Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

The Public’S Perception Of Humanlike Robots: Online Social Commentary Reflects An Appearance-Based Uncanny Valley, A General Fear Of A “Technology Takeover”, And The Unabashed Sexualization Of Female-Gendered Robots, Megan K. Strait, Cynthia Aguillon, Virginia Contreras, Noemi Garcia

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Towards understanding the public’s perception of humanlike robots, we examined commentary on 24 YouTube videos depicting social robots ranging in human similarity – from Honda’s Asimo to Hiroshi Ishiguro’s Geminoids. In particular, we investigated how people have responded to the emergence of highly humanlike robots (e.g., Bina48) in contrast to those with more prototypically-“robotic” appearances (e.g., Asimo), coding the frequency at which the uncanny valley versus fears of replacement and/or a “technology takeover” arise in online discourse based on the robot’s appearance. Here we found that, consistent with Masahiro Mori’s theory of the uncanny valley, people’s commentary reflected an aversion …

Building Capable, Energy-Efficient, Flexible Visualization And Sensing Clusters From Commodity Tablets, Thomas Delgado Dias, Xian Yan, Konstantin Läufer, George K. Thiruvathukal

Konstantin Läufer

We explore the application of clusters of commodity tablet devices to problems spanning a “trilogy” of concerns: visualization, sensing, and computation. We conjecture that such clusters provide a low-cost, energy-efficient, flexible, and ultimately effective platform to tackle a wide range of problems within this trilogy. This is a work in progress, and we now elaborate our position and give a preliminary status report. A wide range of Android tablet devices are available in terms of price and capabilities. “You get what you pay for” w.r.t. display resolution, sensors, and chipset---corresponding to the trilogy. $200 gets one a 1280x800-pixel touch display, …

Design And Implementation Of Triveni: A Process-Algebraic Api For Threads + Events, Christopher P. Colby, Lalita Jategaonkar Jagaeesan, Radhakrishnan Jagadeesan, Konstantin Laufer, Carlos Puchol

Konstantin Läufer

We describe Triveni, a framework and API for integrating threads and events. The design of Triveni is based on an algebra, including preemption combinators, of processes. Triveni is compatible with existing threads standards, such as Pthreads and Java threads, and with the event models structured on the Observer pattern. We describe the software architecture and algorithms underlying a concrete implementation of Triveni in Java. This environment includes specification based testing of safety properties. The results described in the paper have been used to integrate process-algebraic methods into (concurrent) object orientated programming.

Network Technologies Used To Aggregate Environmental Data, Paul Stasiuk, Konstantin Läufer, George K. Thiruvathukal

Konstantin Läufer

The goal of the Loyola Weather Service (lws) project is to design and build a system of functioning environmental monitoring widgets that can intelligently and autonomously control the environment around them based on set thresholds and triggers. The widgets will also have the ability to aggregate their data and easily display this data in various ways: through a user interface in the room that the widget is placed, via a web application, and programmatically via a RESTful web service.

Putting Type Annotations To Work, Martin Odersky, Konstantin Laufer

Konstantin Läufer

We study an extension of the Hindley/Milner system with explicit type scheme annotations and type declarations. The system can express polymorphic function arguments, user-defined data types with abstract components, and structure types with polymorphic fields. More generally, all programs of the polymorphic lambda calculus can be encoded by a translation between typing derivations. We show that type reconstruction in this system can be reduced to the decidable problem of first-order unification under a mixed prefix.

Using Microsoft Excel To Teach Simulation Concepts To Business Students, Robert F. Gordon Ph.D.

Faculty Works: MCS (1984-2023)

The application of computers to solving business problems, the area of study known as decision support systems, is an important component in the education of business students today. One major type of decision support system is computer simulation, which is the technique most often used to solve queuing problems in the industry. This paper describes how to teach the concepts of computer simulation, explain the key components of simulation software, and provide hands-on experience to solve these problems by using Microsoft Excel.

Zero Textbook Cost Syllabus For Cis 3367 (Spreadsheet Applications In Business), Soniya Dsouza

Open Educational Resources

The primary focus of this course is to learn how to construct and use powerful spreadsheets for effective managerial decision-making. This course is mostly project- oriented with a dual focus on spreadsheet engineering and quantitative modeling of financial applications. Students will learn to develop powerful spreadsheet models and perform data analysis using Pivot Tables, VLookUp, Data Validation techniques and Sub Total functions. Students will also learn how to enhance spreadsheets by creating dashboards on financial data. The Visual Basic (macro) concepts will also be introduced to students. With the knowledge and hands-on experience of these concepts, students will be prepared …

Mechanism Design In Sequencing Problems., Parikshit De Dr.

Doctoral Theses

Collective decision making is an important social issue, since it depends on individual preferences that are not publicly observable. Therefore, the question is, whether it is possible to elicit the private information available to individuals and then how to extract the private information in various strategic environment; Mechanism design deals with these questions. The difference between game theory and mechanism design is that, the former tries to predict the outcome of a strategic environment in some “equilibrium” but the latter tries to design or restrict the environment in such a way that the desired objective is attained, that is, the …

Viral Marketing For Smart Cities: Influencers In Social Network Communities, Madhura Kaple, Ketki Kulkarni, Katerina Potika

Faculty Publications, Computer Science

Social networks are used by cities primarily for announcing local-area events, but also for increasing engagement of citizens in votes and elections. Given the current plethora of heterogeneous social networks, city administrators can benefit from social networks to promote initiatives, which are important to a current smart city as well use them to discover future needs in order to manage resources more efficiently. Our focus in this paper is how we can adapt commercial and viral marketing techniques to smart city systems to influence the behavior, opinion and choices of citizens in order to improve their well being and that …

Who Will Leave The Company?: A Large-Scale Industry Study Of Developer Turnover By Mining Monthly Work Report, Lingfeng Bao, Zhenchang Xing, Xin Xia, David Lo, Shanping Li

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Software developer turnover has become a big challenge for information technology (IT) companies. The departure of key software developers might cause big loss to an IT company since they also depart with important business knowledge and critical technical skills. Understanding developer turnover is very important for IT companies to retain talented developers and reduce the loss due to developers' departure. Previous studies mainly perform qualitative observations or simple statistical analysis of developers' activity data to understand developer turnover. In this paper, we investigate whether we can predict the turnover of software developers in non-open source companies by automatically analyzing monthly …

Programming For Data Science Csc 310, Amanda Izenstark

Library Impact Statements

No abstract provided.

Data Science Program, Amanda Izenstark

Library Impact Statements

No abstract provided.

Guest Editors' Introduction: Best Of Respect, Part 2, Tiffany Barnes, Jamie Payton, George K. Thiruvathukal, Jeff Forbes, Kristy Elizabeth Boyer

George K. Thiruvathukal

The guest editors introduce best papers on broadening participation in computing from the RESPECT'15 conference. The five articles presented here are part two of a two-part series representing research on broadening participation in computing. These articles study participation in intersectional ways, through the perceptions and experiences of African-American middle school girls, the sense of belonging in computing for LGBTQ students, the impact of a STEM scholarship and community development program for low-income and first-generation college students, a leadership development program, and how African-American women individually take leadership to enable their success in computing.

The Need For Research In Broadening Participation, Tiffany Barnes, George K. Thiruvathukal

George K. Thiruvathukal

Underrepresentation in computing is a global problem, marked by a disturbing lack of access to computing resources and education among people underrepresented by race, ethnicity, gender, income, disability, and sexual-orientation status. It is urgent that we address this divide between those with and without the knowledge to create computational artifacts or even basic functional literacy. Important alliances for broadening participation (BP) are catalyzing efforts to engage more people in computing, but they are not enough. We need solid research as well.

The Rock 2017, School Of Engineering And Computer Science

The Rock

No abstract provided.

Pop-Up Java: An Augmented Reality Mobile Game To Teach Java, Richard Myers

Georgia Undergraduate Research Conference

As computers become more and more ubiquitous, it becomes increasingly important and prevalent to teach coding. Coding builds important life skills such as organization, higher order thinking, self-esteem, socialization and teamwork, among many others. However, learning the skills necessary to design and create an efficient program from scratch takes a lot of practice that can often be confusing and frustrating to newcomers.

There are a large number of programming languages in the world, each with their own merits. The TIOBE Programming Community Index calculates the popularity of programming languages by tallying search queries on major search engines, and shows that …

Sum Tzu And The Mathematics Of War: A Predictive Assistant For Warhammer 40,000, Ben Kalmin Newman

Senior Projects Spring 2017

The purpose of this project is to classify simple strategies for the tabletop miniature war game Warhammer 40,000. The paper enumerates a series of strategies that are straightforward to automate. Further analysis on these simulations identify collection of proposed best and worst auto-strategies.

Visualizing Sorting Algorithms, Brian Faria

Honors Projects

This paper discusses a study performed on animating sorting algorithms as a learning aid for classroom instruction. A web-based animation tool was created to visualize four common sorting algorithms: Selection Sort, Bubble Sort, Insertion Sort, and Merge Sort. The animation tool would represent data as a bar-graph and after selecting a data-ordering and algorithm, the user can run an automated animation or step through it at their own pace. Afterwards, a study was conducted with a voluntary student population at Rhode Island College who were in the process of learning algorithms in their Computer Science curriculum. The study consisted of …

Panel: Influencing Culture And Curriculum Via Revolution, Amit Jain

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

The goal of this panel session is to introduce audience members to the challenges and successes of significant cultural and curricular change as enacted by awardees in the NSF program Revolutionizing Engineering and Computer Science Departments (RED). This panel will explore how organizations go about the process of cultural investigation and how they embark on culture change, using RED awardees of 2016 as the featured panelists (the second cohort). These teams are engaged in high-risk, high-trust-required activities focused on both the organizational and operational structure of their departments, and on re-envisioning engineering and computer science curricula to create professionals able …

K-Mer Analysis Pipeline For Classification Of Dna Sequences From Metagenomic Samples, Russell Kaehler

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Biological sequence datasets are increasing at a prodigious rate. The volume of data in these datasets surpasses what is observed in many other fields of science. New developments wherein metagenomic DNA from complex bacterial communities is recovered and sequenced are producing a new kind of data known as metagenomic data, which is comprised of DNA fragments from many genomes. Developing a utility to analyze such metagenomic data and predict the sample class from which it originated has many possible implications for ecological and medical applications. Within this document is a description of a series of analytical techniques used to process …

Automated Rendering Of Schema Diagram For Ontologies, Nazifa Karima

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Semantic Web extends the current web, using ontologies, metadata and other technologies to establish links between terms and concepts. This enables machines to automatically integrate information across different platforms utilizing the standard definitions. Furthermore, reasoning agents can infer new knowledge by gathering existing information and these additional connections between them. As a result of being designed and maintained independently, data sources exhibit highly heterogeneous nature. This increases the complexity of data integration and hinders interoperability. However, if we can align the overlapping concepts among different domains of knowledge, the prospect of achieving interoperability and integration without having any intermediate reasoning …

Visualization Of Carbon Monoxide Particles Released From Firearms, Sadan Suneesh Menon

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

A number of soldiers have come forward to report discomfort, irritation and respiratory problems after taking part in a live firing session. These problems are caused due to the fumes and particulates emitted from the gun upon firing. There exists substantial research work focused on lead and other harmful metallic particulates expelled from a firearm, since they are the most harmful among the other emissions. However, our research focuses on visualizing the carbon monoxide (CO) particles released from a firearm in order to help understand adverse effects they may have on the human body. We use data provided by researchers …

Rendering Owl In Latex For Improved Readability: Extensions To The Owlapi, Cogan M. Shimizu

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

As ontology engineering is inherently a multidisciplinary process, it is necessary to utilize multiple vehicles to present an ontology to a user. In order to examine the content of an ontology, formal logic renderings of the axioms appear to be a very helpful approach for some. This thesis introduces a number of incremental improvements to the OWLAPI's \LaTeX{} rendering framework in order to improve the readability, concision, and correctness of OWL files translated into Description Logic and First Order Logic. In addition, we examine the efficacy of these renderings as vehicles for understanding an ontology.