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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, 1921. / Published also without thesis note.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Lehigh University, 2001. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 220-228).

No description available.

No description available.

Many source code tools help software programmers analyze programs as they are being developed, but such tools can no longer be applied once the final programs are shipped to the user. This greatly limits users, security experts, and anyone other than the programmer who wishes to perform additional testing and program analysis. This dissertation is concerned with the development of scalable techniques for statically analyzing binary programs, which can be employed by anyone who has access to the binary. Unfortunately, static binary analysis is often more difficult than static source code analysis because the abstractions that are the basis of source code programs, such as variables, types, functions, and control flow structure, are not explicitly present in binary programs. Previous approaches work around the the lack of abstractions by reasoning about the program at a lower level, but this approach has not scaled as well as equivalent source code techniques that use abstractions. This dissertation investigates an alternative approach to static binary analysis which is called abstraction recovery. The premise of abstraction recovery is that since many binaries are actually compiled from an abstract source language which is more suitable for analysis, the first step of static binary analysis should be to recover such abstractions. Abstraction recovery is shown to be feasible in two real-world applications. First, C abstractions are recovered by a newly developed decompiler. The second application recovers gadget abstractions to automatically generate return-oriented programming (ROP) attacks. Experiments using the decompiler demonstrate that recovering C abstractions improves scalability over low-level analysis, with applications such as verification and detection of buffer overflows seeing an average of 17× improvement. Similarly, gadget abstractions speed up automated ROP attacks by 99×. Though some binary analysis problems do not lend themselves to abstraction recovery because they reason about low-level or syntactic details, abstraction recovery is an attractive alternative to conventional low-level analysis when users are interested in the behavior of the original abstract program from which a binary was compiled, which is often the case.

Pattern mining is a knowledge discovery task which is useful for finding interesting data characteristics. Existing mining techniques sometimes suffer from limited performance in challenging situations, such as when finding patterns in high-dimensional datasets. Binary Decision Diagrams and their variants are a compact and efficient graph data structure for representing and manipulating boolean functions and they are potentially attractive for solving many problems in pattern mining. This thesis explores techniques for the use of binary decision diagrams for mining both simple and complex types of patterns. / Firstly, we investigate the use of Binary Decision Diagrams for mining the fundamental types of patterns. These include frequent patterns, also known as frequent itemsets. We introduce a structure called the Weighted Zero-suppressed Binary Decision Diagram and evaluate its use on high dimensional data. This type of Decision Diagram is extremely useful for re-using intermediate patterns during computation. / Secondly, we study the problem of mining patterns in sequential databases. Here, we introduce a new structure called the Sequence Binary Decision Diagram, which can be used for mining frequent subsequences. We show that our technique is competitive with the state of the art and identify situations where it is superior. / Thirdly, we show how Weighted Zero-suppressed Binary Decision Diagrams can be used for discovering new and complex types of patterns. We introduce new types of highly expressive patterns for capturing contrasts, which express disjunctions of attribute values. Moreover, to investigate the usefulness of disjunctive patterns for knowledge discovery, we employ a statistical methodology for testing their significance, and study their use for solving classification problems. Our findings show that classifiers based on significant disjunctive patterns can be more robust than those which are only based on simple patterns. / Finally, we introduce patterns for capturing second-order differences between two groups of classes, which can provide useful insights for human experts. Again, we show how binary decision diagrams can be deployed for efficiently discovering this type of knowledge. / In summary, we demonstrate that Binary Decision Diagrams, are a powerful and scalable tool in pattern mining. We believe their use is very promising for a range of current and future tasks in the data mining context.

High resolution observations have been made of a number of southern Cepheids to make an observational and theoretical study of Cepheid variables using radial velocities. The stars studied were part of a long term programme to observe southern variable stars, from which a valuable database of radial velocities gathered over a long period were available. Sixteen échelle spectrograph orders in the wavelength region 5400 - 8600Å were used, which included a number of absorption lines covering a range of species and excitation potentials. The line bisector technique was used to measure stellar and telluric lines and to obtain radial velocities. To improve the precision of the radial velocities we used telluric lines to calibrate the observations to a common reference frame. The radial velocities have a precision of ~300ms⁻¹ allowing the detection of velocity differences of ~1 kms⁻¹ with confidence. The radial velocity data obtained at Mount John University Observatory (MJUO) was combined with data from various sources to determine the orbits of any Cepheids exhibiting orbital motion. The various orbital parameters were determined for a number of systems and where radial velocities for the companions exist, some estimate of the mass was made. The precision of the radial velocities obtained from MJUO also allowed us to search for line level effects for a number of species among the Cepheid spectra. A number of IAU standard stars were observed to calibrate the radial velocities obtained at MJUO to the IAU standard scale. The radial velocities from MJUO were found not to differ significantly from the IAU values. Binary Cepheids are particularly useful in the determination of Cepheid masses, which are still an active topic for astronomical research. The value of the MJUO data was that it provided a consistent set of data against which other sources of data could be compared. For 8 of the Cepheids new or improved orbital solutions were found. They are Y Car, YZ Car, AX Cir, BP Cir, S Mus, V636 Sco, V350 Sgr, W Sgr and T Mon. Of these 8 systems, 3 had radial velocities for their respective companions which allowed the determination of the mass of the Cepheids. Masses were determined for the 9 day Cepheid S Mus (6.0±0.4M⊙), the double mode Cepheid Y Car (4.5±1.8 M⊙) and the 5 day Cepheid V350 Sgr (6.0±0.9 M⊙). New results presented here include the first orbital solution for the binary Cepheid AX Cir, a completely revised orbital solution for the binary Cepheid YZ Car which established its eccentricity, and orbital motion. The binary Cepheid BP Cir however was found to require a new pulsation period of 2.39819d to fit the observed pulsational velocities. Observations of the suspected binary Y Oph show it to be an unusual Cepheid with no evidence of binarity (~0.5 kms⁻¹) in our data. Finally, the 5 day Cepheid W Sgr was observed to have the lowest orbital amplitude measured. We discussed the line level effects found in our observations, where a number of spectral lines were observed to show departures from the Fei velocity curve. Line level effects were observed in H⍺, CaⅡ, BaⅡ, FeⅡ, SiⅠ and SiⅡ. Most of the Cepheids were observed to show the same progression of line level effects, with the best example being the bright Cepheid β Dor. The SiⅡ velocities indicate that these lines have the lowest velocity amplitude and form deeper in the atmosphere than the FeⅠ, where as the CaⅡ and H⍺ lines were all observed to have much greater velocity amplitudes with the peak of these velocity curves occurring later, in pulsational phase. These observations are consistent with the lines forming at different depths as a density wave propagates through the atmosphere. X Sgr is peculiar due to its interesting spectra which at certain phases show line doubling and at most other phases the lines were asymmetric. These observations are interpreted to support the idea that X Sgr has strong shock waves present and that X Sgr has greater atmospheric transparency in the spectral region near 6000Å. We also present the results of dynamical modelling of a pulsating Cepheid. Using a non-linear radiative hydrodynamic code developed by A. Fokin, we have modelled two Cepheids, AX Cir and YZ Car. These models have then been compared with the observations obtained here. After extensive modelling using the latest OP opacities, it has been determined that the Cepheid AX Cir can be modelled using parameters L = 2050 L⊙, M = 4.8 M⊙ and Teff = 5900K. The model reproduced the observed stellar characteristics, such as the photometric amplitude and pulsational period. Comparison between the observations and the model for the selected spectral lines, FeⅠ 5576Å, SiⅡ 6347Å, BaⅡ 5853Å and CaⅡ 8542Å show good agreement with similar amplitudes and velocity curves. With no strong shock waves being produced by the model, the observed line level effects can be explained by a density wave. The 18 day Cepheid YZ Car was chosen to explore the capabilities of the radiative hydrodynamic code for a long period Cepheid. The best model developed that reproduced the observed stellar characteristics had parameters L = 9350 L⊙, M = 7.7 M⊙ and Teff = 5590K. The period was 18.314 days and the bolometric light curve agreed well with the observed visual light curve. Comparison of the theoretical and observed radial velocities showed good agreement.

Thesis (M.Sc.) - Carleton University, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 49-50). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, 1921. / Published also without thesis note.