Computer Engineering Commons^™

Can Declared Strategy Voting Be An Effective Instrument For Group Decision-Making?, Lorrie Cranor

Lorrie F Cranor

The goal of this research is to determine whether declared strategy voting can be an effective tool for group decision-making. Declared strategy voting is a novel group decision-making procedure in which preference is specified using voting strategies - first-order mathematical functions that specify a choice in terms of zero or more parameters. This research will focus on refining the declared strategy voting concept, developing an accessible implementation of declared strategy voting that can be used for mock elections, assessing the potential impacts of declared strategy voting, and evaluating the effectiveness of declared strategy voting for group decision-making. This proposal describes …

Design And Implementation Of A Practical Security-Conscious Electronic Polling System, Lorrie Cranor, Ron Cytron

Lorrie F Cranor

We present the design and implementation of Sensus, a practical, secure and private system for conducting surveys and elections over computer networks. Expanding on the work of Fujioka, Okamoto, and Ohta, Sensus uses blind signatures to ensure that only registered voters can vote and that each registered voter only votes once, while at the same time maintaining voters' privacy. Sensus allows voters to verify independently that their votes were counted correctly, and anonymously challenge the results should their votes be miscounted. We outline seven desirable properties of voting systems and show that Sensus satisfied these properties well, in some cases …

Software Metrics And Dashboard, Shilpika Shilpika, George K. Thiruvathukal, Saulo Aguiar, Konstantin Läufer, Nicholas J. Hayward

George K. Thiruvathukal

Software metrics are a critical tool which provide continuous insight to products and processes and help build reliable software in mission critical environments. Using software metrics we can perform calculations that help assess the effectiveness of the underlying software or process. The two types of metrics relevant to our work is complexity metrics and in-process metrics. Complexity metrics tend to focus on intrinsic code properties like code complexity. In-process metrics focus on a higher-level view of software quality, measuring information that can provide insight into the underlying software development process.

Our aim is to develop and evaluate a metrics dashboard …

Towards Real-Time, On-Board, Hardware-Supported Sensor And Software Health Management For Unmanned Aerial Systems, Johann M. Schumann, Kristin Y. Rozier, Thomas Reinbacher, Ole J. Mengshoel, Timmy Mbaya, Corey Ippolito

Ole J Mengshoel

Towards Synthesis Of Platform-Aware Attack-Resilient Control Systems: Extended Abstract, Miroslav Pajic, Nicola Bezzo, James Weimer, Rajeev Alur, Rahul Mangharam, Nathan Michael, George Pappas, Oleg Sokolsky, Paulo Tabuada, Stephanie Weirich, Insup Lee

Stephanie Weirich

No abstract provided.

Contracts Made Manifest, Michael Greenberg, Benjamin C. Pierce, Stephanie Weirich

Stephanie Weirich

Since Findler and Felleisen (Findler, R. B. & Felleisen, M. 2002) introduced higher-order contracts, many variants have been proposed. Broadly, these fall into two groups: some follow Findler and Felleisen (2002) in using latent contracts, purely dynamic checks that are transparent to the type system; others use manifest contracts, where refinement types record the most recent check that has been applied to each value. These two approaches are commonly assumed to be equivalent—different ways of implementing the same idea, one retaining a simple type system, and the other providing more static information. Our goal is to formalize and clarify this …

Combining Proofs And Programs In A Dependently Typed Language, Stephanie Weirich, Vilhelm Sjoberg, Chris Casinghino

Stephanie Weirich

Most dependently-typed programming languages either require that all expressions terminate (e.g. Coq, Agda, and Epigram), or allow infinite loops but are inconsistent when viewed as logics (e.g. Haskell, ATS, mega). Here, we combine these two approaches into a single dependently-typed core language. The language is composed of two fragments that share a common syntax and overlapping semantics: a logic that guarantees total correctness, and a call-by-value programming language that guarantees type safety but not termination. The two fragments may interact: logical expressions may be used as programs; the logic may soundly reason about potentially nonterminating programs; programs can require logical …

Programming Up To Congruence (Extended Version), Vilhelm Sjoberg, Stephanie Weirich

Stephanie Weirich

This paper presents the design of ZOMBIE, a dependently-typed programming language that uses an adaptation of a congruence closure algorithm for proof and type inference. This algorithm allows the type checker to automatically use equality assumptions from the context when reasoning about equality. Most dependently typed languages automatically use equalities that follow from -reduction during type checking; however, such reasoning is incompatible with congruence closure. In contrast, ZOMBIE does not use automatic -reduction because types may contain potentially diverging terms. Therefore ZOMBIE provides a unique opportunity to explore an alternative definition of equivalence in dependently typed language design. Our work …

Closed Type Families With Overlapping Equations (Extended Version), Richard A. Eisenberg, Dimitrios Vytiniotis, Simon Peyton Jones, Stephanie Weirich

Stephanie Weirich

Open, type-level functions are a recent innovation in Haskell that move Haskell towards the expressiveness of dependent types, while retaining the look and feel of a practical programming language. This paper shows how to increase expressiveness still further, by adding closed type functions whose equations may overlap, and may have non-linear patterns over an open type universe. Although practically useful and simple to implement, these features go beyond conventional dependent type theory in some respects, and have a subtle metatheory.

Data Management In Cloud Environments: Nosql And Newsql Data Stores, Katarina Grolinger, Wilson A. Higashino, Abhinav Tiwari, Miriam Am Capretz

Wilson A Higashino

: Advances in Web technology and the proliferation of mobile devices and sensors connected to the Internet have resulted in immense processing and storage requirements. Cloud computing has emerged as a paradigm that promises to meet these requirements. This work focuses on the storage aspect of cloud computing, specifically on data management in cloud environments. Traditional relational databases were designed in a different hardware and software era and are facing challenges in meeting the performance and scale requirements of Big Data. NoSQL and NewSQL data stores present themselves as alternatives that can handle huge volume of data. Because of the …

Crowdsourced Earthquake Early Warning, Sarah Minson, Benjamin Brooks, Craig Glennie, Jessica Murray, John Langbein, Susan Owen, Thomas Heaton, Robert Iannucci, Darren Hauser

Robert A Iannucci

Earthquake early warning (EEW) can reduce harm to people and infrastructure from earthquakes and tsunamis, but it has not been implemented in most high earthquake-risk regions because of prohibitive cost. Common consumer devices such as smartphones contain low-cost versions of the sensors used in EEW. Although less accurate than scientific-grade instruments, these sensors are globally ubiquitous. Through controlled tests of consumer devices, simulation of an Mw (moment magnitude) 7 earthquake on California’s Hayward fault, and real data from the Mw 9 Tohoku-oki earthquake, we demonstrate that EEW could be achieved via crowdsourcing.