<p>VPN (Virtual Private Network) is a method of providing a secure connection between a source (computer/server) and a destination host. The connection is secured not on the basis of employing a dedicated channel between the source and destination host, but instead the connection is secured over the public internet. </p><p> VPN is implemented in a hospital&rsquo;s network to meet the Health Insurance Protection and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations. HIPAA is a directive that compels the medical centers and clinics to handle an individual&rsquo;s electronic medical record securely; free from any nature of breaching. </p><p> In an effort to execute the VPN on a hospital&rsquo;s network that complies with HIPAA, this project is focused on creating a network simulation with the VPN including other networking features. The VPN enabled network is accomplished using the GNS3 network simulation software. The data through the VPN tunnel are encoded and observed in Wireshark Software. </p><p> In the conclusion we will observe the state, unencrypted and encrypted, of the packets before and after, respectively, applying the VPN to the border routers through which the IP packets are traveling via the insecure Public Internet. </p>

Thesis (M.S. in Electrical Engineering)--Naval Postgraduate School, December 2009. / Thesis Advisor: Julian, Alexander L. Second Reader: Cristi, Roberto. "December 2009." Description based on title screen as viewed on January 27, 2010. Author(s) subject terms: RS-232, USB, FPGA. Includes bibliographical references (p. 51-52). Also available in print.

Complex engineered systems evolve, with a tendency toward self-organization, which can, paradoxically, frustrate the aims of those seeking to develop them. The systems engineer, seeking to promote the development in the context of changing and uncertain requirements, is challenged by conceptual gaps that emerge within engineering projects, particularly as they scale up, that inhibit communication among the various stakeholders. Overall optimization, involving multiple criterion, is often expressed in the language of the individual parties, increasing the complexity of the overall situation, subsuming the participants within the evolution of the complex engineered system, conflating the objective and subjective in counter productive or inefficient ways that can arrest healthy development. The conventional pragmatic systems engineering approach to the resolution of such situations is to introduce architectural discipline by way of separation of concerns. In complex engineered systems projects, the crucial interface, at any level of abstraction, is between the technical domain experts and higher level decision makers. Bridging the ensuing conceptual gap requires models and methods that provide communication tools promoting a convergence of the conversation between these parties on a common "common sense" of the underlying reality of the evolving engineered system. In the interest of conceptual clarity, we confine our investigation to a restricted, but important general class of evolving engineered system, information gathering and utilizing systems. Such systems naturally resolve the underlying domain specific measures by reduction into common plausible information measures aimed at an overall sense of informativeness. For concreteness, we further restrict the investigation and the demonstration to a species that is well documented in the open literature: weather radar networks, and in particular to the case of the currently emerging system referred to as CASA. The multiobjective problem of objectively exploring the high dimensionality of the decision space is done using multiobjective genetic algorithms (MOGA), specifically the John Eddy genetic algorithms (JEGA), resulting in well formed Pareto fronts and sets containing Pareto optimal points within 20% of the ideal point. A visualization technique ensures a clear separation of the subjective criterion provided by the decision makers by superficially adding preferences to the objective optimal solutions. To identify the integrative objective functions and test patterns utilized in the MOGA analysis, explorations of networked weather radar technologies and configuration are completed. The explorations identify trends within and between network topologies, and captures both the robustness and fragility of network based measurements. The information oriented measures of fusion accuracy and precision are used to evaluate pairs of networked weather radars against a standardized low order vortex test pattern, resulting in a metrics for characterizing the performance of dual-Doppler weather radar pairs. To define integrative measures, information oriented measures abstracting over sensor estimators and parameters used to estimate the radial velocity and returned signal from distributed targets, specifically precipitation, are shown to capture the single radar predicted performance against standardized test patterns. The methodology bridges the conceptual gap, based on plausible information oriented measures, standardized with test patterns, and objectively applied to a concrete case with high dimensionality, allowed the conversation to converge between the systems engineer, decision makers, and domain experts. The method is an informative objective process that can be generalized to enable expansion within the technology and to other information gathering and utilizing systems and sensor technologies.

<p> This dissertation addresses the problem of the automatic discovery of structure in music from audio signals by introducing novel approaches and proposing perceptually enhanced evaluations. First, the problem of music structure analysis is reviewed from the perspectives of music information retrieval (MIR) and music perception and cognition (MPC), including a discussion of the limitations and current challenges in both disciplines. When discussing the existing methods of evaluating the outputs of algorithms that discover musical structure, a transparent open source software called mir eval, which contains implementations to these evaluations, is introduced. Then, four MIR algorithms are presented: one to compress music recordings into audible summaries, another to discover musical patterns from an audio signal, and two for the identification of the large-scale, non-overlapping segments of a musical piece. After discussing these techniques, and given the differences when perceiving the structure of music, the idea of applying more MPC-oriented approaches is considered to obtain perceptually relevant evaluations for music segmentation. A methodology to automatically obtain the most difficult tracks for machines to annotate is presented in order to include them in a design of a human study to collect multiple human annotations. To select these tracks, a novel open source framework called music structural analysis framework (MSAF) is introduced. This framework contains the most relevant music segmentation algorithms and it uses mir eval to transparently evaluate them. Moreover, MSAF makes use of the JSON annotated music specification (JAMS), a new format to contain multiple annotations for several tasks in a single file, which simplifies the dataset design and the analysis of agreement across different human references. The human study to collect additional annotations (which are stored in JAMS files) is described, where five new annotations for fifty tracks are stored. Finally, these additional annotations are analyzed, confirming the problem of having ground-truth datasets with a single annotator per track due to the high degree of disagreement among annotators for the challenging tracks. To alleviate this, these annotations are merged to produce a more robust human reference annotation. Lastly, the standard F-measure of the hit rate measure to evaluate music segmentation is analyzed when access to additional annotations is not possible, and it is shown, via multiple human studies, that precision seems more perceptually relevant than recall.</p>

<p> Cloud computing is a novel trend emerging in Information Technology (IT) environments with immense infrastructure and resources. An integral aspect of cloud computing is load balancing. Efficient load balancing in cloud computing ensures effective resource utilization. There are two types of load balancers: the static load balancer and the dynamic load balancer. While both types of load balancers are widely used in the industry, they differ in performance. In this project, the performances of the most widely used static and dynamic load balancers, namely the round robin and the throttled, are compared. Specifically, the project examines whether the throttled algorithm takes less time than the round robin algorithm to access data in cloud computing. The results show that the throttled algorithm takes less time than the round robin algorithm to access data, and that this difference is due to a faultiness in the implementation of the round robin algorithm.</p>

<p> With improvements in power harvesting transducers' power density, and power reduction in communication transceiver systems, displays, sensors and energy-aware microprocessors, smart wireless network nodes are becoming ubiquitous throughout our daily life. Digital signage has gained popularity with the integration of smart wireless network nodes into the application space replacing traditional signage and badges. Primary battery sources traditionally supply energy for digital signage, however, that generates waste and maintenance costs that are counterproductive to using digital signage. Therefore, a digital signage prototype called the wireless display sensor node (WDSN) with a micro-power photovoltaic energy harvesting system was developed at UC Davis and is presented as an alternative in this work. The WDSN and node management system is comprised of an electrophoretic display, Wi-Fi radio, photovoltaic and vibration power transducers, internet connected management system, sensors and power harvesting power electronics. A holistic energy approach was used to drive the development of the proposed digital badge and signage. This approach encompasses the characterization of vibrational and photovoltaic energy sources, analyzing the energy requirement from typical digital signage and developing a power harvesting energy management system that will maximize the lifetime and allow for self sufficiency of the digital signage. To bridge the gap between the energy source and the required peripheral supplies, a multiple input and multiple outputs (MIMO) H-bridge DC to DC converter was designed to harvest and regulate photovoltaic energy, and deliver energy to the various continuously active, and charge-and-execute loads of the WDSN. The H-bridge DC to DC converter comprising of a single inductor, two input power FETs from both primary and secondary power sources, and five symmetric output power FETs to create the various supply rails, supply the regulated energy required for the radio, the display, the sensors and the microcontroller. For the charge-and-execute supplies, a constant current ramp charging was developed to transfer charge at the maximum power point current of the photovoltaic cell to the supply capacitors of the peripherals that support the charge-and-execute supply generation. The MIMO H-bridge DC to DC converter presented supports active regulation using pulse width modulation for high current loads, pulse frequency modulation for light current loads, and ramp charging for capacitive loads. The controller was designed using digital logic and the entire MIMO H-bridge DC to DC converter occupies an area of 0.36&nbsp;mm2 to 1.63&nbsp;mm2 depending on the power transistor size selection. The measured instantaneous peak power efficiency is 86% while driving a 63&nbsp;?A load with a transient energy efficiency delivered to the load is 81%. The prototype WDSN dissipates 933&nbsp;mJ to complete a server data synchronization and display refresh. The WDSN update energy when supplied with vibrational and photovoltaic power harvesting is equivalent to 7.52&nbsp;hours of casual continuous walking (34.44&nbsp;?W), 1,230 laboratory door toggles (open and close at 986&nbsp;?W) and 12&nbsp;hours of continuous office lighting (7&nbsp;am to 7&nbsp;pm with a daily total of 958&nbsp;mJ under an average of 538&nbsp;Lux of CFL lighting).</p><p>

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Neste trabalho descreve-se o desenvolvimento do Módulo Quadro de Indicadores Operacionais (Módulo QIO) como um sistema de Armazenamento de Dados. Este módulo tem por objectivo disponibilizar informação de planeamento e controlo aos agentes de decisão de empresas de transportes colectivos rodoviários de passageiros. Faz parte integrante do sistema GIST98/EUROBUS - um Sistema de Apoio à Decisão para a área do planeamento. Começam-se por definir os conceitos fundamentais sobre sistemas de Armazenamento de Dados e apresentar métodos adequados para o desenvolvimento deste tipo de sistemas. De seguida apresenta-se o caso de estudo (a construção do Módulo QIO no âmbito do sistema GIST98/EUROBUS), descreve-se o método de desenvolvimento a utilizar na construção do Módulo QIO e, por último, descreve?se a aplicação do método. O trabalho apresentado foi realizado em colaboração com cinco empresas que utilizam ou vão utilizar num futuro próximo o sistema GIST98/EUROBUS. Estas empresas operam diariamente com cerca de 6000 viaturas correspondendo a mais de metade do mercado de transportes colectivos rodoviários de passageiros em Portugal, incluindo Madeira e Açores. / This work describes the development of the Performance Indicators Board Module (PIB Module) as a Data Warehousing system. This module aims to give planning and control information to support the decision making process at mass transit companies. It is part of the GIST98/EUROBUS system - a Decision Support System to the planning area. Firstly are defined the main concepts about Data Warehousing systems and presented methods to develop this kind of systems. Next is presented the study case (the PIB Module construction as a module of the GIST98/EUROBUS system), described the development method to use on the study case and, finally, it is described the method application. This work was done with the support of five companies that are using or will use soon the GIST98/EUROBUS system. Those companies operate daily about 6000 vehicles, corresponding to more than half of the road public transport market in Portugal, including Madeira and Azores.

No description available.