Computer Engineering Commons^™

Colonel Blotto Games And Lancaster's Equations: A Novel Military Modeling Combination, Andrew Collins, Patrick T. Hester

VMASC Publications

Military strategists face a difficult task when engaged in a battle against an adversarial force. They have to predict both what tactics their opponent will employ and the outcomes of any resultant conflicts in order to make the best decision about their actions. Game theory has been the dominant technique used by analysts to investigate the possible actions that an enemy will employ. Traditional game theory can be augmented by use of Lanchester equations, a set of differential equations used to determine the outcome of a conflict. This paper demonstrates a novel combination of game theory and Lanchester equations using …

Investigation Of The Divcon Neuron To Increase The Performance Of A Traditional Feed Forward Multi-Layer Perceptron And Its Hardware Implementation, Jovan Saenz

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) have been developed in an attempt to emulate the information processing capabilities of the biological brain. They offer an alternate computing approach to problems in which mathematical modeling is complicated, such as pattern recognition and pattern classification.

Since ANNs were proposed in the early 1940s, there has been a great amount of research effort dedicated to the development of new models that improve performance. Consequently, different architectures, a variety of activation functions, and distinct learning algorithms have been developed and implemented in different disciplines such as medicine, engineering, and science. In addition, ANNs have been …

Sensor-Based Robotic Learning System For The Rehabilitation Of Arm, Chethan Ramachandra Keladi

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In recent studies, the neurological studies has shown that the neurological disorders like Stroke, Parkinson's disease, Dystonia, Spinal Cord Injury (SCI), Cerebral Palsy (CP), etc., cause the disability of upper limb and one of the major issues with the neurological injuries is motor impairment. This issue is caused by the lack of interaction between the central nervous system (CNS) and muscles [1] and can be cured by the intensive training which includes repetitive and reaching tasks. The intensive training can be performed using conventional therapy and robot-assisted therapy, but the research has shown additional effects on motor recovery and functional …

Video Mosaicing Using Inertial Sensors, Arturo Maya Pereyra

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

A method to reduce the process complexity of Video Mosaicing could rely on information concerning the orientation of the camera instead of image feature tracking. Inertial sensors (e.g. accelerometers and gyros) could form part of a low cost motion based technology which can be used in this case and this thesis details an approach for Video Mosaicing based on such technology that requires non-computationally intensive algorithms.

An Improved Medium Access Control Protocol For Real-Time Applications In Wlans And Its Firmware Development, Sushil Dutt

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The IEEE 802.11 Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), commonly known as Wi-Fi, has emerged as a popular internet access technology and researchers are continuously working on improvement of the quality of service (QoS) in WLAN by proposing new and efficient schemes. Voice and video over Internet Protocol (VVoIP) applications are becoming very popular in Wi-Fi enabled portable/handheld devices because of recent technological advancements and lower service costs. Different from normal voice and video streaming, these applications demand symmetric throughput for the upstream and downstream. Existing Wi-Fi standards are optimised for generic internet applications and fail to provide symmetric throughput due …

Computational Modeling For Transportation Network Security, Sherif A. Tolba

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.

Data Exploration Interface For Digital Forensics, Varun Dontula

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The fast capacity growth of cheap storage devices presents an ever-growing problem of scale for digital forensic investigations. One aspect of scale problem in the forensic process is the need for new approaches to visually presenting and analyzing large amounts of data. Current generation of tools universally employ three basic GUI components—trees, tables, and viewers—to present all relevant information. This approach is not scalable as increasing the size of the input data leads to a proportional increase in the amount of data presented to the analyst.

We present an alternative approach, which leverages data visualization techniques to provide a more …

Reducing Data Loss And Saving Money By Acquiring Data Loss Prevention Software, Patarika Tipwong

Technical Reports

Choosing and implementing the right security software tools can protect a company’s assets. In particular, data breaches might not happen if a company is aware of its information flow and has the proper tool to protect it. This thesis paper will explain why and how acquiring data loss prevention (DLP) software will help a company to reduce data loss, mitigate the loss impact and save money. Facts and examples are provided to support and illustrate the statement above.

Detection Of Diffuse Sea Floor Venting Using Structured Light Imaging, Gabrielle Inglis, Clara Smart, Christopher Roman, Steven Carey

Graduate School of Oceanography Faculty Publications

Efficiently identifying and localizing diffuse sea floor venting at hydrothermal and cold seep sites is often difficult. Actively venting fluids are usually identified by a temperature induced optical shimmering seen during direct visual inspections or in video data collected by vehicles working close to the sea floor. Relying on such direct methods complicates establishing spatial relations between areas within a survey covering a broad area. Our recent work with a structured light laser system has shown that venting can also be detected in the image data in an automated fashion. A structured light laser system consists of a camera and …

Remote Analysis Of Grain Size Characteristic In Submarine Pyroclastic Deposits From Kolumbo Volcano, Greece, Clara Smart, D. P. Whitesell, Christopher N. Roman, Steven Carey

Graduate School of Oceanography Faculty Publications

Grain size characteristics of pyroclastic deposits provide valuable information about source eruption energetics and depositional processes. Maximum size and sorting are often used to discriminate between fallout and sediment gravity flow processes during explosive eruptions. In the submarine environment the collection of such data in thick pyroclastic sequences is extremely challenging and potentially time consuming. A method has been developed to extract grain size information from stereo images collected by a remotely operated vehicle (ROV). In the summer of 2010 the ROV Hercules collected a suite of stereo images from a thick pumice sequence in the caldera walls of Kolumbo …

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

Department of Computer Electronics and 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 …

State-Based Techniques For Designing, Verifying And Debugging Message Passing Systems, Rajaa Khaled Alqudah

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science - Dissertations

Message passing systems support the applications of concurrent events, where independent or semi-independent events occur simultaneously in a nondeterministic fashion. The nature of independence, random interactions and concurrency made the code development of such applications complicated and error-prone. Conventional code development environments or IDEs, such as Microsoft Visual Studio, provide little programming support in this regard. Furthermore, ensuring the correctness of a message passing system is a challenge. Typically, it is important to guarantee that a system meets its desired specifications along its construction process. Model checking is one of the techniques used in software verification which has proven to …

Efficient Approximation For Security Games With Interval Uncertainty, Chris Kiekintveld, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

There are an increasing number of applications of security games. One of the key challenges for this field going forward is to address the problem of model uncertainty and the robustness of the game-theoretic solutions. Most existing methods for dealing with payoff uncertainty are Bayesian methods which are NP-hard and have difficulty scaling to very large problems. In this work we consider an alternative approach based on interval uncertainty. For a variant of security games with interval uncertainty we introduce a polynomial-time approximation algorithm that can compute very accurate solutions within a given error bound.

Assessment Of Functional Impairment In Human Locomotion: A Fuzzy-Motivated Approach, Murad Alaqtash, Thompson Sarkodie-Gyan, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Many neurological disorders result in disordered motion. The effects of a disorder can be decrease by an appropriate rehabilitation. To make rehabilitation efficient, we need to monitor the patient and check how well he or she improves. In our previous papers, we proposed a fuzzy-based semi-heuristic method of gauging how well a patient improved. Surprisingly, this semi-heuristic method turned out to be more efficient that we expected. In this paper, we provide a justification for this efficiency.

In the future, it is desirable to combine this fuzzy-assessment approach with results by Alavarez-Alvarez, Trivino, and Cordon who use fuzzy techniques …

Constraint Optimization: From Efficient Computation Of What Can Be Achieved To Efficient Computation Of A Way To Achieve The Corresponding Optimum, Ali Jalal-Kamali, Martine Ceberio, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In many practically useful cases, we know how to efficiently compute the exact range of a function over given intervals (and, possibly, under additional constraints). In other words, we know how to efficiently compute the minimum and maximum of a given function f(x₁, ..., x_n) on any box. From the practical viewpoint, it is important not only to find the value of the corresponding maximum or minimum, but also to know for what values of the parameters x_i this optimum is attained. We prove a general result: that if we can efficiently compute the optimum, …

Why Bernstein Polynomials Are Better: Fuzzy-Inspired Justification, Jaime Nava, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

It is well known that an arbitrary continuous function on a bounded set -- e.g., on an interval [a,b] -- can be, with any given accuracy, approximated by a polynomial. Usually, polynomials are described as linear combinations of monomials. It turns out that in many computational problems, it is more efficient to represent a polynomial as Bernstein polynomials -- e.g., for functions of one variable, a linear combination of terms (x-a)^k * (b-x)^n-k. In this paper, we provide a simple fuzzy-based explanation of why Bernstein polynomials are often more efficient, and we show how this informal explanation …

Semi-Heuristic Poverty Measures Used By Economists: Justification Motivated By Fuzzy Techniques, Karen Villaverde, Nagwa Albehery, Tonghui Wang, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

To properly gauge the extent of poverty in a country or in a region, economists use semi-heuristic poverty measures such as the Foster-Greer-Thorbecke (FGT) metric. These measures are used because it was empirically shown that they capture the commonsense meaning of the extent of poverty better than previously proposed measures. However, the fact that these measures are better then a few earlier proposed ones does not necessarily mean that these measures are the best possible; so, it is desirable to look for optimal poverty measures. In this paper, we first use fuzzy techniques to provide a commonsense interpretation of FGT …

In The Beginning Was The Word, And The Word Was Fuzzy, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

No abstract provided.

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 …

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 …