Digital Commons Network^™

On Time Synchronization In Multi-Hop Sensor Networks, Ossama Younis, Sonia Fahmy

Department of Computer Science Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

An Inconsistency Sensitive Arrangement Algorithm For Algebraic Curves, Victor Milenkovic, Elisha Sacks

Department of Computer Science Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Quantifying Software Maintainability On Re-Engineered Translation Of Fortran To C++ Code, Zane Grey Tomlinson Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

Due to the expanding existence of old software, legacy systems, and obsolete platforms with many industries, software re-engineering has become a widespread methodology that assists engineers and software practitioners with translating inflexible, unsupportable legacy software into maintainable software. Many companies today are investing in a variety of re-engineering techniques such as translation of source code to new code structures and target platforms to ensure future software maintenance can be performed in an efficient and effective manner. With sound re-engineering principles, the application of these techniques leverage the knowledge and previous engineering endeavors to mitigate risks and provide adequate performance to …

Silhouette Lookup For Automatic Pose Tracking, Nicholas Howe

Computer Science: Faculty Publications

Computers should be able to detect and track the articulated 3-D pose of a human being moving through a video sequence. Current tracking methods often prove slow and unreliable, and many must be initialized by a human operator before they can track a sequence. This paper introduces a simple yet effective algorithm for tracking articulated pose, based upon looking up observed silhouettes in a collection of known poses. The new algorithm runs quickly, can initialize itself without human intervention, and can automatically recover from critical tracking errors made while tracking previous frames in a video sequence.

Development Of Web Tools For Nlx Simulation Software, Daniel Chai Siriphongs

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

Valuable mathematical equations have developed within biology and other sciences (physics, chemistry, etc.) that model various processes, but the complexity of the equations are not easily understood by students, scientists, and those with limited knowledge of the subject area. Simulation software used to visually explain a model is normally proprietary to the specific model equations and cannot be easily adapted to new models by non-programmers. Simulation software needs to be modular and based upon web technologies so that the software can be run on multiple platforms. The NLX simulation software is a group of Java-based objects that can be combined …

Tournament Versus Fitness Uniform Selection, Shane Legg, Marcus Hutter, Akshat Kumar

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In evolutionary algorithms a critical parameter that must be tuned is that of selection pressure. If it is set too low then the rate of convergence towards the optimum is likely to be slow. Alternatively if the selection pressure is set too high the system is likely to become stuck in a local optimum due to a loss of diversity in the population. The recent Fitness Uniform Selection Scheme (FUSS) is a conceptually simple but somewhat radical approach to addressing this problem - rather than biasing the selection towards higher fitness, FUSS biases selection towards sparsely populated fitness levels. In …

Steganographic Schemes For File System And B-Tree, Hwee Hwa Pang, Kian-Lee Tan, Xuan Zhou

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

While user access control and encryption can protect valuable data from passive observers, these techniques leave visible ciphertexts that are likely to alert an active adversary to the existence of the data. We introduce StegFD, a steganographic file driver that securely hides user-selected files in a file system so that, without the corresponding access keys, an attacker would not be able to deduce their existence. Unlike other steganographic schemes proposed previously, our construction satisfies the prerequisites of a practical file system in ensuring the integrity of the files and maintaining efficient space utilization. We also propose two schemes for implementing …

New Techniques For Improving Biological Data Quality Through Information Integration, Katherine Grace Herbert

Dissertations

As databases become more pervasive through the biological sciences, various data quality concerns are emerging. Biological databases tend to develop data quality issues regarding data legacy, data uniformity and data duplication. Due to the nature of this data, each of these problems is non-trivial and can cause many problems for the database. For biological data to be corrected and standardized, methods and frameworks must be developed to handle both structural and traditional data.

The BIG-AJAX framework has been developed for solving these problems through both data cleaning and data integration. This framework exploits declarative data cleaning and exploratory data mining …

Relationship Analysis : Improving The Systems Analysis Process, Joseph Thomas Catanio

Dissertations

A significant aspect of systems analysis involves discovering and representing entities and their inter-relationships. Guidelines exist to identify entities but do not provide a rigorous and comprehensive process to explicitly capture the relationship structure of the problem domain. Whereas, other analysis techniques lightly address the relationship discovery process, Relationship Analysis is the only systematic, domain-independent analysis technique focusing exclusively on a domain's relationship structure.

The quality of design artifacts, such as class diagrams, and development time necessary to generate these artifacts can be improved by first representing the complete relationship structure of the problem domain. The Relationship Analysis Model is …

Efficient Similarity Search In High-Dimensional Data Spaces, Yue Li

Dissertations

Similarity search in high-dimensional data spaces is a popular paradigm for many modern database applications, such as content based image retrieval, time series analysis in financial and marketing databases, and data mining. Objects are represented as high-dimensional points or vectors based on their important features. Object similarity is then measured by the distance between feature vectors and similarity search is implemented via range queries or k-Nearest Neighbor (k-NN) queries.

Implementing k-NN queries via a sequential scan of large tables of feature vectors is computationally expensive. Building multi-dimensional indexes on the feature vectors for k-NN search also tends to be unsatisfactory …

A Discovery And Analysis Of Influencing Factors Of Pair Programming, Kyungsub Steve Choi

Dissertations

The exploration into the underlying psychosocial links of pair programming. a new and unorthodox programming paradigm in which two programmers share one keyboard and monitor during real-time programming sessions, is undertaken. These complex psychosocial relationships, along with cognitive process exchanges, ultimately mold the programming output as well as determine the level of communication, satisfaction. confidence and compatibility. Laying the framework for this research, a through review of traditional and contemporary paradigms with a special focus on their limitations and a list of current software development problems are presented. Next, a detailed summary of pair programming and related agile software paradigms, …

On Ip Over Wdm Burst-Switched Long Haul And Metropolitan Area Networks, Jingxuan Liu

Dissertations

The IP over Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) network is a natural evolution ushered in by the phenomenal advances in networking technologies and technical breakthroughs in optical communications, fueled by the increasing demand in the reduction of operation costs and the network management complexity. The unprecedented bandwidth provisioning capability and the multi-service supportability of the WDM technology, in synergy with the data-oriented internetworking mechanisms, facilitates a common shared infrastructure for the Next Generation Internet (NGJ).

While NGI targets to perform packet processing directly on the optical transport layer, a smooth evolution is critical to success. Intense research has been conducted to …

Studies Of Disk Arrays Tolerating Two Disk Failures And A Proposal For A Heterogeneous Disk Array, Chunqi Han

Dissertations

There has been an explosion in the amount of generated data in the past decade. Online access to these data is made possible by large disk arrays, especially in the RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) paradigm. According to the RAID level a disk array can tolerate one or more disk failures, so that the storage subsystem can continue operating with disk failure(s). RAID 5 is a single disk failure tolerant array which dedicates the capacity of one disk to parity information. The content on the failed disk can be reconstructed on demand and written onto a spare disk. However, …

Participatory Learning Environment : Requirements And Design Analysis, Vikas Manohar Achhpiliya

Theses

The primary purpose of this thesis is to develop the requirements and model preliminary database and class designs for the Participatory Learning Approach Environment (PLAE). The requirements and the designs will be presented for version 1.0 and 2.0 with version 2.0 supporting an enhanced requirements set.

Participatory Learning Approach Environment (PLAE) is an exercise management tool for the Participatory Learning Approach (PLA) - a pedagogy approach based on the theory of constructivism. The PLAE facilitates and enhances learning among students while easing the administrative burden of the instructor and cognitive overload of the students. The theory and concepts on which …

Analysis Of Auf1 Targeted Mrna Sequences, Jiebo Lu

Theses

AUF 1, an A+U rich element (ARE) binding protein, plays an important role in mRNA decay. To identify the mRNAs that interact with AUF 1, mRNA derived from a human cardiac cDNA expression library was purified by AUF 1 affinity chromatography and cloned following RT-PCR. 261 sequences were obtained. The sequences were searched against two protein databases and four nucleic acid databases, and the sequence information and database search results were input into a local Microsoft Access database, BLAST-AUF 1, by Java applets for parsing document. Analysis of protein information by querying BLAST-AUF 1 identified 194 function-known proteins, which were …

Analysis Of Molecular Conformations Using Relative Planes, Deepa S. Pai

Theses

Ring substructures of a drug usually participate actively in binding to the receptor. It is necessary to study the spatial relationship of these molecular recognition features in order to determine the pharmacophore of the drug. This is a particularly difficult problem when the drug is a flexible molecule with many energetically accessible conformations.

In this research an innovative approach to calculate the relative displacement and orientation of every possible pair of rings in a given molecule was designed, tested, and implemented in the "Planes" program. Planes were defined from each of the ring substructures and the displacement and rotation of …

Random Search Conformational Analysis Of Piperazine And Piperadine Analogs Of Gbr12909 : Implicit Aqueous Solvation Effects, William A. Roosma

Theses

The object of this work was to study the effect of solvent on the conformational potential energy surface (PES) of GBR12909 analogs. Local minima on the PES's were found by the Random Search algorithm using the Sybyl molecular modeling package from Tripos, Inc., and an implicit solvent model. Two force-field/charge models were employed in the analysis: the Tripos force field with Gasteiger-Huckel charges and the MMFF94 force field with MMFF94 charges.

The effect of solvent on the location of minima in multi-dimensional torsional angle space was studied by comparison to the vacuum phase results. Minima were plotted in torsional angle …

Review Of Algorithms For Rna Secondary Structure Prediction With Pseudoknots, Ingrid Helene Nielsen

Theses

Pseudoknots are structures that are formed from the base pairing of an RNA secondary loop structure with a complementary base which lies somewhere outside of the loop. The result is a structure, which plays a vital role in cell structure rigidity, regulation of protein synthesis, and in the structural organization of RNA complexes. Deciphering RNA folding patterns would begin to unravel some of the mysteries surrounding the cell and its functions and open a new world to scientists. Many algorithms have been written in this quest to predict RNA's secondary structure but not many have been very successful.

In this …

A Spatiotemporal Query Service For Mobile Users In Sensor Networks, Chenyang Lu, Guoliang Xing, Octav Chipara, Chien-Liang Fok, Sangeeta Bhattacharya

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

This paper presents MobiQuery, a spatiotemporal query service that allows mobile users to periodically gather information from their surrounding areas through a wireless sensor network. A key advantage of MobiQuery lies in its capability to meet stringent spatiotemporal performance constraints crucial to many applications. These constraints include query latency, data freshness and fidelity, and changing query areas due to user mobility. A novel just-in-time prefetching algorithm enables MobiQuery to main-tain robust spatiotemporal guarantees even when nodes op-erate under extremely low duty cycles. Furthermore, it sig-nificantly reduces the storage cost and network contention caused by continuous queries from mobile users. We …

Toward A Sound Integration Of Isabelle With A Combined Decision Procedure, Tom Harke

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

I present work on a project to integrate Isabelle, an extremely versatile interactive proof assistant, with a combined decision procedure, the Cooperating Validity Checker (CVC). Isabelle is sound and flexible, however it is often tedious to use. CVC is fully automatic, but only handles decision problems expressible over a relatively weak set of theories including linear arithmetic, uninterpreted functions, data types, and firstorder quantifier-free logic. My goal is to increase the amount of automation in Isabelle, by making it use CVC as an oracle for such problems, but without compromising Isabelle’s soundness.

In this paper I report on the progress …

Composing Systemic Aspects Into Component-Oriented Doc Middleware, Nanbor Wang

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

The advent and maturation of component-based middleware frameworks have sim-plified the development of large-scale distributed applications by separating system devel-opment and configuration concerns into different aspects that can be specified and com-posed at various stages of the application development lifecycle. Conventional component middleware technologies, such as J2EE [73] and .NET [34], were designed to meet the quality of service (QoS) requirements of enterprise applications, which focus largely on scalability and reliability. Therefore, conventional component middleware specifications and implementations are not well suited for distributed real-time and embedded (DRE) ap-plications with more stringent QoS requirements, such as low latency/jitter, timeliness, and …

Synchronizing Keyframe Facial Animation To Multiple Text-To-Speech Engines And Natural Voice With Fast Response Time, William H. Pechter

Dartmouth College Undergraduate Theses

This thesis aims to create an automated lip-synchronization system for real-time applications. Specifically, the system is required to be fast, consist of a limited number of keyframes with small memory requirements, and create fluid and believable animations that synchronize with text-to-speech engines as well as raw voice data. The algorithms utilize traditional keyframe animation and a novel method of keyframe selection. Additionally, phoneme-to-keyframe mapping, synchronization, and simple blending rules are employed. The algorithms provide blending between keyframe images, borrow information from neighboring phonemes, accentuate phonemes b, p and m, differentiate between keyframes for phonemes with allophonic variations, and provide prosodromic …

Enhancing Expressiveness Of Speech Through Animated Avatars For Instant Messaging And Mobile Phones, Joseph E. Pechter

Dartmouth College Undergraduate Theses

This thesis aims to create a chat program that allows users to communicate via an animated avatar that provides believable lip-synchronization and expressive emotion. Currently many avatars do not attempt to do lip-synchronization. Those that do are not well synchronized and have little or no emotional expression. Most avatars with lip synch use realistic looking 3D models or stylized rendering of complex models. This work utilizes images rendered in a cartoon style and lip-synchronization rules based on traditional animation. The cartoon style, as opposed to a more realistic look, makes the mouth motion more believable and the characters more appealing. …

Final Report For The Darpa/Nsf Interdisciplinary Study On Human–Robot Interaction, Jennifer L. Burke, Robin Roberson Murphy, Erika Rogers, Vladimir J. Lumelsky, Jean Scholtz

Computer Science and Software Engineering

As part of a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency/National Science Foundation study on human–robot interaction (HRI), over sixty representatives from academia, government, and industry participated in an interdisciplinary workshop, which allowed roboticists to interact with psychologists, sociologists, cognitive scientists, communication experts and human–computer interaction specialists to discuss common interests in the field of HRI, and to establish a dialogue across the disciplines for future collaborations. We include initial work that was done in preparation for the workshop, links to keynote and other presentations, and a summary of the findings, outcomes, and recommendations that were generated by the participants. Findings of …

Meteor-S Web Service Annotation Framework, Abhijit A. Patil, Swapna A. Oundhakar, Amit P. Sheth, Kunal Verma

Kno.e.sis Publications

The World Wide Web is emerging not only as an infrastructure for data, but also for a broader variety of resources that are increasingly being made available as Web services. Relevant current standards like UDDI, WSDL, and SOAP are in their fledgling years and form the basis of making Web services a workable and broadly adopted technology. However, realizing the fuller scope of the promise of Web services and associated service oriented architecture will requite further technological advances in the areas of service interoperation, service discovery, service composition, and process orchestration. Semantics, especially as supported by the use of ontologies, …

Text Is Software Too, Alexander Dekhtyar, Jane Huffman Hayes, Tim Menzies

Computer Science and Software Engineering

Software compiles and therefore is characterized by a parseable grammar. Natural language text rarely conforms to prescriptive grammars and therefore is much harder to parse. Mining parseable structures is easier than mining less structured entities. Therefore, most work on mining repositories focuses on software, not natural language text. Here, we report experiments with mining natural language text (requirements documents) suggesting that: (a) mining natural language is not too diffcult, so (b) software repositories should routinely be augmented with all the natural language text used to develop that software.

Classroom Exercises For Grid Services, Amy Apon, Jens Mache, Yuriko Yara, Kurt Landrus

Presentations

No abstract provided.

The Structure Of Optimal Partitions Of Orthogonal Polygons Into Fat Rectangles, Joseph O'Rourke, Geetika Tewari

Computer Science: Faculty Publications

Motivated by a VLSI masking problem, we explore partitions of an orthogonal polygon of n vertices into isothetic rectangles that maximize the shortest rectangle side over all rectangles. Thus no rectangle is "thin"; all rectangles are "fat". We show that such partitions have a rich structure, more complex than what one might at first expect. For example, for partitions all "cuts" of which are anchored on the boundary, sometimes cuts are needed 1/2 or 1/3 of the distance between two polygon edges, but they are never needed at fractions with a larger denominator. Partitions using cuts without any restrictions seem …

Fusion And Perspective Correction Of Multiple Networked Video Sensors, Christopher E. Neely, John W. Lookwood

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

A network of adaptive processing elements has been developed that transforms and fuses video captured from multiple sensors. Unlike systems that rely on end-systems to process data, this system distributes the computation throughout the network in order to reduce overall network bandwidth. The network architecture is scalable because it uses a hierarchy of processing engines to perform signal processing. Nodes within the network can be dynamically reprogrammed in order to compose video from multiple sources, digitally transform camera perspectives, and adapt the video format to meet the needs of specific applications. A prototype has been developed using reconfigurable hardware that …

Run-Time Modification Of The Class Hierachy In A Live Java Development Environment, Joel R. Brandt

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Class hierarchy design is central to object-oriented software development. How-ever, it is sometimes difficult for developers to anticipate all the implications of a design until implementation is underway. To support experimentation with different designs, we extend prior work on live development environments to allow run-time modification of the class hierarchy. The result is a more fluid object-oriented development process, in which immediate feedback from the executing program can be used to guide hierarchy design. This thesis presents a framework and developer support for run-time modification of class inheritance relations in JPie, a live visual programming environment for Java. Most notably, …