Master of Science / Department of Computing and Information Sciences / Daniel Andresen / The objective of this project is to develop an iPhone application for the Konza Prairie LTER and play a significant role in the development of their website. The data of the Konza Prairie LTER is vast and includes the spatial datasets, weather reports, text archives, information about the flora and fauna at Konza Prairie Natural Area, integrated project areas, Dataset Codes, LTER Core Areas, Related projects, Konza Documents and Permits, and Publications. The module which was developed by me provides users information like publications, personnel information and datasets. The titles of the publications along with their PIs will be retrieved from the database and formatted onto the webpage. The 'Personnel' page has links directing to Primary Contacts, Faculty and Staff and Graduate Students. The attractive feature of this personnel page is that each personnel in the list will have a '+' link which enables the user more information about that particular personnel like their field of interests, mailing address and a link to view their profile. As the website already has all the required data and information in detail, the mobile app only briefs about them. People who are working on-site can make of this app efficiently as its features includes list of upcoming events, map of Konza with GPS feature, Post Card feature, Primary personnel to be contacted and other features. The website is developed using Visual Studio 2010 and SQL Server 2008 database. The iPhone app enhanced my knowledge and provided me with real-time exposure to iPhone SDK tools, X-code, Interface builder and its development environment.

Master of Science / Department of Computing and Information Sciences / Mitchell Neilsen / E-Learning System offers online training for the employees of the company. Every company uses different technologies based on the type of work they do, products they develop and services they offer. Fresher's who are just recruited many not be familiar with the technologies the company is using or the employees already working in the company may not have required level of efficiency in those technologies. It is necessary to train all the employees of the company according to their profiles with different technologies the company uses. The main aim of the project is to create web interface for E-learning System for the employees of the company. In order to use this system the employees needs to register as member and can start using services. The registered users have more access to system and can make use of training system more efficiently then unregistered users. The registered users will have access to master library where all the materials and videos of different courses are available. The users can enroll into different levels of different courses and get trained by downloading and studying the materials available .The users can also schedule for a test for the courses and levels they are registered into. Records are created for the level and course they re passed so that admin they view them. Creating a web interface will help the employees to study easily, manage their courses efficiently and can also check their performances. It also aims for developing reports for each users in the E-Learning System so that the users can see their performances and the admin can also recommend him/her to appropriate project's based on the performance of the employee in the technologies he/she is registered into.

Master of Science / Department of Computing and Information Sciences / Daniel Andresen / Mobile applications can be one of the best ways to keep consumers engaged with a brand as they are on the move. With the increase in demand for smartphones and efficiency of wireless networks, the demand for mobile applications has increased incredibly. Android is one of the most popular open source platforms that offers the developers full access to the framework API’s so as to build innovative applications. The main aim of this project is to build an Android application that helps the users to find a Restaurant in a specified location and according to the specified tastes. The main features provided by the Restaurant Finder application are as follows: 1) Basic Search where the user can search for a particular restaurant based on any keyword and Advanced Search where the user can specify the category, rating and the distance range for the restaurants. 2) Google Maps that shows the top 5 restaurants in the city of the current location and the routes to a particular restaurant. 3) The users can write a review, see the reviews and invite a friend/colleague to meet at a particular restaurant. 4) Google Calendar where the user can mark an event.

This thesis proposes a combination of solutions to improve scalability and playability of MMOGs.

Doctor of Philosophy / Computing and Information Sciences / William H. Hsu / While the Hierarchical Dirichlet Process (HDP) has recently been widely applied to topic modeling tasks, most current hybrid models for concurrent inference of topics and other factors are not based on HDP. In this dissertation, we present two new models that extend an HDP topic modeling framework to incorporate other learning factors. One model injects Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) based sentiment learning into HDP. This model preserves the benefits of nonparametric Bayesian models for topic learning, while learning latent sentiment aspects simultaneously. It automatically learns different word distributions for each single sentiment polarity within each topic generated. The other model combines an existing HDP framework for learning topics from free text with latent authorship learning within a generative model using author list information. This model adds one more layer into the current hierarchy of HDPs to represent topic groups shared by authors, and the document topic distribution is represented as a mixture of topic distribution of its authors. This model automatically learns author contribution partitions for documents in addition to topics.

Master of Science / Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering / Dwight D. Day / Process migration is a technique in clustering and distributed computing by which parallel applications can be dynamically moved between nodes in a cluster in response to differing phases of execution, which is of growing usefulness in the field of distributed computing. A drawback to many recent implementations of process migration is that sockets for interprocess communication do not migrate with the process requiring communication to be rerouted through the process' starting, or home, node, resulting in reduced communications performance when the process is migrated away from its home node. This thesis focuses on the implemention a solution to this problem at the kernel level for the OpenMosix process migration system with efficient socket handoff and cluster-wide unique addressing by reimplemting TCP on top of the existing network code in the Linux kernel. Although falling short of the initial goal of fully transparent operation, this thesis presents a working implementation of migratable sockets for the OpenMosix process migration system that demonstrates working socket migration and improved performance over non-migrating sockets in OpenMosix.

Master of Science / Department of Computing and Information Sciences / David A. Gustafson / An interest point detection scheme is presented that is comparable in quality to existing methods, but can be performed much faster. The detection is based on a straightforward color analysis at a coarse granularity. A 3x3 grid of squares is centered on the candidate point, so that the candidate point corresponds to the middle square. If the color of the center region is inhomogeneous with all of the surrounding regions, the point is labeled as interesting. A point will also be labeled as interesting if a minority of the surrounding squares are homogeneous, and arranged in an appropriate pattern. Testing confirms that this detection scheme is much faster than the state-of-the-art. It is also repeatable, even under different viewing conditions. The detector is robust with respect to changes in viewpoint, lighting, zoom, and to a certain extent, rotation.

Master of Science / Department of Computing and Information Sciences / Daniel A. Andresen / All the students who are enrolled in Computing and Information Sciences (CIS) major in Kansas State University are required to submit their Program of Study (POS) which they manually do by filling in all the necessary details and submit the form to the department. The main objective of this project is to develop an online submission of program of study. The online student profile management system is a web-based application that provides students of CIS major to submit their program of study in an easy and efficient manner. This application mainly allows the students to enter their personal information (viz., contact information, previous education) and to choose core as well as non-core courses of their choice. In addition the faculty of CIS department can also log on to the application and view the POS of the students by entering their wildcat ID. The primary focus is to get familiar with .NET framework and to code in C#.NET. This in turn uses MS SQL server 2005 as database for storing and retrieving of data. This project is implemented using C#.NET on Microsoft visual studio 2005.

Master of Science / Department of Computing and Information Sciences / Mitchell L. Neilsen / Hiring process in an organization is very crucial which consumes cost along with a lot of time. I developed a catalyst which will accelerate the recruiting process which assures optimum time and cost utilization. Keeping track of all the applicants throughout the recruiting process is cumbersome. This catalyst for accelerating recruitment process is an interactive web application which helps multinational corporations and organizations to keep track of the recruiting steps for different position, reasons for creating a new position, history of all the potential applicants and the employer’s feedback along with email communication to all the people involved. Major emphasis of the web application ensures that none of the applicants in recruiting process are terminated unconditionally due to manual errors or miscommunication. Initially a position is created specifying the requirements and duties by a line manager or a branch manager. Initial applications are shortlisted by the recruiter and interviews are scheduled with panelists. This web application does not involve in the decision making, rather it provides a framework and sequence to follow and to tag an offer to a potential candidate. The web application follows 3- tier architecture and Asp.net is used is used to develop the web application. Asp.net web forms, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are used to provide rich front end, Vb.net classes provide the business logic, and Microsoft SQL server serves as the data layer. A part from the SMTP mail server is used to send mails to HR manager, line manager, panelists and candidates.

Master of Science / Department of Computing and Information Sciences / Mitchell L. Neilsen / The mission of the Office of International Programs is to lead the internationalization of Kansas State University by supporting and collaborating with faculty, students, and scholars. The units within the Office of International Programs provide primary support for both in coming international students, faculty and researchers at K-State, faculty and researchers going abroad, etc. It seldom happens that all the international activity of a particular university is organized under the same hood. There is no conventional source that handles all the information (International activity) in a single web application, it is usually scattered over the web. This makes it tough for prospective students or researchers to search for people or programs. Therefore, to overcome this issue, the current project has been implemented. The main objective of the current project is to design a website for the Office of International Programs. This website hosts information about International Faculty, Study Abroad Programs, International Agreements, Alumni Groups and International Students on a single platform. This portal would offer the administrators with different modules where information about a particular program can be added, edited, deleted and viewed. Primary focus of this application is to display information in an innovative format and to enable different users to navigate over the web site easily. This website makes the searching process easy for users. This site is significantly responsible for viewing of information and maintaining a database for various people and programs for Office of International Programs at Kansas State University.