Student Posters

Author / Title / College or University	Abstract
Timothy K. Johnson Multi-stage Control Software for a Raman Laser Spectrometer Sam Houston State University	The implementation of a multi-axis control can often be an inexpensive endeavor. The goal of this project was to use off the shelf parts to create a cheaper alternative than buying a custom system each time from a manufacturer. By writing a piece of software to interact with a micro-controller this software allows the less expensive implementation of 3 axis movement by the use of this standard micro-controller and any motors that can be attached to it. This resulted in a theoretical significant savings for the university and a piece of software that could be reused with other projects. As the implementation was in java; this software is platform independent allowing the easy use of this software.
Shelley Smith Woods Mars Advanced Radiation Acquisition Data Conversion Utility (MARA-DCU) Texas Southern University	The Mars Advanced Radiation Acquisition (MARA) Project is developing advanced technology radiation detection systems for Shuttle, Space Station, Moon, and Mars missions. The detectors measure radiation by converting the energy deposited by a radiation event into an electrical current. The previous radiation instrumentation was developed in the 1980’s under the direction of Dr. Gautam Badhwar and was a payload on the 2001 Mars Odyssey Orbiter, which was launched on 7 April 2001. The instrument measures doses from two sources of space radiation which are harmful to humans — galactic cosmic rays (GCR) and solar energetic particles (SEP). MARIE provided data during the cruise from the Earth to Mars, and in orbit around Mars until a large solar event on 28 October 2003. Over the years, however, MARIE had experienced some technological erosion, due to the moderate modifications to the existing design, which essentially brought on the need to develop new higher performance instruments with more advanced technology. As a result, MARA was born. MARA is currently running real-time testing sequences and storing that data in raw hexadecimal format. This format was selected in order for the data to be efficiently transmitted through bus from space to earth. The objective of my project was to design, develop and manage a program that takes the raw data from MARA, converts it to readable ASCII format to be used for further analysis by physicists and other scientists. MARA radiation detection techniques have the potential for introducing unique approaches to radiation detection which is essential in the advancement of manned space travel, lunar exploration and future planetary exploration.
Raymon H Lange Discovery of Routing Algorithms through Analysis of Network Traffic St. Edwards University	The purpose of this study is to see if a routing algorithm can be detected by analyzing the packets sent and received between the router and the nodes. The study should prove that a routing algorithm can be detected thru the TCP messages sent from the router. This project entailed the knowledge of different routing algorithms, the implementation of routing algorithms, and the mathematical analysis of paths. Knowledge of routing algorithms will be the most critical part of the experiment, reason being the development of creating test situations to explore the weakness and strengths of each routing algorithm. This experiment will be able to analyze the packets sent and determine if a routing algorithm can be discovered.
Raymon H Lange Creation of Jnode Network Driver St. Edwards University	JNode (Java New Operating System Design Effort) is an open-source project to create a Java platform operating system. The project has taken the unique direction of creating all the software in Java itself, with the exception of some assembly language to boot and load the system. The JVM compiler (which normally uses just-in-time compilation) is used to build native binaries out of the core Java code. In this way, nearly the entire system is capable of being written in the Java programming language. Due to the growing popularity or at least interest in Jnode project, there has been an increasing demand for a large support of Ethernet adapter. I hope to successfully create a network driver to support the Airlink 101 Ethernet adapter with support of full duplex.
Lucas A. Wilson Distributed Resource Management Using Artificial Immune Systems Texas A&M University - Corpus Christi	Modern Grid and cluster environments are powerful tools that enable scientists and engineers to perform cutting edge computational research with increasing speed and accuracy. However, traditional centralized management and scheduling techniques cannot continue to effectively and efficiently manage environments as the number of resources increases. This project details a novel approach for performing distributed resource management in large-scale heterogeneous multicomputer environments by mimicking features of the mammalian immune system, taking inspiration from Immune Network Theory and Danger Theory.
Brian Gammill Developing a new algorithm to support larger query ranges for a disk-based multi-dimentiosnal (sic) index. University of Central Oklahoma	The ND-tree is a disk-based multi-dimensional index tree that supports similarity queries on vectors with non-ordered discrete components, which are typical in bioinformatics applications such as the genome databases. One limitation of such indexing methods is that, when the query range becomes large, their query performance degrades. In this project, we develop a new algorithm in C++ to improve query performance by slightly reducing the accuracy of the query result. For a given range query, the traditional query algorithm accesses all the tree nodes whose bounding region (BR) intersects the query sphere. The new algorithm, however, only considers nodes that have a large overlapping BR with the query sphere. Thus, the new approach can greatly reduce the number of disk I/Os with just a slight sacrifice in query accuracy. Our experiments have shown promising results.
Jerry D Smith Intel 8051 Microcontroller Board Sam Houston State University	The Intel 8051 Microcontroller Board was inspired by the book "Code" by Microsoft Press. The purpose of the board is to facilitate learning about computer organization and software development. The board facilitates learning MIPS assembly hands-on in a limited memory space without having to deal with the extra complexities of the modern computer. The board provides 32k SRAM for program development, 30k Flash ROM for semi-permanent program storage, a 20x2 LCD display, eight LEDs, and a prototype area with 50 programmable I/O lines. Through these features, the board provides a variety of opportunities to experiment with both hardware and software development. By connecting to the board with a serial port, the student is provided with a command prompt that allows such actions as downloading applications to the board, running them, and dumping or hex editing memory.
Mehdi R. Kanso A Study on Communication Patterns in OSS Communities Jackson State University	Recently, it is noted that Open Source Software (OSS) is invading the field of software development. “OSS is developed in public in a collaborative manner that gives the user the ability to access, modify, improve, and to redistribute the software freely”[7]. OSS is a new phenomenon that is challenging the conventional commercial way of developing software projects. The fact that such types of projects gather wide range of skills from different contributors makes the project, if successfully managed and completed, competitive software that can some times dominate the market (ex. Linux, Java, MySQL, PHP). This way of development requires a lot of management, organization, and cooperation to assure that the project will result in a complete software. Various communication methods are used to connect different individuals or groups of the same project. An important facet in OSS is to control communication methods that allow successful management and productive cooperation. Various communication methods are used by the contributor to get support from other contributors, keep track of latest changes, be involved in the management process, and keep connections to facilitate monitoring, testing, and debugging.
Ke Yang Graphic Vision of Environment Threat in New Orleans Area after Katrina Southeastern Louisiana University	The risks of lead poisoning in New Orleans are increased after Katrina. First of all, Lead paint from old buildings (especially those built before 1950) could be diffused into flooded water. Second, flooded houses with lead-based paint were destroyed or remolded. Collaborating with faculty and students of Chemistry Department, an on-site, real time, qualitatively monitoring system to evaluate environmental contaminant of lead (Pb) was established. An environmental assessment and identification of public health threats caused by exposure to environmental contaminant of lead was conducted. Data collected on lead measurement were used to generate a database. A spatial database was generated and maps were developed to display an up-to-date graphic vision of environment threat in New Orleans area after Katrina.
Adrian Salazar Image Processing Performance using GPU's Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi	Their advanced architectural design coupled with their ability to handle highly multi threaded processes have made Graphical Processing Units (GPU)ideal choices to be used in the next generation of computational algorithms, General Purpose Computation on GPU (GPGPU). This new form of computation takes advantage of GPU capabilities in order to process data in parallel. By using a NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra graphics card and CUDA,a C/C++ based language; we are able to produce highly multi threaded applications capable of assisting in image processing. This research focuses on not only exploring the performance of GPUs on low level imagingtasks, but also improving performance and decrease processing time as compared to using a CPU alone.
Gregory A. Wilson, Alex Vinson Robotics in Python McNeese State University	The purpose of this project is to provide a research experience developing robotic maneuverability through multiple connected sensors using Python as the programming language. This research experience will include learning a new language (Python) and to program in an open source operating system (Linux), how to connect multiple sensors to a robot, understanding the information received from these sensors, and programming the robot to move first wirelessly and then autonomously with the information gathered from the sensors.