Research and Creative Activity, July 1, 2020-June 30, 2021: Major Sponsored Programs and Faculty Accomplishments in Research and Creative Activity, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Foreword by Bob Wilhelm, Vice Chancellor for Research and Economic Development, University of Nebraska-Lincoln: This booklet highlights successes in research, scholarship and creative activity by University of Nebraska–Lincoln faculty during the fiscal year running July 1, 2020, to June 30, 2021. It lists investigators, project titles and funding sources on major grants and sponsored awards received during the year; fellowships and other recognitions and honors bestowed on our faculty; books and chapters published by faculty; performances, exhibitions and other examples of creative activity; patents and licensing agreements issued; National Science Foundation I-CORPS teams; and peer-reviewed journal articles and conference presentations. In recognition of the important role faculty have in the undergraduate experience at Nebraska, this booklet notes the students and mentors participating in the Undergraduate Creative Activities and Research Experience (UCARE) and the First-Year Research Experience (FYRE) programs. While metrics cannot convey the full impact of our work, they are tangible measures of growth. A few achievements of note: • UNL achieved a record $320 million in total research expenditures in FY 2020, a 43• Our faculty earned 1,508 sponsored research awards in FY 2020. University-sponsored industry activity also spurred economic growth for Nebraska. • Nebraska Innovation Campus created 1,948 jobs statewide and had a total economic impact of$372 million. • Industry sponsorship supported $19.2 million in research expenditures. • NUtech Ventures brought in$6.48 million in licensing income. I applaud the Nebraska Research community for its determination and commitment during a challenging year. Your hard work has made it possible for our momentum to continue growing. Our university is poised for even greater success. The Grand Challenges initiative provides a framework for developing bold ideas to solve society’s greatest issues, which is how we will have the greatest impact as an institution. Please visit research.unl.edu/grandchallenges to learn more. We’re also renewing our campus commitment to a journey of anti-racism and racial equity, which is among the most important work we’ll do. I am pleased to present this record of accomplishments. Contents Awards of $5 Million or More Awards of$1 Million to $4,999,999 Awards of$250,000 to $999,999 50 Early Career Awards Arts and Humanities Awards of$250,000 or More Arts and Humanities Awards of $50,000 to$249,999 Arts and Humanities Awards of $5,000 to$49,999 Patents License Agreements National Science Foundation Innovation Corps Teams Creative Activity Books Recognitions and Honors Journal Articles 105 Conference Presentations UCARE and FYRE Projects Glossar

Senior Cohousing: The Social Architecture of Cohousing, Community Design & Well Being

The world is facing a situation without precedent, due to the anticipated growth in and increasing longevity of elderly people. Where and how people live is and can be a determinant of health. There is substantial research on inadequate housing for older people and its adverse effects on health. However, less is known about how senior cohousing affects the health of its residents. Further research is needed to improve strategies for senior living environments that promote social interaction and facilitate well-being. This study aims to bolster design and policy strategies by investigating how senior cohousing residents perceive how their living situation affects their well-being. The theoretical underpinning for this study brings together the aging theories together with Rowe and Kahn’s (Rowe & Kahn 1997, 2015) and Baltes’ (Baltes & Baltes, 1990), theories on successful aging and well-being. These approaches expand on the Person (PE)-Environment dynamic interchange while adding Socialization (S) into the models’ framework the complex blending of physiological, behavioral, and social interaction that occur at scales of the individual, built environment, and community. This research investigates how environmental design and improved social networks result in measurable improvements in quality of life (QOL), life satisfaction (LS), and well-being (WB). The study sought to evaluate the determinants across multiple SR (self-reported) measures of health. The survey results show that increased are statistically significant for QOL, LS, and WB. Senior cohousing residents are a select group of individuals who seek a more meaningful and socially connected life. They enjoy independence, autonomy, and a healthier, active aging process. The research shows that high-quality social interaction and sustainable and environmentally sensitive architectural design, through the concept of Socially Enriched Environments (SEE) and Nature Rich Environments (NRE), promote a positive sense of well-being, and self-rated health (SRH). Senior cohousing is a necessary consideration for policy initiatives in the United States, given current health care cost trajectories for the aged which are unsustainable. If undertaken, this typology can potentially relieve some of the associated costs of providing health care. It has the clear potential to help relieve social isolation and lack of social support. However, currently, the domestic senior cohousing cohort is a highly selective group with substantial life resources (education, income, assets, and resilience) that puts them well outside normal population distributions in the U.S. Meanwhile, senior cohousing has and is becoming a well-established typology. Meanwhile, senior cohousing has and is becoming a well-established typology in Denmark, Sweden, and, more recently, the United Kingdom. The establishment of these European communities relies on policy initiatives and organizational and financial assistance which make it a viable option. In the U.S., the provision of policy assistance in the formation of senior cohousing communities can reduce the amount of lead time necessary to develop these communities and the high costs of initial development while potentially increasing the number of seniors who could live in them

Fine-grained, Content-agnostic Network Traffic Analysis for Malicious Activity Detection

The rapid evolution of malicious activities in network environments necessitates the development of more effective and efficient detection and mitigation techniques. Traditional traffic analysis (TA) approaches have demonstrated limited efficacy and performance in detecting various malicious activities, resulting in a pressing need for more advanced solutions. To fill the gap, this dissertation proposes several new fine-grained network traffic analysis (FGTA) approaches. These approaches focus on (1) detecting previously hard-to-detect malicious activities by deducing fine-grained, detailed application-layer information in privacy-preserving manners, (2) enhancing usability by providing more explainable results and better adaptability to different network environments, and (3) combining network traffic data with endpoint information to provide users with more comprehensive and accurate protections. We begin by conducting a comprehensive survey of existing FGTA approaches. We then propose CJ-Sniffer, a privacy-aware cryptojacking detection system that efficiently detects cryptojacking traffic. CJ-Sniffer is the first approach to distinguishing cryptojacking traffic from user-initiated cryptocurrency mining traffic, allowing for fine-grained traffic discrimination. This level of fine-grained traffic discrimination has proven challenging to accomplish through traditional TA methodologies. Next, we introduce BotFlowMon, a learning-based, content-agnostic approach for detecting online social network (OSN) bot traffic, which has posed a significant challenge for detection using traditional TA strategies. BotFlowMon is an FGTA approach that relies only on content-agnostic flow-level data as input and utilizes novel algorithms and techniques to classify social bot traffic from real OSN user traffic. To enhance the usability of FGTA-based attack detection, we propose a learning-based DDoS detection approach that emphasizes both explainability and adaptability. This approach provides network administrators with insightful explanatory information and adaptable models for new network environments. Finally, we present a reinforcement learning-based defense approach against L7 DDoS attacks, which combines network traffic data with endpoint information to operate. The proposed approach actively monitors and analyzes the victim server and applies different strategies under different conditions to protect the server while minimizing collateral damage to legitimate requests. Our evaluation results demonstrate that the proposed approaches achieve high accuracy and efficiency in detecting and mitigating various malicious activities, while maintaining privacy-preserving features, providing explainable and adaptable results, or providing comprehensive application-layer situational awareness. This dissertation significantly advances the fields of FGTA and malicious activity detection. This dissertation includes published and unpublished co-authored materials

Internet-Wide Evaluations of Security and Vulnerabilities

The Internet significantly impacts the world culture. Since the beginning, it is a multilayered system, which is even gaining more protocols year by year. At its core, remains the Internet protocol suite, where the fundamental protocols such as IPv4, TCP/UDP, DNS are initially introduced. Recently, more and more cross-layer attacks involving features in multiple layers are reported. To better understand these attacks, e.g. how practical they are and how many users are vulnerable, Internet-wide evaluations are essential. In this cumulative thesis, we summarise our findings from various Internet-wide evaluations in recent years, with a main focus on DNS. Our evaluations showed that IP fragmentation poses a practical threat to DNS security, regardless of the transport protocol (TCP or UDP). Defense mechanisms such as DNS Response Rate Limiting could facilitate attacks on DNS, even if they are designed to protect DNS. We also extended the evaluations to a fundamental system which heavily relies on DNS, the web PKI. We found that Certificate Authorities suffered a lot from previous DNS vulnerabilities. We demonstrated that off-path attackers could hijack accounts at major CAs and manipulate resources there, with various DNS cache poisoning attacks. The Domain Validation procedure faces similar vulnerabilities. Even the latest Multiple-Validation-Agent DV could be downgraded and poisoned. On the other side, we also performed Internet-wide evaluations of two important defence mechanisms. One is the cryptographic protocol for DNS security, called DNSSEC. We found that only less than 2% of popular domains were signed, among which about 20% were misconfigured. This is another example showing how poorly deployed defence mechanisms worsen the security. The other is ingress filtering, which stops spoofed traffic from entering a network. We presented the most completed Internet-wide evaluations of ingress filtering, which covered over 90% of all Autonomous Systems. We found that over 80% of them were vulnerable to inbound spoofing

Aeronautics and Space Report of the President

The years 1989 to 1990 activities are reported including human space flight, unmanned expendable launch vehicles, space science and applications, space communications operations, space research and technology, and aeronautics research and technology. Contributions made by the 14 participating government organizations are outline. Each organization's aeronautics and/or space activities for the year are presented. The organizations involved include: (1) NASA; (2) Dept. of Defense; (3) Dept. of Commerce; (4) Dept. of Energy; (5) Dept. of the Interior; (6) Dept. of Agriculture; (7) Federal Communications Commission; (8) Dept. of Transportation; (9) Environmental Protection Agency; (10) National Science Foundation; (11) Smithsonian Institution; (12) Dept. of State; (13) Arms Control and Disarmament; and (14) United States Information Agency

South Carolina Conference Journal 2018

THE JOURNAL OF THE SOUTH CAROLINA CONFERENCE OF The United Methodist Church Southeastern Jurisdiction VOLUME I 2018 Price: $35.00 per year paid in advance by subscription only (Volumes I and II included) Edited for the Conference by KENNETH L. NELSON Secretary of the Annual Conference TD Convention Center Greenville, South Carolina June 3-6, 201

USCID fourth international conference

Presented at the Role of irrigation and drainage in a sustainable future: USCID fourth international conference on irrigation and drainage on October 3-6, 2007 in Sacramento, California.Includes bibliographical references.The two-layer model of Shuttlerworth and Wallace (SW) was evaluated to estimate actual evapotranspiration (ETa) above a drip-irrigated Merlot vineyard, located in the Talca Valley, Region del Maule, Chile (35° 25' LS; 71° 32' LW ; 136m above the sea level). An automatic weather system was installed in the center of the vineyard to measure climatic variables (air temperature, relative humidity, and wind speed) and energy balance components (solar radiation, net radiation, latent heat flux, sensible heat flux, and soil heat flux) during November and December 2006. Values of ETa estimated by the SW model were tested with latent heat flux measurements obtained from an eddy-covariance system on a 30 minute time interval. Results indicated that SW model was able to predict ETa with a root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.44 mm d-1 and mean absolute error (MAE) of 0.36 mm d-1. Furthermore, SW model predicted latent heat flux with RMSE and MAE of 32 W m-2 and 19W m-1, respectively

USCID fourth international conference

Presented at the Role of irrigation and drainage in a sustainable future: USCID fourth international conference on irrigation and drainage on October 3-6, 2007 in Sacramento, California.Includes bibliographical references.A In order to promote irrigation sustainability through reporting by irrigation water managers around Australia, we have developed an adaptive framework and methodology for improved triple-bottom-line reporting. The Irrigation Sustainability Assessment Framework (ISAF) was developed to provide a comprehensive framework for irrigation sustainability assessment and integrated triple-bottom-line reporting, and is structured to promote voluntary application of this framework across the irrigation industry, with monitoring, assessment and feedback into future planning, in a continual learning process. Used in this manner the framework serves not only as a "reporting tool", but also as a "planning tool" for introducing innovative technology and as a "processes implementation tool" for enhanced adoption of new scientific research findings across the irrigation industry. The ISAF was applied in case studies to selected rural irrigation sector organisations, with modifications to meet their specific interests and future planning