Digital Commons Network^™

Teaching Ethical And Social Issues In Cs1 And Cs2, Kay G. Schulze, Frances Grodzinsky

School of Computer Science & Engineering Faculty Publications

The discussion of whether ethical and social issues of computing should be explored in undergraduate computer science education has resulted in most academic institutions and educators agreeing that they are important topics that must be included. Further support has been provided by Curricula '91 [16], the CSAC/CSAB accreditation [2] and ImpactCS [12]. Many books [7, 8, 9, 10] and papers [6, 14] have discussed what topics should be covered and what techniques can be used either in a dedicated course or in modules across the curriculum. However, explicit detailed examples that have worked successfully, particularly in lower level computer science …

Analyzing And Improving Stochastic Network Security: A Multicriteria Prescriptive Risk Analysis Model, David L. Lyle

Theses and Dissertations

This research optimized two measures of network security by hardening components and improving their reliability. A common measure of effectiveness (MOE) for networks is statistical reliability, which ignores the effects of hostile actions. A new MOE which includes hostile actions was developed. Both measures require component reliability functions, derived using fault trees. Fuzzy Logic and Monte Carlo simulation were used to quantify uncertainty. Results from the model are compared to traditional Risk Assessment results.

Agdb: A Debugger For Agent Tcl, Melissa Hirschl, David Kotz

Computer Science Technical Reports

The Agent Tcl language is an extension of Tcl/Tk that supports distributed programming in the form of transportable agents. AGDB is a debugger for the Agent Tcl language. AGDB mixes of traditional and distributed debugging facilities. Traditional debugging features include breakpoints (line-specific, conditional, and once-only), watch conditions and variables, and interrupts. Distributed-debugging features address issues inherent in distributed programming such as migration and communication. These capabilities make debugging distributed programs difficult because they add complexities like race conditions to the set of problems a program can encounter. This paper discusses how AGDB uses distributed debugging features to debug agents.

Some Relationships Between Foies And Sigma 1 1 Arity Hierarchies, Guozhu Dong, Limsoon Wong

Kno.e.sis Publications

No abstract provided.

Ua66/3/2 Computer Science Alumni Newsletter, Vol. 10, Wku Computer Science

WKU Administration Documents

Newsletter created by WKU Computer Science for alumni of the program.

Wright State University College Of Engineering And Computer Science Bits And Pcs Newsletter, Volume 13, Number 2, February 1997, College Of Engineering And Computer Science, Wright State University

BITs and PCs Newsletter

A twelve page newsletter created by the Wright State University College of Engineering and Computer Science that addresses the current affairs of the college.

An Efficient Scheme For A Distributed Video Retrieval System For Remote Users, Fillia Makedon, James Matthews, Charles Owen, Samuel Rebelsky

Computer Science Technical Reports

The new era of digital video and multimedia technologies has created the potential for large libraries of digital video. With this new technology come the challenges of creating usable means by which such large and diverse depositories of digital information (digital libraries) can be efficiently queried and accessed so that (a) the response is fast, (b) the communication over the Internet is minimal and (c) the retrieval is characterized by high precision and recall. In this paper we discuss how existing digital video editing tools, together with data compression techniques, can be combined to create a fast, accurate and cost …

Softlab: A Virtual Laboratory Framework For Computational Science, A. C. Catlin, M. G. Gaitatzes, Elias N. Houstis, Z. Ma, S. Markus, Nien-Hwa Wang, S. Weerawarana

Department of Computer Science Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Active Gateway: A Facility For Video Conferencing Traffic Control, Shunge Li, Bharat Bhargava

Department of Computer Science Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Least Space-Time First Scheduling Algorithm : Scheduling Complex Tasks With Hard Deadline On Parallel Machines, Bo-Chao Cheng

Dissertations

Both time constraints and logical correctness are essential to real-time systems and failure to specify and observe a time constraint may result in disaster. Two orthogonal issues arise in the design and analysis of real-time systems: one is the specification of the system, and the semantic model describing the properties of real-time programs; the other is the scheduling and allocation of resources that may be shared by real-time program modules.

The problem of scheduling tasks with precedence and timing constraints onto a set of processors in a way that minimizes maximum tardiness is here considered. A new scheduling heuristic, Least …

Safe Code Transfromations For Speculative Execution In Real-Time Systems, Mohamed Mohamed Younis

Dissertations

Although compiler optimization techniques are standard and successful in non-real-time systems, if naively applied, they can destroy safety guarantees and deadlines in hard real-time systems. For this reason, real-time systems developers have tended to avoid automatic compiler optimization of their code. However, real-time applications in several areas have been growing substantially in size and complexity in recent years. This size and complexity makes it impossible for real-time programmers to write optimal code, and consequently indicates a need for compiler optimization. Recently researchers have developed or modified analyses and transformations to improve performance without degrading worst-case execution times. Moreover, these optimization …

Massively Parallel Reasoning In Transitive Relationship Hierarchies, Yugyung Lee

Dissertations

This research focuses on building a parallel knowledge representation and reasoning system for the purpose of making progress in realizing human-like intelligence. To achieve human-like intelligence, it is necessary to model human reasoning processes by programs. Knowledge in the real world is huge in size, complex in structure, and is also constantly changing even in limited domains. Unfortunately, reasoning algorithms are very often intractable, which means that they are too slow for any practical applications. One technique to deal with this problem is to design special-purpose reasoners. Many past Al systems have worked rather nicely for limited problem sizes, but …

Abstraction Of An Object-Oriented Vocabulary By Providing A Standardized Interface, Hemant Kothavade

Theses

Controlled vocabularies are ubiquitous in varied application fields. They are particularly helpful in the medical field since they can unify disparate terminologies and provide information in a compact, comprehensible manner. In this thesis, we present a mechanism to efficiently retrieve and update knowledge stored in a controlled vocabulary modeled as an Object-Oriented Database (OODB) system. We aim to provide a standardized interface to the vocabulary, such that the implementation details of the vocabulary are transparent to all users. The user of this standardized interface will typically be an application programmer who is trying to provide the vocabulary's knowledge-base to end …

Automated Parallelization Of Discrete State-Space Generation, David M. Nicol, Gianfranco Ciardo

Computer Science Technical Reports

We consider the problem of generating a large state-space in a distributed fashion. Unlike previously proposed solutions that partition the set of reachable states according to a hashing function provided by the user, we explore heuristic methods that completely automate the process. The first step is an initial random walk through the state space to initialize a search tree, duplicated in each processor. Then, the reachability graph is built in a distributed way, using the search tree to assign each newly found state to classes assigned to the available processors. Furthermore, we explore two remapping criteria that attempt to balance …

Structural Issues In Active Rule Systems, James Bailey, Guozhu Dong, Kotagiri Ramamohanarao

Kno.e.sis Publications

Active database systems enhance the functionality of traditional databases through the use of active rules or ‘triggers’. There is little consensus, though, on what components should be included in a rule system. In this paper, the expressive power of some simple active database rule systems is examined and the effect of choosing different features studied. Four important parameters of variation are presented, namely the rule language, the external query language, the meta rule language and the pending rule structure. We show that each of these is highly influential in determining the expressiveness of the rule system as a whole, and …

An Error Handling Framework For The Orbwork Workflow Enactment Service Of Meteor, Davasish Worah, Amit P. Sheth, Krzysztof J. Kochut, John A. Miller

Kno.e.sis Publications

Workflow Management Systems (WFMSs) can be used to re-engineer, streamline, automate, and track organizational processes involving humans and automated information systems. However, the state-of-the-art in workflow technology suffers from a number of limitations that prevent it from being widely used in large-scale mission critical applications. Error handling is one such issue. What makes the task of error handling challenging is the need to deal with errors that appear in various components of a complex distributed application execution environment, including various WFMS components, workflow application tasks of different types, and the heterogeneous computing infrastructure.

In this paper, we discuss a top-down …

A One-Pass Algorithm For Accurately Estimating Quantiles For Disk-Resident Data, Khaled Alsabti, Sanjay Ranka, Vineet Singh

College of Engineering and Computer Science - Former Departments, Centers, Institutes and Projects

The '-quantile of an ordered sequence of data values is the element with rank ' \Theta n, where n is the total number of values. Accurate estimates of quantiles are required for the solution of many practical applications. In this paper, we present a new algorithm for estimating the quantile values for disk-resident data. Our algorithm has the following characteristics: (1) It requires only one pass over the data; (2) It is deterministic; (3) It produces good lower and upper bounds of the true values of the quantiles; (4) It requires no a priori knowledge of the distribution of the …

Concurrent Simulation Of Plasma Reactors, Marc Rieffel, Stephen Taylor, Jerrell Watts, Sadasivan Shankar

College of Engineering and Computer Science - Former Departments, Centers, Institutes and Projects

This paper summarizes the computational techniques behind a novel concurrent simulation method used for studying the neutral flow inside plasma reactors. The technique is intended to cope with low pressure flow (less than 1.5 Torr) in realistic three-dimensional geometries. It is based on the Direct Simulation Monte Carlo method to accurately model rarefied gas flow. The concurrent formulation operates on a broad variety of shared-memory multiprocessors, multicomputers, and networked workstations.

Practical Algorithms For Selection On Coarse-Grained Parallel Computers, Ibraheem Al-Furaih, Srinivas Aluru, Sanjay Goil, Sanjay Ranka

College of Engineering and Computer Science - Former Departments, Centers, Institutes and Projects

In this paper, we consider the problem of selection on coarse-grained distributed memory parallel computers. We discuss several deterministic and randomized algorithms for parallel selection. We also consider several algorithms for load balancing needed to keep a balanced distribution of data across processors during the execution of the selection algorithms. We have carried out detailed implementations of all the algorithms discussed on the CM-5 and report on the experimental results. We demonstrate that the randomized algorithms are superior to their deterministic counterparts.

Integer Sorting Algorithms For Coarse-Grained Parallel Machines, Khaled Alsabti, Sanjay Ranka

College of Engineering and Computer Science - Former Departments, Centers, Institutes and Projects

Integer sorting is a subclass of the sorting problem where the elements have integer values and the largest element is polynomially bounded in the number of elements to be sorted. It is useful for applications in which the size of the maximum value of element to be sorted is bounded. In this paper, we present a new distributed radix-sort algorithm for integer sorting. The structure of our algorithm is similar to radix sort except that it typically requires less number of communication phases. We present experimental results for our algorithm on two distributed memory multiprocessors, the Intel Paragon and the …

The Software Architecture Of A Virtual Distributed Computing Environment, Haluk Topcuoglu, Salim Hariri, Wojtek Furmanski, Jon Valente

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science - All Scholarship

The requirements of grand challenge problems and the deployment of gigabit networks makes the network computing framework an attractive and cost effective computing environment with which to interconnect geographically distributed processing and storage resources. Our project, Virtual Distributed Computing Environment (VDCE), provides a problem-solving environment for high-performance distributed computing over wide area networks. VDCE delivers well-defined library functions that relieve end-users of tedious task implementations and also support reusability. In this paper we present the conceptual design of VDCE software architecture, which is defined in three modules: a) the Application Editor, a user-friendly application development environment that generates the Application …

Parallel Domain Decomposition And Load Balancing Using Space-Filling Curves, Srinivas Aluru, Faith E. Sevilgen

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science - All Scholarship

Partitioning techniques based on space-filling curves have received much recent attention due to their low running time and good load balance characteristics. The basic idea underlying these methods is to order the multidimensional data according to a space-filling curve and partition the resulting one-dimensional order. However, space-filling curves are defined for points that lie on a uniform grid of a particular resolution. It is typically assumed that the coordinates of the points are representable using a fixed number of bits, and the run-times of the algorithms depend upon the number of bits used. In this paper, we present a simple …

A Global Computing Environment For Networked Resources, Haluk Topcuoglu, Salim Hariri

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science - All Scholarship

Current advances in high-speed networks and WWW technologies have made network computing a cost-effective, high-performance computing alternative. New software tools are being developed to utilize efficiently the network computing environment. Our project, called Virtual Distributed Computing Environment (VDCE), is a high-performance computing environment that allows users to write and evaluate networked applications for different hardware and software configurations using a web interface. In this paper we present the software architecture of VDCE by emphasizing application development and specification, scheduling, and execution/runtime aspects.

Hpjava: Data Parallel Extensions To Java, Bryan Carpenter, Guansong Zhang, Geoffrey C. Fox, Xinying Li

Northeast Parallel Architecture Center

We outline an extension of Java for programming with distributed arrays. The basic programming style is Single Program Multiple Data (SPMD), but parallel arrays are provided as new language primitives. Further extensions include three distributed control constructs, the most important being a data-parallel loop construct. Communications involving distributed arrays are handled through a standard library of collective operations. Because the underlying programming model is SPMD programming, direct calls to MPI or other communication packages are also allowed in an HPJava program.

How Secure Transactions Are Achieved On The Internet Using Ssl: An Honors Presentation Of Internet Security Practices And Protocols, Julie Klinefelter

Honors Theses, 1963-2015

The goal of this project is to research and present the security protocol "Secure Sockets Layer" or as it is more commonly referred to, "SSL." SSL is one of the main encryption techniques used by the internet industry to help ensure the secure transfer of information across the internet. It is one of the main encryption techniques currently under review by Internet Engineering Task Force. SSL is comprised of a strict protocol that initiates a secure "session" between two computing devices. The session is established above the transport level (on the OSI model) and encrypts from the session up. Therefore …

A Comparison Of Annealing Techniques For Academic Course Scheduling, M.A. Saleh Elmohamed, Geoffrey C. Fox, Paul Coddington

Northeast Parallel Architecture Center

In this study we have tackled the NP-hard problem of academic class scheduling (or timetabling) at the university level. We have investigated a variety of approaches based on simulated annealing, including mean-field annealing, simulated annealing with three different cooling schedules, and the use of a rule-based preprocessor to provide a good initial solution for annealing. The best results were obtained using simulated annealing with adaptive cooling and reheating as a function of cost, and a rule-based preprocessor. This approach enabled us to obtain valid schedules for the timetabling problem for a large university, using a complex cost function that includes …

A Load Balancing Technique For Multiphase Computations, Jerrell Watts, Marc Rieffel, Stephen Taylor

College of Engineering and Computer Science - Former Departments, Centers, Institutes and Projects

Parallel computations comprised of multiple, tightly interwoven phases of computation may require a different approach to dynamic load balancing than single-phase computations. This paper presents a load sharing method based on the view of load as a vector, rather than as a scalar. This approach allows multiphase computations to achieve higher efficiency on large-scale multicomputers than possible with traditional techniques. Results are presented for two large-scale particle simulations running on 128 nodes of an Intel Paragon and on 256 processors of a Cray T3D, respectively.

Standardization Of A Communication Middleware For High-Performance Real-Time Systems, Arkady Kanevsky, Anthony Skjellum, Jerrell Watts

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science - All Scholarship

The last several years saw an emergence of standardization activities for real-time systems including standardization of operating systems (series of POSIX standards [1]), of communication for distributed (POSIX.21 [10]) and parallel systems (MPI/RT [5]) and real-time object management (realtime CORBA [9]). This article describes the ongoing standardization work and implementation of communication middleware for high performance real-time computing. The real-time message passing interface (MPI/RT) advances the non-real-time high-performance communication standard Message Passing Interface Standard (MPI), emphasizing changes that enable and support real-time communication, and is targeted for embedded, fault-tolerant and other real-time systems. MPI/RT is the only communication middleware layer …

Resource Access Control For An Internet User Agent, Nataraj Nagaratnam, Steven B. Byrne

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science - All Scholarship

The rapid increase in the Internet's connectivity has lead to proportional increase in the development of Web-based applications. Usage of downloadable content has proved effective in a number of emerging applications including electronic commerce, software components on-demand, and collaborative systems. In all these cases, Internet user agents (like browsers, tuners) are widely used by the clients to utilize and execute such downloadable content. With this new technology of using downloadable content comes the problem of the downloaded content obtaining unauthorized access to the client's resources. In effect, granting a hostile remote principal the requested access to client's resources may lead …

Agent-Based Expert Assistance For Visual Problem Solving, Erika Rogers, Robin R. Murphy, Barb Ericson

Computer Science and Software Engineering

This paper presents a domain-independent architecture for facilitating visual problem solving between robots or softbots and humans. The architecture defines virtual and human agents in terms of their inherent cognitive and perceptual abilities, and their weak and strong knowledge sources. It introduces a third agent, an expert assistant called teleVIA, to mediate the flow of information, facilitate cooperation, filter and cache data, and generate the appropriate visual displays. The agent architecture addresses the technical issues of using an expert assistant to coordinate perception, thought, and action, manage sensing and perception, facilitate diagnosis, and to support the collaboration between people and …