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Screencrayons: Using Screen Captures For Annotation And Research, Trent Alan Taufer Dec 2006

Screencrayons: Using Screen Captures For Annotation And Research, Trent Alan Taufer

Theses and Dissertations

In a world full of digital information we should be able to easily collect, organize, annotate, and leverage information from many different sources. This should be easy to do and not interrupt our normal workflow. A system to support information collection and organization should be user-friendly and as unobtrusive as possible, while still allowing for flexible and intelligent annotation. It should also be able to leverage the inherent information content of a collection of annotated information. We present a system that will demonstrate how these ideas can come together to make information collection easier and more productive. The system facilitates …


Analysis Of Near-Infrared Phase Effects On Biometric Iris Data, Brady Roos Stevenson Dec 2006

Analysis Of Near-Infrared Phase Effects On Biometric Iris Data, Brady Roos Stevenson

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research is to ascertain potential iris scan data variations from near infrared waves derived from fluorescent illumination. Prior studies of iris data variances from infrared wave interference of halogen, incandescent, and sunlight with iris cameras suggest that similar changes may exist under near infrared wavelengths from fluorescent light. The concern is that the fluorescent energy emission may interfere with the near infrared detection of an iris camera. An iris camera is used to measure human eye characteristics known as biometrics. If such infrared emission is statistically significant, then it can alter the validity of the iris …


Generating Paraphrases With Greater Variation Using Syntactic Phrases, Rebecca Diane Madsen Dec 2006

Generating Paraphrases With Greater Variation Using Syntactic Phrases, Rebecca Diane Madsen

Theses and Dissertations

Given a sentence, a paraphrase generation system produces a sentence that says the same thing but usually in a different way. The paraphrase generation problem can be formulated in the machine translation paradigm; instead of translation of English to a foreign language, the system translates an English sentence (for example) to another English sentence. Quirk et al. (2004) demonstrated this approach to generate almost 90% acceptable paraphrases. However, most of the sentences had little variation from the original input sentence. Leveraging syntactic information, this thesis project presents an approach that successfully generated more varied paraphrase sentences than the approach of …


Contour Encoded Compression And Transmission, Christopher B. Nelson Nov 2006

Contour Encoded Compression And Transmission, Christopher B. Nelson

Theses and Dissertations

As the need for digital libraries, especially genealogical libraries, continues to rise, the need for efficient document image compression is becoming more and more apparent. In addition, because many digital library users access them from dial-up Internet connections, efficient strategies for compression and progressive transmission become essential to facilitate browsing operations. To meet this need, we developed a novel method for representing document images in a parametric form. Like other “hybrid" image compression operations, the Contour Encoded Compression and Transmission (CECAT) system first divides images into foreground and background layers. The emphasis of this thesis revolves around improving the compression …


A Performance Evaluation Of Dynamic Transport Switching For Multi-Transport Devices, Lei Wang Nov 2006

A Performance Evaluation Of Dynamic Transport Switching For Multi-Transport Devices, Lei Wang

Theses and Dissertations

Multi-transport devices are becoming more common, but sophisticated software is needed to fully realize the advantages of these devices. In this paper, we examine the performance of dynamic transport switching, which selects the best available transport for communication between two devices. We simulate transport switching within the Quality of Transport (QoT) architecture and show that it can effectively mitigate the effects of congestion and interference for connections between two multi-transport devices. We then evaluate dynamic transport switching overhead to characterize its effect on application throughput. Based on these insights, we identify several limitations of the QoT architecture and present solutions …


Eliminating Redundant And Less-Informative Rss News Articles Based On Word Similarity And A Fuzzy Equivalence Relation, Ian Garcia, Yiu-Kai D. Ng Nov 2006

Eliminating Redundant And Less-Informative Rss News Articles Based On Word Similarity And A Fuzzy Equivalence Relation, Ian Garcia, Yiu-Kai D. Ng

Faculty Publications

The Internet has marked this era as the information age. There is no precedent in the amazing amount of information, especially network news, that can be accessed by Internet users these days. As a result, the problem of seeking information in online news articles is not the lack of them but being overwhelmed by them. This brings huge challenges in processing online news feeds, e.g., how to determine which news article is important, how to determine the quality of each news article, and how to filter irrelevant and redundant information. In this paper, we propose a method for filtering redundant …


Digital Receipts: A System To Detect The Compromise Of Digital Certificates, Nathaniel Allen Seeley Nov 2006

Digital Receipts: A System To Detect The Compromise Of Digital Certificates, Nathaniel Allen Seeley

Theses and Dissertations

The ease of copying digital materials creates difficulty in detecting the theft of digital certificates. Uneducated users frequently fail to protect their digital certificate keys by not encrypting them, storing them in insecure places, and using them unwisely. In addition, there is no way to prove that protocols involving certificates are completely secure. This thesis introduces a system to ameliorate these problems by detecting the compromise of digital certificates. It leverages dual logging messages sent via side channels to a trusted third party. This third party correlates these messages and automatically detects when an imposter presents a certificate based on …


On-Line Electronic Document Collaboration And Annotation, Trev R. Harmon Nov 2006

On-Line Electronic Document Collaboration And Annotation, Trev R. Harmon

Theses and Dissertations

The Internet provides a powerful medium for communication and collaboration. The ability one has to connect and interact with web-based tools from anywhere in the world makes the Internet ideal for such tasks. However, the lack of native tools can be a hindrance when deploying collaborative initiatives, as many current projects require specialized software in order to operate. This thesis demonstrates, with the comparably recent advances in browser technology and Document Object Model (DOM) implementation, a web-based collaborative annotation system can be developed that can be accessed by a user through a standards-compliant web browser. Such a system, demonstrated to …


Learning In Short-Time Horizons With Measurable Costs, Patrick Bowen Mullen Nov 2006

Learning In Short-Time Horizons With Measurable Costs, Patrick Bowen Mullen

Theses and Dissertations

Dynamic pricing is a difficult problem for machine learning. The environment is noisy, dynamic and has a measurable cost associated with exploration that necessitates that learning be done in short-time horizons. These short-time horizons force the learning algorithms to make pricing decisions based on scarce data. In this work, various machine learning algorithms are compared in the context of dynamic pricing. These algorithms include the Kalman filter, artificial neural networks, particle swarm optimization and genetic algorithms. The majority of these algorithms have been modified to handle the pricing problem. The results show that these adaptations allow the learning algorithms to …


An Improved Distance Heuristic Function For Directed Software Model Checking, Eric G. Mercer, Neha Rungta Nov 2006

An Improved Distance Heuristic Function For Directed Software Model Checking, Eric G. Mercer, Neha Rungta

Faculty Publications

State exploration in directed software model checking is guided using a heuristic function to move states near errors to the front of the search queue. Distance heuristic functions rank states based on the number of transitions needed to move the current program state into an error location. Lack of calling context information causes the heuristic function to underestimate the true distance to the error; however, inlining functions at call sites in the control flow graph to capture calling context leads to an exponential growth in the computation. This paper presents a new algorithm that implicitly inlines functions at call sites …


Effects Of Gap Open And Gap Extension Penalties, Hyrum Carroll, Mark J. Clement, Perry Ridge, Quinn O. Snell Oct 2006

Effects Of Gap Open And Gap Extension Penalties, Hyrum Carroll, Mark J. Clement, Perry Ridge, Quinn O. Snell

Faculty Publications

Fundamental to multiple sequence alignment algorithms is modeling insertions and deletions (gaps). The most prevalent model is to use gap open and gap extension penalties. While gap open and gap extension penalties are well understood conceptually, their effects on multiple sequence alignment, and consequently on phylogeny scores are not as well understood. We use exhaustive phylogeny searching to explore the effects of varying the gap open and gap extension penalties for three nuclear ribosomal data sets. Particular attention is given to optimal phylogeny scores for 200 alignments of a range of gap open and gap extension penalties and their respective …


Large Grain Size Stochastic Optimization Alignment, Hyrum Carroll, Mark J. Clement, Perry Ridge, Dan Sneddon, Quinn O. Snell Oct 2006

Large Grain Size Stochastic Optimization Alignment, Hyrum Carroll, Mark J. Clement, Perry Ridge, Dan Sneddon, Quinn O. Snell

Faculty Publications

DNA sequence alignment is a critical step in identifying homology between organisms. The most widely used alignment program, ClustalW, is known to suffer from the local minima problem, where suboptimal guide trees produce incorrect gap insertions. The optimization alignment approach, has been shown to be effective in combining alignment and phylogenetic search in order to avoid the problems associated with poor guide trees. The optimization alignment algorithm operates at a small grain size, aligning each tree found, wasting time producing multiple sequence alignments for suboptimal trees. This research develops and analyzes a large grain size algorithm for optimization alignment that …


Pharmacogenomics: Analyzing Snps In The Cyp2d6 Gene Using Amino Acid Properties, Wesley A. Beckstead, Mark J. Clement, Mark Ebbert, David Mcclellan, Timothy O'Connor Oct 2006

Pharmacogenomics: Analyzing Snps In The Cyp2d6 Gene Using Amino Acid Properties, Wesley A. Beckstead, Mark J. Clement, Mark Ebbert, David Mcclellan, Timothy O'Connor

Faculty Publications

Each year people suffer from complications of adverse drug reactions, but with pharmacogenomics there is hope to prevent thousands of these people from suffering or dying needlessly. The CYP2D6 gene is responsible for metabolizing a large portion of these drugs. Because of the gene’s importance, various approaches have been taken to analyze CYP2D6 and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) throughout its sequence. This study introduces a novel method to analyze the effects of SNPs on encoded protein complexes by focusing on the biochemical properties of each nonsynonymous substitution using the program TreeSAAP. We apply this technique to SNPs found in the …


Improving Error Discovery Using Guided Model Checking, Neha Shyam Rungta Sep 2006

Improving Error Discovery Using Guided Model Checking, Neha Shyam Rungta

Theses and Dissertations

State exploration in directed software model checking is guided using a heuristic function to move states near errors to the front of the search queue. Distance heuristic functions rank states based on the number of transitions needed to move the current program state into an error location. Lack of calling context information causes the heuristic function to underestimate the true distance to the error; however, inlining functions at call sites in the control flow graph to capture calling context leads to exponential growth in the computation. This paper presents a new algorithm that implicitly inlines functions at call sites to …


Digital Roots Of Human Relations: Enabling Technologies For Family History And Genealogical Research, William A. Barrett Sep 2006

Digital Roots Of Human Relations: Enabling Technologies For Family History And Genealogical Research, William A. Barrett

Faculty Publications

Flowing out of a Computer Science research lab on the third floor of the Talmage Building is a wellspring of enabling technologies for family history and genealogical research. Here, computer science students, working under the direction of Dr. Tom Sederberg and Dr. Bill Barrett are creating software tools to help individuals with their family history research so that people everywhere can seek out their ancestors and perform vital ordinances in their behalf, as desired. These tools include visualization of an entire pedigree on a single (large) sheet of paper, the ability to automatically calculate if and how two or more …


Vision-Based Rendering: Using Computational Stereo To Actualize Ibr View Synthesis, Kevin L. Steele Aug 2006

Vision-Based Rendering: Using Computational Stereo To Actualize Ibr View Synthesis, Kevin L. Steele

Theses and Dissertations

Computer graphics imagery (CGI) has enabled many useful applications in training, defense, and entertainment. One such application, CGI simulation, is a real-time system that allows users to navigate through and interact with a virtual rendition of an existing environment. Creating such systems is difficult, but particularly burdensome is the task of designing and constructing the internal representation of the simulation content. Authoring this content on a computer usually requires great expertise and many man-hours of labor. Computational stereo and image-based rendering offer possibilities to automatically create simulation content without user assistance. However, these technologies have largely been limited to creating …


A Constructive Incremental Learning Algorithm For Binary Classification Tasks, Christophe G. Giraud-Carrier, Tony R. Martinez Jul 2006

A Constructive Incremental Learning Algorithm For Binary Classification Tasks, Christophe G. Giraud-Carrier, Tony R. Martinez

Faculty Publications

This paper presents i-AA1*, a constructive, incremental learning algorithm for a special class of weightless, self-organizing networks. In i-AA1*, learning consists of adapting the nodes’ functions and the network’s overall topology as each new training pattern is presented. Provided the training data is consistent, computational complexity is low and prior factual knowledge may be used to “prime” the network and improve its predictive accuracy. Empirical generalization results on both toy problems and more realistic tasks demonstrate promise.


Vectorization Of Raster Images Using B-Spline Surfaces, Curtis A. Armstrong Jul 2006

Vectorization Of Raster Images Using B-Spline Surfaces, Curtis A. Armstrong

Theses and Dissertations

A system has been developed for converting raster images into vector images. Raster images are made of pixels, while vector images are made of smoother shapes. The image is first segmented, and the segments are layered. The boundary of each segment is approximated with a periodic B-Spline curve. This curve is then used to create a B-Spline surface to approximate the interior of the segment. The algorithm fits each B-Spline to the colors of the image using least-squares approximation. The color and shape of each B-Spline surface are extrapolated into regions behind other segments. The result is a vector image …


Characterizing Dynamic Power And Data Rate Policies For Wirelessusb Networks, Jeffrey L. Barlow Jul 2006

Characterizing Dynamic Power And Data Rate Policies For Wirelessusb Networks, Jeffrey L. Barlow

Theses and Dissertations

Wireless communication is increasingly ubiquitous. However, mobility depends intrinsically on battery life. Power can be conserved at the Media Access Control (MAC) layer by intelligently adjusting transmission power level and data rate encoding. WirelessUSB is a low-power, low-latency wireless technology developed by Cypress Semiconductor Corporation for human interface devices such as keyboards and mice. WirelessUSB devices conserve power by employing power-efficient hardware, dynamic power level adjustment and dynamic data rate adjustment. We characterize the effects on power consumption of dynamically adjusting node power using two dynamic power negotiation techniques as well as two reactive techniques. We also characterize the effects …


Particle Swarm Optimization In Dynamic Pricing, Christopher K. Monson, Patrick B. Mullen, Kevin Seppi, Sean C. Warnick Jul 2006

Particle Swarm Optimization In Dynamic Pricing, Christopher K. Monson, Patrick B. Mullen, Kevin Seppi, Sean C. Warnick

Faculty Publications

Dynamic pricing is a real-time machine learning problem with scarce prior data and a concrete learning cost. While the Kalman Filter can be employed to track hidden demand parameters and extensions to it can facilitate exploration for faster learning, the exploratory nature of Particle Swarm Optimization makes it a natural choice for the dynamic pricing problem. We compare both the Kalman Filter and existing particle swarm adaptations for dynamic and/or noisy environments with a novel approach that time-decays each particle's previous best value; this new strategy provides more graceful and effective transitions between exploitation and exploration, a necessity in the …


Cooperation-Based Clustering For Profit-Maximizing Organizational Design, Christophe G. Giraud-Carrier, Kevin Seppi, Nghia Tran, Sean C. Warnick Jul 2006

Cooperation-Based Clustering For Profit-Maximizing Organizational Design, Christophe G. Giraud-Carrier, Kevin Seppi, Nghia Tran, Sean C. Warnick

Faculty Publications

This paper shows how the notion of value of cooperation, a measure of the percentage of a firm’s profits due strictly to the cooperative effects among the goods it sells, can be used to analyze the relative economic advantage afforded by various organizational structures. The value of cooperation is computed from transactions data by solving a regression problem to fit the parameters of the consumer demand function, and then simulating the resulting profit-maximizing dynamic system under various organizational structures. A hierarchical agglomerative clustering algorithm can be applied to reveal the optimal organizational substructure.


A Microformatted Registry Alternative, Thomas R. Warne Jul 2006

A Microformatted Registry Alternative, Thomas R. Warne

Theses and Dissertations

To effectively use Web services, providers and consumers need to be connected by a registry. Several registry solutions exist today, including UDDI and WSIL. Also, many organizations simply use Web pages to list available Web services and their descriptions. This research describes a microformat for representing Web service description documents. These microformatted documents can be converted back to the original format for use by machines. They can also contain additional information, making them more useful to people. A registry, allowing indexing and searching of microformatted service descriptions, is also described. The benefits of this solution include: using existing standards; allowing …


Local Url Resolution Protocol, Joseph Clark Ekstrom Jul 2006

Local Url Resolution Protocol, Joseph Clark Ekstrom

Theses and Dissertations

DOGMA is a resource management system designed to create a supercomputer like system from unused desktop computers. Scalability is one of the challenges faced by DOGMA because it uses a strict client/server architecture. Distributing large files over a client server architecture is problematic since available network bandwidth is limited. The Local URL Resolution Protocol(LURP) addresses this problem for environments where there are high node densities. LURP implements a locality aware Peer-to-Peer file distribution model to increase the speed of file distribution while reducing the overall network congestion.


Jumpstarting Phylogenetic Searches, Jesse Lewis Mecham Jul 2006

Jumpstarting Phylogenetic Searches, Jesse Lewis Mecham

Theses and Dissertations

Phylogenetic analysis is a central tool in studies of comparative genomics. When a new region of DNA is isolated and sequenced, researchers are often forced to throw away months of computation on an existing phylogeny of homologous sequences in order to incorporate this new sequence. The previously constructed trees are often discarded, and the researcher begins the search again from scratch. The jumpstarting algorithm uses trees from the prior search as a starting point for a new phylogenetic search. This technique drastically decreases search time for large data sets. This kind of analysis is necessary as researchers analyze tree of …


Improving Record Linkage Through Pedigrees, Burdette N. Pixton Jul 2006

Improving Record Linkage Through Pedigrees, Burdette N. Pixton

Theses and Dissertations

Record linkage, in a genealogical context, is the process of identifying individuals from multiple sources which refer to the same real-world entity. Current solutions focus on the individuals in question and on complex rules developed by human experts. Genealogical databases are highly-structured with relationships existing between the individuals and other instances. These relationships can be utilized and human involvement greatly minimized by using a filtered structured neural network. These neural networks, using traditional back-propagation methods, are biased in a way to make the network human readable. The results show an increase in precision and recall when pedigree data is available …


Markov Approximations: The Characterization Of Undermodeling Errors, Lei Lei Jul 2006

Markov Approximations: The Characterization Of Undermodeling Errors, Lei Lei

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is concerned with characterizing the quality of Hidden Markov modeling when learning from limited data. It introduces a new perspective on different sources of errors to describe the impact of undermodeling. Our view is that modeling errors can be decomposed into two primary sources of errors: the approximation error and the estimation error. This thesis takes a first step towards exploring the approximation error of low order HMMs that best approximate the true system of a HMM. We introduce the notion minimality and show that best approximations of the true system with complexity greater or equal to the …


Reinforcement Programming: A New Technique In Automatic Algorithm Development, Spencer Kesson White Jul 2006

Reinforcement Programming: A New Technique In Automatic Algorithm Development, Spencer Kesson White

Theses and Dissertations

Reinforcement programming is a new technique for using computers to automatically create algorithms. By using the principles of reinforcement learning and Q-learning, reinforcement programming learns programs based on example inputs and outputs. State representations and actions are provided. A transition function and rewards are defined. The system is trained until the system converges on a policy that can be directly implemented as a computer program. The efficiency of reinforcement programming is demonstrated by comparing a generalized in-place iterative sort learned through genetic programming to a sorting algorithm of the same type created using reinforcement programming. The sort learned by reinforcement …


Preparing More Effective Liquid State Machines Using Hebbian Learning, David Norton, Dan A. Ventura Jul 2006

Preparing More Effective Liquid State Machines Using Hebbian Learning, David Norton, Dan A. Ventura

Faculty Publications

In Liquid State Machines, separation is a critical attribute of the liquid—which is traditionally not trained. The effects of using Hebbian learning in the liquid to improve separation are investigated in this paper. When presented with random input, Hebbian learning does not dramatically change separation. However, Hebbian learning does improve separation when presented with real-world speech data.


Learning Quantum Operators From Quantum State Pairs, Neil Toronto, Dan A. Ventura Jul 2006

Learning Quantum Operators From Quantum State Pairs, Neil Toronto, Dan A. Ventura

Faculty Publications

Developing quantum algorithms has proven to be very difficult. In this paper, the concept of using classical machine learning techniques to derive quantum operators from examples is presented. A gradient descent algorithm for learning unitary operators from quantum state pairs is developed as a starting point to aid in developing quantum algorithms. The algorithm is used to learn the quantum Fourier transform, an underconstrained two-bit function, and Grover’s iterate.


Spatiotemporal Pattern Recognition Via Liquid State Machines, Eric Goodman, Dan A. Ventura Jul 2006

Spatiotemporal Pattern Recognition Via Liquid State Machines, Eric Goodman, Dan A. Ventura

Faculty Publications

The applicability of complex networks of spiking neurons as a general purpose machine learning technique remains open. Building on previous work using macroscopic exploration of the parameter space of an (artificial) neural microcircuit, we investigate the possibility of using a liquid state machine to solve two real-world problems: stockpile surveillance signal alignment and spoken phoneme recognition.