Changes in Cognitive State Alter Human Functional Brain Networks

The study of the brain as a whole system can be accomplished using network theory principles. Research has shown that human functional brain networks during a resting state exhibit small-world properties and high degree nodes, or hubs, localized to brain areas consistent with the default mode network. However, the study of brain networks across different tasks and or cognitive states has been inconclusive. Research in this field is important because the underpinnings of behavioral output are inherently dependent on whether or not brain networks are dynamic. This is the first comprehensive study to evaluate multiple network metrics at a voxel-wise resolution in the human brain at both the whole-brain and regional level under various conditions: resting state, visual stimulation, and multisensory (auditory and visual stimulation). Our results show that despite global network stability, functional brain networks exhibit considerable task-induced changes in connectivity, efficiency, and community structure at the regional level

AE 2250: Construction Graphics and Design—A Peer Review of Teaching Project Benchmark Portfolio

This course portfolio designs and documents AE 2250 (Construction Design and Graphics) course that is taught in Spring 2016 at UNL\u27s College of Engineering under the Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction program. The course is intended to introduce BIM (Building Information Modeling) to architectural engineering, construction engineering, construction management and civil engineering students ranging from freshman to juniors. This course portfolio documents the challenges associated with delivering this course, tailors the course objectives, activities and tracking measures to meet the course objectives throughout the semester. This portfolio uses quantitative and qualitative measures to track student performances and learning objectives including Blackboard statistics and CATME modules. Various course activities including final project, research presentation, quizzes and exams are designed and presented using representative examples and student performances. The portfolio also documents future works and improvements that needs to be addressed at the department and college level

AE 2250: Construction Graphics and Design—A Peer Review of Teaching Project Benchmark Portfolio

This course portfolio designs and documents AE 2250 (Construction Design and Graphics) course that is taught in Spring 2016 at UNL\u27s College of Engineering under the Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction program. The course is intended to introduce BIM (Building Information Modeling) to architectural engineering, construction engineering, construction management and civil engineering students ranging from freshman to juniors. This course portfolio documents the challenges associated with delivering this course, tailors the course objectives, activities and tracking measures to meet the course objectives throughout the semester. This portfolio uses quantitative and qualitative measures to track student performances and learning objectives including Blackboard statistics and CATME modules. Various course activities including final project, research presentation, quizzes and exams are designed and presented using representative examples and student performances. The portfolio also documents future works and improvements that needs to be addressed at the department and college level

Department of Computer Science Activity 1998-2004

This report summarizes much of the research and teaching activity of the Department of Computer Science at Dartmouth College between late 1998 and late 2004. The material for this report was collected as part of the final report for NSF Institutional Infrastructure award EIA-9802068, which funded equipment and technical staff during that six-year period. This equipment and staff supported essentially all of the department\u27s research activity during that period

Secure Hardware Enhanced MyProxy: A Ph.D. Thesis Proposal

In 1976, Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman demonstrated how New Directions In Cryptography could enable secure information exchange between parties that do not share secrets. In order for public key cryptography to work in modern distributed environments, we need an infrastructure for finding and trusting other parties\u27 public keys (i.e., a PKI). A number of useful applications become possible with PKI. While the applications differ in how they use keys (e.g., S/MIME uses the key for message encryption and signing, while client-side SSL uses the key for authentication), all applications share one assumption: users have keypairs. In previous work, we examined the security aspects of some of the standard keystores and the their interaction with the OS. We concluded that desktops are not safe places to store private keys, and we demonstrated the permeability of keystores such as the default Microsoft keystore and the Mozilla keystore. In addition to being unsafe, these desktop keystores have the added disadvantage of being immobile. In other previous work, we examined trusted computing. In industry, a new trusted computing initiative has emerged: the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance (TCPA) (now renamed the Trusted Computing Group (TCG)). The goal of the TCG design is lower-assurance security that protects an entire desktop platform and is cheap enough to be commercially feasible. Last year, we built a trusted computing platform based on the TCG specifications and hardware. The picture painted by these previous projects suggests that common desktops are not secure enough for use as PKI clients, and trusted computing can improve the security of client machines. The question that I propose to investigate is: Can I build a system which applies trusted computing hardware in a reasonable manner in order to make desktops usable for PKI? My design begins with the Grid community\u27s MyProxy credential repository, and enhances it to take advantage of secure hardware on the clients, at the repository, and in the policy framework. The result is called Secure Hardware Enhanced MyProxy

Attribute-Based, Usefully Secure Email

A secure system that cannot be used by real users to secure real-world processes is not really secure at all. While many believe that usability and security are diametrically opposed, a growing body of research from the field of Human-Computer Interaction and Security (HCISEC) refutes this assumption. All researchers in this field agree that focusing on aligning usability and security goals can enable the design of systems that will be more secure under actual usage. We bring to bear tools from the social sciences (economics, sociology, psychology, etc.) not only to help us better understand why deployed systems fail, but also to enable us to accurately characterize the problems that we must solve in order to build systems that will be secure in the real world. Trust, a critically important facet of any socio-technical secure system, is ripe for analysis using the tools provided for us by the social sciences. There are a variety of scopes in which issues of trust in secure systems can be stud- ied. We have chosen to focus on how humans decide to trust new correspondents. Current secure email systems such as S/MIME and PGP/MIME are not expressive enough to capture the real ways that trust flows in these sorts of scenarios. To solve this problem, we begin by applying concepts from social science research to a variety of such cases from interesting application domains; primarily, crisis management in the North American power grid. We have examined transcripts of telephone calls made between grid manage- ment personnel during the August 2003 North American blackout and extracted several different classes of trust flows from these real-world scenarios. Combining this knowl- edge with some design patterns from HCISEC, we develop criteria for a system that will enable humans apply these same methods of trust-building in the digital world. We then present Attribute-Based, Usefully Secure Email (ABUSE) and not only show that it meets our criteria, but also provide empirical evidence that real users are helped by the system