Practical Methods for High-Dimensional Data Publication with Differential Privacy

In recent years, differential privacy has seen significant growth, and has been widely embraced as the dominant privacy definition by the research community. Much progress has been made on designing theoretically principled and practically sound privacy mechanisms. There have even been some real-world deployments of differential privacy, although it has not yet seen widespread adoption. One challenge is that for some problems, there is a gap between the privacy budget required to have a meaningful privacy guarantee and to retain data utility. A second challenge is that many privacy mechanisms have trouble scaling to high-dimensional data, limiting their applicability to real world data. In this work, we take significant steps towards addressing these challenges, by designing mechanisms and tools that mitigate this gap and scale effectively to high-dimensional settings. This thesis consists of three high-level contributions. In Chapt 3, we present HDMM, a mechanism for linear query answering under differential privacy that scales effectively to large multi-dimensional domains while providing more utility than a large body of prior work. In Chapter 4, we present PrivatePGM, a general-purpose post-processing tool that can estimate a discrete data distribution from noisy observations, improving the utility and scalability of many existing mechanisms at no cost to privacy. In Chapter 5, we present AIM, a mechanism for differentially private synthetic data generation, that leverages PrivatePGM to scale to high-dimensional settings, while introducing a number of novel components to overcome the utility limitations of prior work

Land vehicle antennas for satellite mobile communications

The RF performance, size, pointing system, and cost were investigated concepts are: for a mechanically steered 1 x 4 tilted microstrip array, a mechanically steered fixed-beam conformal array, and an electronically steered conformal phased array. Emphasis is on the RF performance of the tilted 1 x 4 antenna array and methods for pointing the various antennas studied to a geosynchronous satellite. An updated version of satellite isolations in a two-satellite system is presented. Cost estimates for the antennas in quantities of 10,000 and 100,000 unites are summarized

Surviving physiological stress: Can insights into human adaptation to austere environments be applied to the critical care unit?

The harshest environment that many people will ever face is the critical care unit, where pathology can stress homeostatic mechanisms beyond their limits, leading to multiple organ failure and death. Our understanding of the biology that underlies this catastrophic process remains limited. There is significant variation in survival between individuals with apparently similar severity of organ dysfunction and it is difficult to predict which patients will weather the storm. Survival may be influenced by as yet undiscovered innate adaptive mechanisms that determine an individual's ability to tolerate physiological stress. Identifying favourable phenotypes, and the molecular machinery underlying them, could yield new therapeutic targets to improve outcome in life-threatening illness. Unfortunately, the complexity of critical illness makes it difficult to elucidate subtle adaptive mechanisms that could favour survival during stress. However, comparisons can be drawn between the stress of critical illness and that imposed by austere environments. The Earth is comprised of a wide range of different physical environments, each of which challenges homeostasis. Whilst technological advances have played a significant role in our capacity to survive in austere environments, biological adaptation and evolutionary change have been crucial. Studying human responses to environmental stressors such as heat, cold, hypoxia and microgravity has taught us a great deal about innate human adaptation, from the system to the cellular level, and the field continues to expand. Translating this to the pathophysiological stress of critical illness could offer alternative approaches to the current practice of intensive care medicine

Linear Rheological Response of a Series of Densely Branched Brush Polymers

We have examined the linear rheological responses of a series of welldefined, dense, regularly branched brush polymers. These narrow molecular weight distribution brush polymers had polynorobornene backbones with degrees of polymerization (DP) of 200, 400, and 800 and polylactide side chains with molecular weight of 1.4 kDa, 4.4 kDa, and 8.7 kDa. The master curves for these brush polymers were obtained by time temperature superposition (TTS) of the dynamic moduli over the range from the glassy region to the terminal flow region. Similar to other long chain branched polymers, these densely branched brush polymers show a sequence of relaxation. Subsequent to the glassy relaxation, two different relaxation processes can be observed for samples with the high molecular weight (4.4 and 8.7 kDa) side chains, corresponding to the relaxation of the side chains and the brush polymer backbone. Influenced by the large volume fraction of high molecular weight side chains, these brush polymers are unentangled. The lowest plateau observed in the dynamic response is not the rubbery entanglement plateau but is instead associated with the steady state recoverable compliance. Side chain properties affect the rheological responses of these densely branched brush polymers and determine their glassy behaviors

Prevalence of Anderson-Fabry disease in male patients with late onset hypertrophic cardiomyopathy

Background-Although studies have suggested that "late-onset" hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) may be caused by sarcomeric protein gene mutations, the cause of HCM in the majority of patients is unknown. This study determined the prevalence of a potentially treatable cause of hypertrophy, Anderson-Fabry disease, in a HCM referral population.Methods and Results-Plasma alpha-galactosidase A (alpha-Gal) was measured in 79 men with HCM who were diagnosed at greater than or equal to40 years of age (52.9 +/- 7.7 years; range, 40-71 years) and in 74 men who were diagnosed at <40 years (25.9 +/- 9.2 years; range, 8-39 years). Five patients (6.3%) with late-onset disease and 1 patient (1.4%) diagnosed at <40 years had low alpha-Gal activity. Of these 6 patients, 3 had angina, 4 were in New York Heart Association class 2, 5 had palpitations, and 2 had a history of syncope. Hypertrophy was concentric in 5 patients and asymmetric in 1 patient. One patient had left ventricular outflow tract obstruction. All patients with low alpha-Gal activity had alpha-Gal gene mutations.Conclusion-Anderson-Fabry disease should be considered in all cases of unexplained hypertrophy. Its recognition is important given the advent of specific replacement enzyme therapy

Surveyor: Mobile Highway Inventory and Measurement System

Surveyor is a mobile highway data collection system designed to collect measurement data about objects, features, structures, and landmarks located along highways and roadways for highway planning, management, and maintenance. It creates classified inventories annotated with object dimensions, object position relative to the road, and global position reference. The mobile data collection part of the system consists of a high-speed multifunction vehicle with minimum complement of a right-of-way video system with a precisely calibrated high-resolution video camera, a distance-measuring instrument for spatial positioning, a gyroscopic geometries system, and an ultrasonic grade system for precise measurement of vehicle attitude. Data acquisition is facilitated by multiple on-board computers, and the right-of-way video uses a time code for synchronization to the geometric and position databases. The interactive (postprocessing) part of the system uses a workstation to retrieve and buffer the video for the user to identify targets by using point and click with a mouse, to classify them, and to request position or size measurements. The software can make measurements on multiple images by using triangulation or on single images by using the idealized plane of the highway as a reference

Mandy Lane / music by Wm McKenna; words by Wm McKenna

Cover: drawing of a well dressed African American woman; photo inset of Otis Harlan; Publisher: Jerome H. Remick and Co. (New York)https://egrove.olemiss.edu/sharris_b/1088/thumbnail.jp

Investigations into the triggered lightning response of the F106B thunderstorm research aircraft

An investigation has been conducted into the lightning characteristics of the NASA F106B thunderstorm research aircraft. The investigation includes analysis of measured data from the aircraft in the time and frequency domains. Linear and nonlinear computer modelling has also been performed. In addition, new computer tools have been developed, including a new enhanced nonlinear air breakdown model, and a subgrid model useful for analyzing fine details of the aircraft's geometry. Comparison of measured and calculated electromagnetic responses of the aircraft to a triggered lightning environment are presented