http://www.aapt.org/sections/officers.cfm?section=Nebraska 2.Friends of Loren Eiseley: Web site: http://www.eiseley.org/ 3.Lincoln Gem & Mineral Club: Web site: http://www.lincolngemmineralclub.org/ 4.Nebraska Chapter, National Council for Geographic Education 5.Nebraska Geological Society: Web site: http://www.nebraskageologicalsociety.org Sponsors of a $50 award to the outstanding student paper presented at the Nebraska Academy of SciencesAnnual Meeting, Earth Science /Nebraska Chapter, National Council Sections 6.Nebraska Graduate Women in Science 7.Nebraska Junior Academy of Sciences: Web site: http://www.nebraskajunioracademyofsciences.org/ 8.Nebraska Ornithologists’ Union: Web site: http://www.noubirds.org/ 9.Nebraska Psychological Association: http://www.nebpsych.org/ 10.Nebraska-Southeast South Dakota Section Mathematical Association of America: Web site: http://sections.maa.org/nesesd/ 11.Nebraska Space Grant Consortium: Web site: http://www.ne.spacegrant.org/ CONTENTS AERONAUTICS & SPACE SCIENCE ANTHROPOLOGY APPLIED SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY BIOLOGICAL & MEDICAL SCIENCES COLLEGIATE ACADEMY: BIOLOGY COLLEGIATE ACADEMY: CHEMISTRY & PHYSICS EARTH SCIENCES ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES GENERAL CHEMISTRY GENERAL PHYSICS TEACHING OF SCIENCE & MATHEMATICS 2020-2021 PROGRAM COMMITTEE 2020-2021 EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE FRIENDS OF THE ACADEMY NEBRASKA ACADEMY OF SCIENCS FRIEND OF SCIENCE AWARD WINNERS FRIEND OF SCIENCE AWARD TO DR PAUL KAR