RESEARCH

Penn State University
CReSIS Undergraduate Research Student
Department of Geology
Mentor: Dr. Sridhar Anandakrishnan
Monitoring Glacial Advance and Retreat of the Skaftafellsjökull Glacier, Iceland
Team Webpage Link

Team Abstract:
Visual documentation of glaciers can provide daily, seasonal, and yearly statistics concerning their advance and retreat, as well as contribute to historical record. Recognizing how glaciers change will improve glacier models, which leads to a better understanding of climate and ice-sheet interactions. Obtaining frequent images of glaciers can be difficult since they are often located in remote locations with rugged terrain and harsh weather conditions. Access can be arduous even during warm weather months. To overcome this obstacle, we propose building an autonomous imaging device that is powered by solar panels and can withstand the harsh weather. The imaging device will have the ability to capture images of the glacier at specified times, store them for uploading, and send them over a radio link to an Internet access point. Then they will be sent back to Penn State for analysis and display at the Earth and Mineral Sciences Museum. The autonomous imaging system will contain a high-resolution digital camera, a low power Linux computer, used for the command and control of the camera, and a radio to communicate with the Internet access point. The system will be accommodated in an all-weather case designed specifically for this application.

Elizabeth City State University
Undergraduate Research Student
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
Mentor: Dr. Eric Akers
The Installation of a Condor Super Computing Pool
Team Webpage Link

Team Abstract:
The international polar year was designed to study and better understand the current state of the climatic changes to the world’s ice sheets. For the last few decades, there have been automated weather stations and satellites in geo-synchronous orbit that created data sets. Today, numerous amounts of data are unexplored due to insufficient funding and the scarcity of resources. For this reason, the polar grid concept was proposed to delegate the analysis of the existing data sets.

The goal of the Elizabeth City State University’s Polar Grid Team was to construct a model network to serve as a base for a super computing pool. The super computing pool will be constructed on the university’s campus and linked to the overall polar grid system. Numerous Software and protocols were researched that are currently in use at other institutions around the nation. From the possible protocols, the condor software was chosen. Condor was created and developed at the University of Wisconsin because of easier usage and its willingness for expansion.

An eighteen node computing pool was constructed and tested within Dixon Hall's second floor lab using Condor. This pool was comprised of seventeen desk-tops running on a Windows NT platform, with the pool's mater housed in Lane hall acting as a Linux based server.

The University of Kansas
CReSIS Undergraduate Intern
Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering
Mentors: Dr. Arvin Agah and Christopher Gifford
Modeling and Simulation of the Seismic TETwalker Concept
Team Webpage Link

Team Abstract:
The objective of this project was to adapt the design of a robot that was originally created at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center called the TETwalker, in a computer simulation software program to demonstrate the collection of seismic data of ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland. We will take their design and adapt it for seismic data collection by placing seismic sensors (geophones) in each ground node of the tetrahedral structure, or in the center node for deployment. Seismic methods are analyzed in order to determine which design could possibly be more efficient and reliable in polar environments in terms of geophone deployment and environmental characteristics.

Elizabeth City State University
Undergraduate Research Student
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
Mentors: Professor Christopher Edwards
Undergraduate Research Office Network Redesign
Team Webpage Link

Team Abstract:
Fifteen years ago, the Undergraduate Research Computer Lab located in115 Lester Hall consisted of daisy chained Apple Macintosh computer network. At that time research mentors thought if students are going to work on research projects during the spring and fall semesters not just during the summer research program, specific software and hardware to support the programs goals must be acquired and implemented.
The solution was to install SGI UNIX hosts along with a suite of UNIX and Macintosh business applications and tools that students can use to explore two and three dimensional computer based simulations when collecting research data, creating research papers, and using academic software to enhance their research skills.
Over the past fourteen years, the Undergraduate Research Computer Lab has expanded from a single LAN into three segmented TCP/IP star based LANs tied together via the ECSU backbone which consists of managed switches that extend into each campus building d-marc. Two of the LANs are located in Lester Hall room 115 and 116 and the third LAN is located in Dixon Hall in room 216. Each LAN consists of a mixture of 15 UNX, 28 Macintosh, 40 Windows PCs, eight printers, and one video teleconference host. Within Lester Hall room 116 two IBM Windows 2003 server hosts are used as web servers, nia.ecsu.edu and cerser.ecsu.edu, for the Undergraduate Research Program to communicate with its business partners, mentors, and researches. Also located within room 115 is a Macintosh G4 OS X server used as a Primary Domain Controller for 23 Macintosh G3 hosts. Also, in the third office located in Dixon Hall, room 216, is one Tera Scan UNIX server which is used to download satellite images from a NASA satellite for analysis by students in the Undergraduate Research Remote Sensing Education program. Within each office hosts communicate with one another and the public using two transmission mediums, Ethernet Category 5e and wireless 802.11b/g adapters.

The vision for the project is for the network team to wipe the slate clean and redesign the network based on the University of North Carolina Academic Computing Model. The network team goal for the 2006-2007 research programs is to take a fresh look at the Undergraduate Research Computer Lab network to make fully functional and secure.

The University of Kansas
CReSIS Undergraduate Intern
Depeartment of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering
Mentors: Dr. Sivaprasad Gogineni and Dr. Arvin Agah
The Development and Assimilation of Robots Using a 3d Animation Program for the Antarctic and Greenland Coast to Help Detect Global Warming
Team Webpage Link

Team Abstract:
Using simulation to test robot formation and shape change is beneficial in terms of time and money. This paper discusses robot model design and testing in the Webots mobile robot simulation software package. The motivation for this research involves forming evenly-spaced grid patterns with a team of mobile robots for future use in seismic imaging. A team of robots is incrementally designed and tested by incorporating sensors and altering each robot's controller. Challenges encountered throughout the process as well as design issues are discussed. Attention was given for each robot to travel efficiently from one location to the next. Simulation images of robot details and shape transformations are displayed as results of this research.

Elizabeth City State University
Undergraduate Research Student
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
Mentors: Professor Christopher Edwards
Using Passive Network Discovery to Fingerprint Vulnerabilities within Ethernet Broadcast Frames
Team Webpage Link

Team Abstract:
This paper examines how open source embedded network tools were used to perform persistent internal audits of Ethernet Local Area Network broadcast traffic. The initial requirements to define the project phases were developed based on the analysis of each open source learning stage. Open Source UNIX version, Ubuntu, was selected as the platform to prototype because of its ease of use and usable business productivity, internet, drawing and graphics applications. To understand why hosts within the ONR LAB were experiencing a decrease in system performance and transmission speed. A Passive Network Discovery of Ethernet Broadcast Frames was captured and analyzed to determine if Local Area Network traffic between the local and foreign hosts is malicious or valid. The identification of remote active nodes and their system information was collected to build a resource map of all remote hosts requesting services from hosts within the ONR Lab and listing of local hosts listening ports and services running on those ports. The passive analysis approach was selected by the ONR UNIX Network Administration Team, because the collection of active LAN traffic would be not impact ECSU’s LAN/WAN assets. Moreover, this paper goal is to show that persistent packet monitoring of Ethernet traffic can identify weaknesses that reduce LAN performance and possibly harm valuable assets used to support major and/or general support systems.

Please feel free to contact me at: blcarmichael@mail.ecsu.edu