Engineering Commons^™

A Study Of Correlations Between The Definition And Application Of The Gene Ontology, Yuji Mo

Computer and Electronics Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

When using the Gene Ontology (GO), nucleotide and amino acid sequences are annotated by terms in a structured and controlled vocabulary organized into relational graphs. The usage of the vocabulary (GO terms) in the annotation of these sequences may diverge from the relations defined in the ontology. We measure the consistency of the use of GO terms by comparing GO's defined structure to the terms' application. To do this, we first use synthetic data with different characteristics to understand how these characteristics influence the correlation values determined by various similarity measures. Using these results as a baseline, we found that …

Powersearch: Augmenting Mobile Phone Search Through Personalization, Xiangyu Liu

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Cell phone has become a fundamental element of people's life. People use it to call each other, browse websites, send text messages, etc. Among all the functionalities, the most important and frequently used is the search functionality. Based on ComScore, in July 2008, Google was estimated to host 235 millions searches per day. However, unlike the search on desktop, the search on cell phone has one critical constrain: battery. Cell phone performing a normal Google search, the battery drains very fast. The reason is that when sending a query to and fetching the results from Google, cell phone keeps communicating …

The Value Of Government Mandated Location-Based Services In Emergencies In Australia, Anas Aloudat, Katina Michael, Roba Abbas, Mutaz M. Al-Debei

Dr. Mutaz M. Al-Debei

The adoption of mobile technologies for emergency management has the capacity to save lives. In Australia in February 2009, the Victorian Bushfires claimed 173 lives, the worst peace-time disaster in the nation’s history. The Australian government responded swiftly to the tragedy by going to tender for mobile applications that could be used during emergencies, such as mobile alerts and location services. These applications, which are becoming increasingly accurate with the evolution of positioning techniques, have the ability to deliver personalized information direct to the citizen during crises, complementing traditional broadcasting mediums like television and radio. Indeed governments have a responsibility …

Quantification Of Stochastic Uncertainty Propagation For Monte Carlo Depletion Methods In Reactor Analysis, Quentin Thomas Newell

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The Monte Carlo method provides powerful geometric modeling capabilities for large problem domains in 3-D; therefore, the Monte Carlo method is becoming popular for 3-D fuel depletion analyses to compute quantities of interest in spent nuclear fuel including isotopic compositions. The Monte Carlo approach has not been fully embraced due to unresolved issues concerning the effect of Monte Carlo uncertainties on the predicted results.

Use of the Monte Carlo method to solve the neutron transport equation introduces stochastic uncertainty in the computed fluxes. These fluxes are used to collapse cross sections, estimate power distributions, and deplete the fuel within depletion …

Stability And Classification Performance Of Feature Selection Techniques, Huanjing Wang, Taghi Khoshgoftaar, Qianhui Liang

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Feature selection techniques can be evaluated based on either model performance or the stability (robustness) of the technique. The ideal situation is to choose a feature selec- tion technique that is robust to change, while also ensuring that models built with the selected features perform well. One domain where feature selection is especially important is software defect prediction, where large numbers of met- rics collected from previous software projects are used to help engineers focus their efforts on the most faulty mod- ules. This study presents a comprehensive empirical ex- amination of seven filter-based feature ranking techniques (rankers) applied to …

Relational Neighborhood Inverse Consistency For Constraint Satisfaction: A Structure-Based Approach For Adjusting Consistency & Managing Propagation, Robert J. Woodward

Department of Computer Science and Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Freuder and Elfe [1996] introduced Neighborhood Inverse Consistency (NIC) as a local consistency property defined on the values in the variables' domains of a Constraint Satisfaction Problem (CSP). Debruyne and Bessiere [2011] showed that enforcing NIC on binary CSPs is ineffective on sparse graph and too costly on dense graphs. In this thesis, we propose Relational Neighborhood Inverse Consistency (RNIC), an extension of NIC defined as a local consistency property on the tuples of the relations of a CSP. We characterize RNIC for both binary and non-binary CSPs, and propose an algorithm for enforcing it whose complexity is bounded by …

Location Cheating: A Security Challenge To Location-Based Social Network Services, Mai Ren

Department of Computer Science and Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Location-based mobile social network services such as Foursquare and Gowalla have grown exponentially over the past several years. These location-based services utilize the geographical position to enrich user experiences in a variety of contexts, including location-based searching and location-based mobile advertising. To attract more users, the location-based mobile social network services provide real-world rewards to the user, when a user checks in at a certain venue or location. This gives incentives for users to cheat on their locations.

In this thesis, we investigate the threat of location cheating attacks, find the root cause of the vulnerability, and outline the possible …

Tracking Web Video Topics: Discovery, Visualization, And Monitoring, Juan Cao, Chong-Wah Ngo, Yong-Dong Zhang, Jin-Tao Li

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Despite the massive growth of web-shared videos in Internet, efficient organization and monitoring of videos remains a practical challenge. While nowadays broadcasting channels are keen to monitor online events, identifying topics of interest from huge volume of user uploaded videos and giving recommendation to emerging topics are by no means easy. Specifically, such process involves discovering of new topic, visualization of the topic content, and incremental monitoring of topic evolution. This paper studies the problem from three aspects. First, given a large set of videos collected over months, an efficient algorithm based on salient trajectory extraction on a topic evolution …

Galaxy Browser: Exploratory Search Of Web Videos, Lei Pang, Song Tan, Hung-Khoon Tan, Chong-Wah Ngo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Most search engines return a ranked list of items in response to a query. The list however tells very little about the relationship among items. For videos especially, users often read to spend significant amount of time to navigate the search result. Exploratory search presents a new paradigm for browsing where the browser takes up the role of information exploring and presents a well-organized browsing structure for users to navigate. The proposed interface Galaxy Browser adopts the recent advances in near-duplicate detection and then synchronizes the detected near-duplicate information with comprehensive background knowledge derived from online external resources. The result …

On The Pooling Of Positive Examples With Ontology For Visual Concept Learning, Shiai Zhu, Chong-Wah Ngo, Yu-Gang Jiang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

A common obstacle in effective learning of visual concept classifiers is the scarcity of positive training examples due to expensive labeling cost. This paper explores the sampling of weakly tagged web images for concept learning without human assistance. In particular, ontology knowledge is incorporated for semantic pooling of positive examples from ontologically neighboring concepts. This effectively widens the coverage of the positive samples with visually more diversified content, which is important for learning a good concept classifier. We experiment with two learning strategies: aggregate and incremental. The former strategy re-trains a new classifier by combining existing and newly collected examples, …

Cytongrasp: Cyton Alpha Controller Via Graspit! Simulation, Nicholas Wayne Overfield

Masters Theses

This thesis addresses an expansion of the control programs for the Cyton Alpha 7D 1G arm. The original control system made use of configurable software which exploited the arm’s seven degrees of freedom and kinematic redundancy to control the arm based on desired behaviors that were configured off-line. The inclusions of the GraspIt! grasp planning simulator and toolkit enables the Cyton Alpha to be used in more proactive on-line grasping problems, as well as, presenting many additional tools for on-line learning applications. In short, GraspIt! expands what is possible with the Cyton Alpha to include many machine learning tools and …

Development Of A Simulation Tool For Analysis Of Freeway Crashes Due To Cell Phone Usage, Sourabh Sriom

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Research shows that drivers are susceptible to numerous distractions while driving which can be held responsible as the reason of a crash. Usage of cell phones, i.e. talking or texting while driving is considered one of the prominent distractions which causes a crash. This dissertation aims to study the number of crashes occurring on the freeways and their relation with the drivers of these cars using cell phones while they are driving. Since crashes occur relatively less frequently, the study of crashes is done using what is called the "rare event" theory. Java based simulations are done to model a …

Cross Media Hyperlinking For Search Topic Browsing, Song Tan, Chong-Wah Ngo, Hung-Khoon Tan, Lei Pang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

With the rapid growth of social media, there are plenty of information sources freely available online for use. Nevertheless, how to synchronize and leverage these diverse forms of information for multimedia applications remains a problem yet to be seriously studied. This paper investigates the synchronization of multiple media content in the physical form of hyperlinking them. The ultimate goal is to develop browsing systems that author search results with rich media information mined from various knowledge sources. The authoring enables the vivid visualization and exploration of different information landscapes inherent in search results. Several key techniques are studied in this …

Efficient Traffic Crash And Snow Complaint Gis System, Anthony B. Ngo

Department of Computer Science and Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

We describe the design and implementation of a traffic crash and snow complaint GIS system developed for the Lincoln Public Works department. We also describe a novel geocoding algorithm that was used to move data from the older Criminal Justice Information System, which is a relational database, to the new GIS system. In addition, we describe the implementation of several indexing algorithms that enable the system to efficiently answer rectangular range queries and queries about the relative locations of moving objects. Finally, in many applications (on-line analysis or mobile GIS), we need to execute spatial query efficiently (fast and small), …

The Hydra Filesystem: A Distrbuted Storage Famework, Benjamin Gonzalez, George K. Thiruvathukal

George K. Thiruvathukal

Hydra File System (HFS) is an experimental framework for constructing parallel and distributed filesystems. While parallel and distributed applications requiring scalable and flexible access to storage and retrieval are becoming more commonplace, parallel and distributed filesystems remain difficult to deploy easily and configure for different needs. HFS aims to be different by being true to the tradition of high-performance computing while employing modern design patterns to allow various policies to be configured on a per instance basis (e.g. storage, communication, security, and indexing schemes). We describe a working prototype (available for public download) that has been implemented in the Python …

Scalable Implementations Of Mpi Atomicity For Concurrent Overlapping I/O, Wei-Keng Liao, Alok Choudhary, Kenin Coloma, George K. Thiruvathukal, Lee Ward, Eric Russell, Neil Pundit

George K. Thiruvathukal

For concurrent I/O operations, atomicity defines the results in the overlapping file regions simultaneously read/written by requesting processes. Atomicity has been well studied at the file system level, such as POSIX standard. In this paper, we investigate the problems arising from the implementation of MPI atomicity for concurrent overlapping write access and provide a few programming solutions. Since the MPI definition of atomicity differs from the POSIX one, an implementation that simply relies on the POSIX file systems does not guarantee correct MPI semantics. To have a correct implementation of atomic I/O in MPI, we examine the efficiency of three …

Naked Object File System (Nofs): A Framework To Expose An Object-Oriented Domain Model As A File System, Joseph P. Kaylor, Konstantin Läufer, George K. Thiruvathukal

George K. Thiruvathukal

We present Naked Objects File System (NOFS), a novel framework that allows a developer to expose a domain model as a file system by leveraging the Naked Objects design principle. NOFS allows a developer to construct a file system without having to understand or implement all details related to normal file systems development. In this paper we explore file systems frameworks and object-oriented frameworks in a historical context and present an example domain model using the framework. This paper is based on a fully-functional implementation that is distributed as free/open source software, including virtual machine images to demonstrate and study …

Investigating The Role Of The Internet In Women And Minority Stem Participation: A Case Study Of Two Florida Engineering Programs, Arland Nguema Ndong

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Despite our awareness of the fascination modern humans have with the Internet, little is known about how and why colleges and universities create and maintain Websites. At the most general level, in this case study, I hypothesize that university Websites serve as communication and marketing tools in attracting students. At the most specific level, I postulate that civil engineering programs with Web pages depicting images of women and minorities would be more successful in recruiting and retaining women and students of color than civil engineering programs with Web pages displaying fewer or no images of women and minorities. The primary …

The Social And Behavioral Implications Of Location-Based Services, Katina Michael, M.G. Michael

Associate Professor Katina Michael

The social and behavioral implications of location-based services (LBS) are only now beginning to come to light in advanced markets where the services have been adopted by just a little over half the market (Microsoft 2011). Depending on one’s definition of what constitutes location-based services, statistics on the level of adoption differ considerably. While it is helpful to provide as broad a list of applications as possible in what constitutes LBS (e.g. everything from in-vehicle navigation systems to downloading a map using a computer), it can also cloud the real picture forming behind this emerging technology. Emerging not in the …

Measuring Stability Of Threshold-Based Feature Selection Techniques, Huanjing Wang, Taghi Khoshgoftaar

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Feature selection has been applied in many domains, such as text mining and software engineering. Ideally a feature selection technique should produce consistent out- puts regardless of minor variations in the input data. Re- searchers have recently begun to examine the stability (robustness) of feature selection techniques. The stability of a feature selection method is defined as the degree of agreement between its outputs to randomly-selected subsets of the same input data. This study evaluated the stability of 11 threshold-based feature ranking techniques (rankers) when applied to 16 real-world software measurement datasets of different sizes. Experimental results demonstrate that AUC …

A Pomdp Model For Guiding Taxi Cruising In A Congested Urban City, Lucas Agussurja, Hoong Chuin Lau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We consider a partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) model for improving a taxi agent cruising decision in a congested urban city. Using real-world data provided by a large taxi company in Singapore as a guide, we derive the state transition function of the POMDP. Specifically, we model the cruising behavior of the drivers as continuous-time Markov chains. We then apply dynamic programming algorithm for finding the optimal policy of the driver agent. Using a simulation, we show that this policy is significantly better than a greedy policy in congested road network.

A Tutorial On Bayesian Networks For System Health Management, Arthur Choi, Lu Zheng, Adnan Darwiche, Ole J. Mengshoel

Ole J Mengshoel

Bayesian networks have established themselves as an indispensable tool in artificial intelligence, and are being used effectively by researchers and practitioners more broadly in science and engineering. The domain of system health management, including diagnosis, is no exception. In fact, diagnostic applications have driven much of the developments in Bayesian networks over the past few decades. In this chapter, we provide a gentle and accessible introduction to modeling and reasoning with Bayesian networks, with the domain of system health management in mind.

A Review Of International Best Practice In E-Governmentsome Lessons For New Adopters, Deogratias Harorimana Sr

Dr Deogratias Harorimana

Efficient bureaucratic processes as essential to attract and retain investment, as well as promote SME growth. The e_Gov is one of many ways emerging economies have used to streamline public service delivery and create a freindly and conducive atmosphere for business -both MNC and SMEs. This presentation provide an overview of some of the World's most recent case examples on the successful design-plan-implementation of eGov to build a strong basis to attract investment and deliver seamless essential services to Citizens.

Engaging Game Design Students Using Peer Evaluation, Amber Settle, Charles Wilcox, Chad Settle

Amber Settle

A Critical Review Of The Effectiveness Of Fiscal And Monetary Policies In The Pacific Island Countries (Pics) Between 1990-2010, Deogratias Harorimana Mr

Dr Deogratias Harorimana

The purpose of this paper is to critically assess the effectiveness of Fiscal and Monetary Policies in the South Pacific Island Countries. The paper tracks down the economic growth for the last 20 years between 1990-2010, and drawing from key fiscal and monetary policies in place during the time under consideration, as well as specific interventions in the region, we find that: 1) While the South Pacific Island Countries (SPICs) particularly the six major economies (Solomon Islands, Fiji, Vanuatu, PNG, Samoa, Tonga) pursued fiscal and monetary policies for promoting growth and diversification of their economies, their fiscal policies relied heavily …

Three-Dimensional Modeling Of Electrostatic Precipitator Using Hybrid Finite Element - Flux Corrected Transport Technique, Niloofar Farnoosh

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis presents the results of a three-dimensional simulation of the entire precipitation process inside a single-electrode one-stage electrostatic precipitator (ESP). The model was designed to predict the motion of ions, gas and solid particles. The precipitator consists of two parallel grounded collecting plates with a corona electrode mounted at the center, parallel to the plates and excited with a high dc voltage. The complex mutual interaction between the three coexisting phenomena of electrostatic field, fluid dynamics and the particulate transport, which affect the ESP process, were taken into account in all the simulations. The electrostatic field and ionic space …

Issues In Human Capital Development : Lessons For Public Administration And Governance, Deogratias Harorimana Mr

Dr Deogratias Harorimana

With few minerals or other natural resources, Rwanda believes that she can still achieve her ambitions by investing in human capital - her unique resource. If this ambition can be achieved, then is this the next role model for international development? We used a case study design and analysis methods to examine development models used elsewhere in recent decades, using both qualitative and quantitative data on Rwanda to establish the comparative advantages in relation to Singapore’s economic development model. The implications for international development are that (1) an effective human capital development strategy should be inclusive enough to respond to …

Cs 240: Computer Programming - I, Michael Ondrasek

Computer Science & Engineering Syllabi

Basic concepts of programming and programming languages are introduced. Emphasis is on problem solving and object oriented programming. This course provides a general introduction to the fundamentals of computer science and programming. Examples from and applications to a broad range of problems are given. No prior knowledge of programming is assumed. The concepts covered will be applied to the Java programming language. Students must register for both lecture and one laboratory section. 4 credit hours

Cs 240: Distance Learning Computer Programming - I, Michael Ondrasek

Computer Science & Engineering Syllabi

Basic concepts of programming and programming languages are introduced. Emphasis is on problem solving and object oriented programming. This course provides a general introduction to the fundamentals of computer science and programming. Examples from and applications to a broad range of problems are given. No prior knowledge of programming is assumed. The concepts covered will be applied to the Java programming language. Students must register for both a lecture and laboratory section. 4 credit hours.

Cs 241: Computer Programming Ii, Jay Dejongh

Computer Science & Engineering Syllabi

A continuation of CS 240. The emphasis is on data abstraction and software engineering. Prerequisite: CS240.