Computer Engineering Commons^™

Media Usage Survey: Overall Comparison Of Faculty And Students, Gerd Gidion, Michael Grosch, Luiz Fernando Capretz, Ken Meadows Dr.

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

Recent developments in the use of technologies in education have provided unique opportunities for teaching and learning. This paper describes the results of a survey conducted at Western University (Canada) in 2013, regarding the use of media by students and instructors. The results of this study support the assumption that the media usage of students and instructors include a mixture of traditional and new media. The main traditional media continue to be important, and some new media have emerged as seemingly on equal footing or even more important than the traditional forms of media. Some new media that have recently …

Design Of A Haptic Interface For Medical Applications Using Magneto-Rheological Fluid Based Actuators, Nima Najmaei

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis reports on the design, construction, and evaluation of a prototype two degrees-of-freedom (DOF) haptic interface, which takes advantage of Magneto-Rheological Fluid (MRF) based clutches for actuation. Haptic information provides important cues in teleoperated systems and enables the user to feel the interaction with a remote or virtual environment during teleoperation. The two main objectives in designing a haptic interface are stability and transparency. Indeed, deficiencies in these factors in haptics-enabled telerobotic systems has the introduction of haptics in medical environments where safety and reliability are prime considerations. An actuator with poor dynamics, high inertia, large size, and heavy …

Media Usage In Post-Secondary Education And Implications For Teaching And Learning, Gerd Gidion, Luiz Fernando Capretz, Ken Mead Dr., Michael Grosch Dr.

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

The Web 2.0 has permeated academic life. The use of online information services in post-secondary education has led to dramatic changes in faculty teaching methods as well as in the learning and study behavior of students. At the same time, traditional information media, such as textbooks and printed handouts, still form the basic pillars of teaching and learning. This paper reports the results of a survey about media usage in teaching and learning conducted with Western University students and instructors, highlighting trends in the usage of new and traditional media in higher education by instructors and students. In addition, the …

Security Issues In Data Warehouse, Saiqa Aleem, Luiz Fernando Capretz, Faheem Ahmed Dr.

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

Data Warehouse (DWH) provides storage for huge amounts of historical data from heterogeneous operational sources in the form of multidimensional views, thus supplying sensitive and useful information which help decision-makers to improve the organization’s business processes. A data warehouse environment must ensure that data collected and stored in one big repository are not vulnerable. A review of security approaches specifically for data warehouse environment and issues concerning each type of security approach have been provided in this paper.

A Collaborative Access Control Model For Shared Items In Online Social Networks, Hanaa Al Shareef

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The recent emergence of online social networks (OSNs) has changed the communication behaviors of thousand of millions of users. OSNs have become significant platforms for connecting users, sharing information, and a valuable source of private and sensitive data about individuals. While OSNs insert constantly new social features to increase the interaction between users, they, unfortunately, offer primitive access control mechanisms that place the burden of privacy policy configuration solely on the holder who has shared data in her/his profile regardless of other associated users, who may have different privacy preferences. Therefore, current OSN privacy mechanisms violate the privacy of all …

Automated Image Interpretation For Science Autonomy In Robotic Planetary Exploration, Raymond Francis

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Advances in the capabilities of robotic planetary exploration missions have increased the wealth of scientific data they produce, presenting challenges for mission science and operations imposed by the limits of interplanetary radio communications. These data budget pressures can be relieved by increased robotic autonomy, both for onboard operations tasks and for decision- making in response to science data.

This thesis presents new techniques in automated image interpretation for natural scenes of relevance to planetary science and exploration, and elaborates autonomy scenarios under which they could be used to extend the reach and performance of exploration missions on planetary surfaces.

Two …

Use Of Microsoft Kinect In A Dual Camera Setup For Action Recognition Applications, Omar Ghassan Kayal

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Conventional human action recognition methods use a single light camera to extract all the necessary information needed to perform the recognition. However, the use of a single light camera poses limitations which can not be addressed without a hardware change. In this thesis, we propose a novel approach to the multi camera setup. Our approach utilizes the skeletal pose estimation capabilities of the Microsoft Kinect camera, and uses this estimated pose on the image of the non-depth camera. The approach aims at improving performance of image analysis of multiple camera, which would not be as easy in a typical multiple …

State Controlled Object Oriented Programming, Jamil Ahmed

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In this thesis, we examine an extension to the idea of object oriented programming to make programs easier for people and compilers to understand. Often objects behave differently depending on the history of past operations as well as their input that is their behavior depends on state. We may think of the fields of an object as encoding two kinds of information: data that makes up the useful information in the object and state that controls its behavior. Object oriented languages do not distinguish these two. We propose that by specifying these two, programs become clearer for people to write …

A Vector-Based Approach To Virtual Machine Arrangement, Nicholas Cerilli

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Cloud based data centres benefit from minimizing operating costs and service level agreement violations. Vector-based data centre management policies have been shown to assist with these goals. Vector-based data centre management policies arrange virtual machines in a data centre to minimize the number of hosts being used which translates to greater power efficiency and reduced costs for the data centre overall. I propose an improved vector-based virtual machine arrangement algorithm with two novel additions, namely a technique that changes what it means for a host to be balanced and a concept that excludes undesirable target hosts, thereby improving the arrangement …

Addressing User Requirements In Open Source Software: The Role Of Online Forums, Arif Raza, Luiz Fernando Capretz

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

User satisfaction has always been important in the success of software, regardless of whether it is closed and proprietary or open source software (OSS). OSS users are geographically distributed and include technical as well as novice users. However, it is generally believed that if OSS was more usable, its popularity would increase tremendously. Hence, users and their requirements need to be addressed in the priorities of an OSS environment. Online public forums are a major medium of communication for the OSS community. The research model of this work studies the relationship between user requirements in open source software and online …

Brain Tumor Segmentation With Minimal User Assistance, Liqun Liu

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In this thesis, we propose a brain tumor segmentation system that requires only 4 clicks from users to specify a tight bounding box that completely contains the tumor.

We convert the segmentation problem to an energy minimization problem. We utilize the basic energy function that combines intensity appearance and boundary smoothness. Global and local appearance models are experimented and compared in our work.

The basic energy function does not assume any shape prior and thus leads to unrealistic shapes. We take the advantage of the fact that most of the tumors are approximately convex in shape and incorporate the star …

Hybrid Data Storage Framework For The Biometrics Domain, Abhinav Tiwari

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Biometric based authentication is one of the most popular techniques adopted in large-scale identity matching systems due to its robustness in access control. In recent years, the number of enrolments has increased significantly posing serious issues towards the performance and scalability of these systems. In addition, the use of multiple modalities (such as face, iris and fingerprint) is further increasing the issues related to scalability. This research work focuses on the development of a new Hybrid Data Storage Framework (HDSF) that would improve scalability and performance of biometric authentication systems (BAS). In this framework, the scalability issue is addressed by …

Are Students Satisfied With Media: A Canadian Case Study, Gerd Gidion, Luiz Fernando Capretz, Ken Meadow, Michael Grosch

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

The article presents partial results of a survey about media usage habits for studying and learning conducted in 2013 at Western University, a large Canadian university. The article focuses on students’ frequency of use and satisfaction with media for studying and learning. The results of this study support the assumption that student’s media usage includes a mixture of traditional and new media. The main traditional media continue to play an important role in the students’ academic life, and some new media have emerged as seemingly on equal footing or even more important than the traditional forms of media. The use …