AN INVESTIGATION OF THE MANDELBROT SET THROUGH THE DERIVATIVE TEST

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John D. Melville and Dr. Robert P. Burton, Computer Science Considered the most complex object in mathematics, the Mandelbrot set has dazzled and mystified mathematicians and the public for more than twenty years. Unfortunately little progress has been made in understanding the phenomena that generate the Mandelbrot set. Recent discoveries by the Hyperspace Research Group […]

“The Lion and the Mouse” Character Animation Study Proposal

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Keri Rainock and Professor Kelly Loosli, Animation Program in the Visual Arts Animation is a powerful and diverse art form that can make use of any genre and create magic. Character Animation is the process of bringing a character to life. This process transcends any number of media- from 2D hand drawn images to clay animation […]

Four-dimensional Data Navigation

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Daniel Wilding and Dr. Robert Burton, Computer Science Department In almost any field of research or analysis, understanding numerical data is vital. Although there are many commonly-used methods of presenting data with three variables, there are no commonly available methods for presenting data of four or more variables, a seemingly arbitrary limitation. Virtually any field […]

Optimal Path Scheduling of Tracking Systems

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Nghia Tran and Dr. Sean Warnick, Computer Science Department We studied the path control problem, which differ from reference tracking problems in its optimality measure. In general, tracking problems employs the point-wise distance measure, while the path control problem uses the alignment distance. The former is a simple distance measure between particular parameterization of the […]

Content-Based Classification and Retrieval of Digital Images

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Ethan Garofolo and Dr. William Barrett, Computer Science Purpose As digital image libraries continue to grow in size, classifying the content of such a large volume continues to grow in difficulty. At present, human users catalog images by giving descriptive filenames and/or labels in image header files, hoping that the given names will make sense […]

A REGION ORIENTED PARALLEL POLYGON SCAN-CONVERSION ALGORITHM FOR RASTER GRAPHICS

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Minglei Xua and Dr. Robert P. Burton, Computer Science The filling of general polygons, the so-called polygon scan-conversion problem, shows up in many areas of computer graphics, especially in hidden surface removal and ray tracing. The classical polygon scanconversion algorithm, the scan line algorithm, is characterized by two data structures commonly called the Edge Table […]

Structure and Properties of Dynamical Structure Functions Reconstruction of Genetic Networks Using Gene Silencing and Overexpression Methods

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Russell Howes and Dr. Sean Warnick, Computer Science Department Network structure–the presence and absence of ‘connections’ among different variables in a dynamical system–is important in the identification and control of complex systems. Discovering structure from data can be difficult, and many current identification methods either concern themselves only with dynamic behavior (response of the system […]

Optimization Analysis of the Needleman-Wunsch Algorithm

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Mark Kendell Clement and Dr. Sean Warnick, Computer Science The Needleman-Wunsch algorithm is a classic example of dynamic programming – a technique that solves large problems by breaking them down into small problems. The simplest problems are solved first and are then used to solve the larger problems. Over this past year, I studied the […]

Monster In the Woods—Adventures in Puppetry

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Brian R. McNair and Professor Kelly Loosli, Animation It was supposed to be simple, a quick project, inexpensive, from the gut, a chance to experience a puppet production from beginning to end, learn from every step, and come away with an intricate knowledge of film, puppetry, green screen, and post production; a project meant to last […]

Speculative Evaluation in Particle Swarm Optimization

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Matthew Gardner and Dr. Kevin Seppi, Computer Science Optimization problems are ubiquitous in our modern world. Businesses such as Google need to decide where to place ads, scientists need to fit models to data, and airlines need to schedule their flights. All of these problems are optimization problems, and optimization techniques can be used to […]