There are potential risks when individuals choose to share information on social media platforms such as Facebook. With over 2.20 billion active monthly users, Facebook has the largest collection of user information compared to other social media sites. Due to their large collection of data, Facebook has constantly received criticism for their data privacy policies. Facebook has constantly changed its privacy policies in the effort to protect itself and end users. However, the changes in privacy policy may not translate into users changing their privacy controls. The goal of Facebook privacy controls is to allow Facebook users to be in charge of their data privacy. The goal of this study was to determine if a gap between user perceived privacy and reality existed. If this gap existed we investigated to see if certain information about the user would have a relationship to their ability to implement their settings successfully. We gathered information of ASU college students such as: gender, field of study, political affiliations, leadership involvement, privacy settings and online behaviors. After collecting the data, we reviewed each participants' Facebook profiles to examine the existence of the gap between their privacy settings and information available as a stranger. We found that there existed a difference between their settings and reality and it was not related to any of the users' background information.

As computers become a more embedded aspect of daily life, the importance of communicating ideas in computing and technology to the general public has become increasingly apparent. One such growing technology is electronic voting. The feasibility of explaining electronic voting protocols was directly investigated through the generation of a presentation based on journal articles and papers identified by the investigator. Extensive use of analogy and visual aids were used to explain various cryptographic concepts. The presentation was then given to a classroom of ASU freshmen, followed by a feedback survey. A self-evaluation on the presentation methods is conducted, and a procedure for explaining subjects in computer science is proposed based on the researcher's personal process.

Modern curriculum requires students to purchase expensive handheld calculators, which has created a market with little competition or incentive for improvement. The purpose of this project was to create a competitive free alternative to be used outside the classroom for those who do not have the economic stability to purchase, for example, a TI-82, which costs approximately $100. Calculat3d is an Android application that matches the general-purpose functionality of the TI-82, including calculations, basic statistical functions, graphing, and creating programs. Additionally, a programming language and interpreter were created so programs can be written inside Calculat3d and be used alongside calculations, thus expanding the functionality of the calculator. Graphing functionality is also included in Calculat3d but expanded to three dimensions as opposed to the two-dimension limited TI calculator.

Agent Based modeling has been used in computer science to simulate complex phenomena. The introduction of Agent Based Models into the field of economics (Agent Based Computational Economics ACE) is not new, however work on making model environments simpler to design for individuals without a background in computer science or computer engineering is a constantly evolving topic. The issue is a trade off of how much is handled by the framework and how much control the modeler has, as well as what tools exist to allow the user to develop insights from the behavior of the model. The solutions looked at in this thesis are the construction of a simplified grammar for model construction, the design of an economic based library to assist in ACE modeling, and examples of how to construct interactive models.

\English is a programming language, a method of allowing programmers to write instructions such that a computer may understand and execute said instructions in the form of a program. Though many programming languages exist, this particular language is designed for ease of development and heavy optimizability in ways that no other programming language is. Building on the principles of Assembly level efficiency, referential integrity, and high order functionality, this language is able to produce extremely efficient code; meanwhile, programmatically defined English-based reusable syntax and a strong, static type system make \English easier to read and write than many existing programming languages. Its generalization of all language structures and components to operators leaves the language syntax open to project-specific syntactical structuring, making it more easily applicable in more cases. The thesis project requirements came in three parts: a compiler to compile \English code into NASM Assembly to produce a final program product; a standard library to define many of the basic operations of the language, including the creation of lists; and C translation library that would utilize \English properties to compile C code using the \English compiler. Though designed and partially coded, the compiler remains incomplete. The standard library, C translation library, and design of the language were completed. Additional tools regarding the language design and implementation were also created, including a Gedit syntax highlighting configuration file; usage documentation describing in a tutorial style the basic usage of the language; and more. Though the thesis project itself may be complete, the \English project will continue in order to produce a new language capable of the abilities possible with the design of this language.

Implementing a distributed algorithm is more complicated than implementing a non-distributed algorithm. This is because distributed systems involve coordination of different processes each of which has a partial view of the global system state. The only way to share information in a distributed system is by message passing. Task that are straightforward in a non-distributed system, like deciding on the value of a global system state, can be quite complicated to achieve in a distributed system [1]. On top of the difficulties caused by the distributed nature of the computations, distributed systems typically need to be able to operate normally even if some of the nodes in the system are faulty which further adds to the uncertainty that processes have about the global state. Many factors make the implementation of a distributed algorithms difficult. Design patterns [2] are useful in simplifying the development of general algorithms. A design pattern describes a high level solution to a common, abstract problem that many systems may face. Common structural, creational, and behavioral problems are identified and elegantly solved by design patterns. By identifying features that an algorithm uses, and framing each feature as one of the common problems that a specific design pattern solves, designing a robust implementation of an algorithm becomes more manageable. In this way, design patterns can aid the implementation of algorithms. Unfortunately, design patterns are typically not discussed when developing distributed algorithms. Because correctly developing a distributed algorithm is difficult, many papers (eg. [1], [3], [4]) focus on verifying the correctness of the developed algorithm. Papers that are more practical ([5], [6]) establish the correctness of their algorithm and that their algorithm is efficient enough to be practical. However, papers on distributed algorithms usually make little mention of design patterns. The goal of this work was to gain experience implementing distributed systems including learning the application of design patterns and the application of related technical topics. This was achieved by implementing a currently unpublished algorithm that is tentatively called Bakery Consensus. Bakery Consensus is a replicated state-machine protocol that can tolerate servers with Byzantine faults, but assumes non-faulty clients. The algorithm also establishes non-skipping timestamps for each operation completed by the replicated state-machine. The design of the structure, communication, and creation of the different system parts depended heavily upon the book Design Patterns [2]. After implementing the system, the success of the in implementing its various parts was based upon their ability to satisfy the SOLID [7] principles as well as their ability to establish low coupling and high cohesion [8]. The rest of this paper is organized as follows. We begin by providing background information about distributed algorithms, including replicated state-machine protocols and the Bakery Consensus algorithm. Section 3 gives a background on several design patterns and software engineering principles that were used in the development process. Section 4 discusses the well designed parts of the system that used design patterns, and how these design patterns were chosen. Section 5 discusses well designed system parts that relied upon other technical topics. Section 6 discusses system parts that need redesign. The conclusion summarizes what was accomplished by the implementation process and the lessons learned about design patterns for distributed algorithms.

To facilitate the development of the Semantic Web, we propose in this thesis a general automatic ontology-building algorithm which, given a pool of potential terms and a set of relationships to include in the ontology, can utilize information gathered from Google queries to build a full ontology for a certain domain. We utilized this ontology-building algorithm as part of a larger system to tag computer tutorials for three systems with different kinds of metadata, and index the tagged documents into a search engine. Our evaluation of the resultant search engine indicates that our automatic ontology-building algorithm is able to build relatively good-quality ontologies and utilize this ontology to effectively apply metadata to documents.

A primary goal in computer science is to develop autonomous systems. Usually, we provide computers with tasks and rules for completing those tasks, but what if we could extend this type of system to physical technology as well? In the field of programmable matter, researchers are tasked with developing synthetic materials that can change their physical properties \u2014 such as color, density, and even shape \u2014 based on predefined rules or continuous, autonomous collection of input. In this research, we are most interested in particles that can perform computations, bond with other particles, and move. In this paper, we provide a theoretical particle model that can be used to simulate the performance of such physical particle systems, as well as an algorithm to perform expansion, wherein these particles can be used to enclose spaces or even objects.

Dynamic languages like Java enjoy robust and powerful testing tools like JUnit and Cobertura. On the other hand, while there is no shortage of unit testing frameworks for C, the nature of C makes it difficult to make frameworks as powerful as those for other languages. In this paper, we describe ZTest, a testing framework that addresses some of these shortcomings in the C unit testing landscape. We also discuss results of its application to a medium-sized C project.

The central goal of this thesis is to develop a practical approach to validating the correctness of SSA forms. Since achieving this goal is very involved for a general program, we restrict our attention to simple programs. In particular, the programs we consider are loop-free and are comprised of simple assignments to scalar variables, as well as input and output statements. Even for such a simple program, a full formal treatment would be very involved, extending beyond the scope of an undergraduate honors thesis.