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My ceramic sculptures are abstracted portraits of friends and family. They reveal no clues about the age, the gender, or the physical identity of the subjects. Instead, they are abstracted character traits rendered in clay with a biomorphic sensibility. I translate a particular personality trait of a friend or family member into a tangible object and arrange those pieces referencing botanical forms. I tend to choose the negative traits that cause friction in our relationship. My work is a way of acknowledging and dealing with the struggle these traits have caused. I structure my pieces as a floral arrangement to transfer an otherwise unfavorable experience into a positive one.

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This thesis consists of an introduction and four research papers related to free boundary problems and systems of fully non-linear elliptic equations. Paper A and Paper B prove optimal regularity of solutions to general elliptic and parabolic free boundary problems, where the operators are fully non-linear and convex. Furthermore, it is proven that the free boundary is continuously differentiable around so called "thick" points, and that the free boundary touches the fixed boundary tangentially in two dimensions. Paper C analyzes singular points of solutions to perturbations of the unstable obstacle problem, in three dimensions. Blow-up limits are characterized and shown to be unique. The free boundary is proven to lie close to the zero-level set of the corresponding blow-up limit. Finally, the structure of the singular set is analyzed. Paper D discusses an idea on how existence and uniqueness theorems concerning quasi-monotone fully non-linear elliptic systems can be extended to systems that are not quasi-monotone. / <p>QC 20151210</p>

Homomorphic encryption has progressed rapidly in both efficiency and versatility since its emergence in 2009. Meanwhile, a multitude of pressing privacy needs --- ranging from cloud computing to healthcare management to the handling of shared databases such as those containing genomics data --- call for immediate solutions that apply fully homomorpic encryption (FHE) and somewhat homomorphic encryption (SHE) technologies. Recent rapid progress in fully homomorphic encryption has catalyzed renewed efforts to develop efficient privacy preserving protocols. Several works have already appeared in the literature that provide solutions to these problems by employing leveled or somewhat homomorphic encryption techniques. Here, we propose efficient ways of adapting the most fundamental programming problems; boolean algebra, arithmetic in binary and higher radix representation, sorting, and search to the fully homomorphic encryption domain by focusing on the multiplicative depth of the circuits alongside the more traditional metrics. The reduced depth allows much reduced noise growth and thereby makes it possible to select smaller parameter sizes in leveled FHE instantiations resulting in greater efficiency savings. We begin by exploring already existing solutions to these programming problems, and analyze them in terms of homomorphic evaluation and memory costs. Most of these algorithms appear to be not the best candidates for FHE solutions, hence we propose new methods and improvements over the existing algorithms to optimize performance.

In the past decade, one of the major breakthroughs in computer science theory is the first construction of fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) scheme introduced by Gentry. Using a FHE one may perform an arbitrary numbers of computations directly on the encrypted data without revealing of the secret key. Therefore, a practical FHE provides an invaluable security application for emerging technologies such as cloud computing and cloud-based storage. However, FHE is far from real life deployment due to serious efficiency impediments. The main part of this dissertation focuses on accelerating the existing FHE schemes using GPU and hardware design to make them more efficient and practical towards real-life applications. Another part of this dissertation is for the hardware design of the large key-size RSA cryptosystem. As the Moore law continues driving the computer technology, the key size of the Rivest-Shamir-Adelman (RSA) encryption is necessary to be upgraded to 2048, 4096 or even 8192 bits to provide higher level security. In this dissertation, the FFT multiplication is employed for the large-size RSA hardware design instead of using the traditional interleaved Montgomery multiplication to show the feasibility of the FFT multiplication for large-size RSA design.

Communication technology has become indispensable in a modernsociety. Its importance is growing day by day. One of the main reasonsbehind this growth is the advancement in the analog and mixed signalcircuit design.Analog to digital converter (ADC) is an essential part in a modernreceiver system. Its development is driven by the progress of CMOStechnologies with an aim to reduce area and power consumption. In thearea of RF integrated circuits for wireless application low operationalvoltage, and less current consumption are the central aspects of thedesign. The aim of this master thesis is the development and design ofa low-power analog to digital converter for RF applications.The basic specifications are:· High Speed, Low Current (1.5 V supply voltage)· Maximum input frequency 3.5 MHz· 8-bit resolution· Sampling rate &lt; 100 MHzThus, this work comprises a theoretical concept phase in whichdifferent ADC topologies will be investigated. Based on which anappropriate ADC architecture will be fixed. Later, the chosen design willbe implemented in an industrial 130 nm CMOS process.

­^¤åºK­n A time-independent finite-difference numerical scheme is developed to study the dynamic response of a submerged and a floating breakwater under the wave loading of a fully numerical force. The coupled surge, heave and pitch motion of a floating breakwater and the wave-structure interaction are included in the model. The numerical results are validated uses several bench mark studies and results available elsemlse. The wave reducing effect of a submerged and a floating breakwaters were analysis and discusse.

The fully-pitched winding arrangement is one of the most radical changes in the design of doubly-salient reluctance motors in recent times. By replacing conventional shortpitched windings with fully-pitched windings, the resulting machine has a strong and position dependant mutual coupling between phases. The major torque producing mechanism is due to changes in mutual inductance with rotor position. This enables the windings to be better utilised, and with correct selection of excitation all phases can contribute useful torque all of the time. The increased winding utilisation requires a lower MMF per phase in comparison with a short-pitch wound machine with a single phase excited. Given a suitable winding configuration and machine dimensions, the copper losses for a given torque can be significantly lower than an equivalent conventional switched reluctance machine. Operation of a three phase fully-pitched winding switched reluctance machine has been studied theoretically, in simulation and experimentally. The experimental drive comprises of a D132 frame 12:8 machine, IGBT power converter and DSP controller. Operation with unipolar phase currents has been investigated over a wide speed range and performance compared with a conventional switched reluctance machine. Bipolar operation with several different excitation patterns has been investigated. Unipolar operation gives the largest torque/speed envelope with a simple controller, although bipolar modes can equal this with a more complex controller. Results show that for equal RMS phase current the average torque produced by four different modes of excitation are approximately equal. However, there is a large difference in the torque ripple and acoustic noise performance of each mode. Current control in switched reluctance machines is complicated by the non-linear nature of the load. By controlling flux-linkage rather than current a linear load model can be used. A discrete time 'dead-beat' flux-linkage controller has been implemented which gives superior phase current control performance to other types of controller with the same sample interval. A new method of constant torque operation based on 'flux ramps' has been proposed. This method gives predictable performance and enables constant torque operation over a wide speed range. A Genetic Algorithm has been shown to be very effective when applied to the problem of optimising the 'flux ramps' for minimum torque ripple. A speed controller has been implemented which makes use of the Genetic Algorithm optimised flux ramps to give smooth torque over a wide speed range.

The objective of this study is to identify differences in fully softened shear strength testing based on sample preparation technique and water source. Two sample preparation techniques were used, the blenderizing technique outlined in EM 1110-2-1906 and the hand disaggregation technique outlined in ASTM D 4318-10. The samples used for this study were clay shale samples from the Dallas, Texas area. The two water sources are groundwater and deionized water. Shear strength testing was conducted using a direct shear box. The clay shale Atterberg limits, shear strength, mineralogy, and water chemistry were analyzed to determine the effect on variations in the results.