Digital Commons Network^™

Process Modeling Using Proslcse On Web-Enabled Platform, Orcan Ali Enunlu

Theses

Process modeling is a relatively complex task that needs to be addressed from a different point of view. The classical approach would be to design the model, to send it for evaluation, then to return feedback to the developing team, and to reevaluate the model with the feedback received from the parties involved.

However, it is our understanding that the steps taken during the process modeling could benefit from the advantages that the Internet offers. To demonstrate the usefulness of Internet in process modeling, I have taken an existing tool, ProSLCSE, and implemented it with Java so that it can …

Method Engineering For Web Information Systems Development: Challenges And Issues, Keng Siau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Despite the rapid advancement of technology in the last few decades, accurate, on-time, and on-budget completion of information systems development projects is still a vision rather than a reality. The software crisis is still very much alive almost forty years after it was first defined. The sudden popularity of Internet and electronic commerce pose a new challenge to the software engineering community. With the increasing importance of electronic commerce and $3 billion in sales expected to take place over cyberspace by the year 2000, organizations will be competing to design and develop web-based applications. However, existing information modeling methods might …

On Agent Communication In Large Groups, Gary R. Greenfield

Department of Math & Statistics Technical Report Series

The problem is fundamental and natural, yet deep - to simulate the simplest possible form of communication that can occur within a large multi-agent system. It would be prohibitive to try and survey all of the research on "communication" in general so we must restrict our focus. We will devote our efforts to synthetic communication occurring within large groups. In particular, we would like to discover a model for communication that will serve as an abstract model, a prototype, for simulating communication within large groups of biological organisms.

Computer-Aided Mechanical Design Using Configuration Spaces, Leo Joskowicz, Elisha Sacks

Department of Computer Science Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Architectural Optimization Of Digital Libraries, Aileen O. Biser

Computer Science Theses & Dissertations

This work investigates performance and scaling issues relevant to large scale distributed digital libraries. Presently, performance and scaling studies focus on specific implementations of production or prototype digital libraries. Although useful information is gained to aid these designers and other researchers with insights to performance and scaling issues, the broader issues relevant to very large scale distributed libraries are not addressed. Specifically, no current studies look at the extreme or worst case possibilities in digital library implementations. A survey of digital library research issues is presented. Scaling and performance issues are mentioned frequently in the digital library literature but are …

Search For Sleptons In E+E- Collisions At Centre-Of-Mass Energies Up To 184 Gev Aleph Collaboration, R. Barate, Manoj Thulasidas

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The data collected by the ALEPH experiment at LEP at centre–of–mass energies around 183 GeV are analysed to search for sleptons, the partners of leptons in supersymmetric theories. The previously published search for acoplanar leptons and missing energy has been updated. New searches have been developed to cover a wider range of slepton signals. These include single electrons, acoplanar leptons accompanied by two photons plus missing energy as well as particles with lifetime. No evidence for the production of any such particles is found. Slepton mass limits are reported within gravity mediated and gauge mediated SUSY breaking scenarios.

Scalar Quark Searches In E+E- Collisions At √S = 181 - 184 Gev, Barate, R.; Et Al., M. Thulasidas

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Searches for scalar top, scalar bottom and degenerate scalar quarks have been performed with data collected with the ALEPH detector at LEP. The data sample consists of 57 pb−1 taken at s = 181–184 GeV. No evidence for scalar top, scalar bottom or degenerate scalar quarks was found in the channels t̃→cχ, t̃→bℓν̃, b̃→bχ, and q̃→qχ. From the channel t̃→cχ a limit of 74 GeV/c2has been set on the scalar top quark mass, independent of the mixing angle. This limit assumes a mass difference between the t̃ and the χ in the range 10–40 GeV/c2. From the channel t̃→bℓν̃ the …

The Forward-Backward Asymmetry For Charm Quarks At The Z, R. Barate, Manoj Thulasidas

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

From 1.4 million hadronic Z decays collected by the ALEPH detector at LEP, an enriched sample of Z → cc̄ events is extracted by requiring the presence of a high momentum D∗±. The charm quark forward-backward charge asymmetry at the Z pole is measured to be AFB0.c = (8.0 ± 2.4) % corresponding to an effective electroweak mixing angle of sin2θWeff = 0.2302 ± 0.0054.

Octary Codewords With Power Envelopes Of 3∗2M, Katherine M. Nieswand, Kara N. Wagner

Department of Math & Statistics Technical Report Series

This paper examines codewords of length 2^m in Z₈ with envelope power maxima of 3 ∗ 2^m. Using the general form for Golay pairs as a base, a general form is derived for the set of coset leaders that generate these codewords. From this general form it will be proven that there exists at least one element in the coset that achieves a power of 3 ∗ 2^m for each m-even and m-odd case.

Information Storage Capacity Of Incompletely Connected Associative Memories, Holger Bosch, Franz J. Kurfess

Computer Science and Software Engineering

In this paper, the memory capacity of incompletely connected associative memories is investigated. First, the capacity is derived for memories with fixed parameters. Optimization of the parameters yields a maximum capacity between 0.53 and 0.69 for hetero-association and half of it for auto-association improving previously reported results. The maximum capacity grows with increasing connectivity of the memory and requires sparse input and output patterns. Further, parameters can be chosen in such a way that the information content per pattern asymptotically approaches 1 with growing size of the memory.

Fuzzy Logic Applied To System Control To Enhance Commercial Appliance Performance, Glenn Moffett

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this research is to determine the usefulness of fuzzy logic and fuzzy control when applied to a commercial appliance. Fuzzy logic is a structured, model-free estimator that approximates a function through linguistic input/output associations. Fuzzy rule-based systems apply these methods to solve many types of "real-world" problems, especially where a system is difficult to model, is controlled by a human operator or expert, or where ambiguity or vagueness is common.

This dissertation presents fuzzy sets, fuzzy systems, and fuzzy control, with an example conveying the use of fuzzy control of a consumer product and an overview of …

Analyzing The Effects Of Display Characteristics And Cognitive Variables On Performance Using Keystroke And Eye Movement Data, Orhan E. Beckman

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Information about how operators use their eyes while interacting with visual displays is often an overlooked aspect of human-computer interaction. Such information is fundamental to assessing the quality of software interfaces and understanding the cognitive processes that underlie operator behavior. Other research evaluating information displays evolved from using reaction time and subjective data as dependent variables to using oculometric measures. In the current research conventional performance measures are coupled with oculometric measures to evaluate the influence display characteristics and cognitive variables have on performance.

Twelve subjects used a software program to complete a series of specified tasks. Subjects were asked …

Minimizing The Diameter In Tree Networks Under Edge Reductions, Susanne E. Hambrusch, Hyeong-Seok Lim

Department of Computer Science Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Multiple Streams Synchronization In Collaborative Multimedia Systems, Emilia Stoica

Computer Science Theses & Dissertations

With the recent increase of the communication bandwidth and processor power, new types of applications have emerged. Among them, there are multimedia application, in which users are able to control, combine, and manipulate different types of media, such as text, sound, video, computer graphics, and animation. A key requirement in any multimedia application is to synchronize the delivery of various media streams to the user. To achieve this, the sender has to provide the temporal relations between the streams as they are captured. Since the receiver uses this information in streams presentation, its accuracy is very important.

Our main contribution …

Coupled Electrodynamic-Monte Carlo Simulations Of Nanoscale Gaas Terahertz Optical Mixers, Jiang Li

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The concept of mixing or heterodyning has traditionally been used for microwaves and for radio frequency communications. However, the concept can easily be extended into the optical frequency regime. By doing so, the photomixing process can serve as a very versatile tool for both the generation of ultrahigh frequency (terahertz) and the detection of weak optical signals.

The aim of this thesis is to perform a theoretical study of the photomixing process inside GaAs devices as the non-linear elements. A coupled approach which combines the Monte Carlo simulation scheme for the carrier transport, with Maxwell's equation for the electrodynamics, has …

Quality Of Service Semantics For Multimedia Database Systems, Jonathan Walpole, Charles Krasic, Ling Liu, David Maier, Calton Pu, Dylan Mcnamee, David Steere

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Quality of service (QoS) support has been a hot research topic in multimedia databases, and multimedia systems in general, for the past several years. However, there remains little consensus on how QoS support should be provided. At the resource-management level, systems designers are still debating the suitability of reservation- based versus adaptive QoS management. The design of higher system layers is less clearly understood, and the specification of QoS requirements in domain-specific terms is still an open research topic. To address these issues, we propose a QoS model for multimedia databases. The model covers the specification of user-level QoS preferences …

Multiple Media Correlation: Theory And Applications, Charles B. Owen

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

This thesis introduces multiple media correlation, a new technology for the automatic alignment of multiple media objects such as text, audio, and video. This research began with the question: what can be learned when multiple multimedia components are analyzed simultaneously? Most ongoing research in computational multimedia has focused on queries, indexing, and retrieval within a single media type. Video is compressed and searched independently of audio, text is indexed without regard to temporal relationships it may have to other media data. Multiple media correlation provides a framework for locating and exploiting correlations between multiple, potentially heterogeneous, media streams. The goal …

Boosting A Simple Weak Learner For Classifying Handwritten Digits, Matthew P. Carter

Dartmouth College Undergraduate Theses

A weak PAC learner is one which takes labeled training examples and produces a classifier which can label test examples more accurately than random guessing. A strong learner (also known as a PAC learner), on the other hand, is one which takes labeled training examples and produces a classifier which can label test examples arbitrarily accurately. Schapire has constructively proved that a strong PAC learner can be derived from a weak PAC learner. A performance boosting algorithm takes a set of training examples and a weak PAC learning algorithm and generates a strong PAC learner. Our research attempts to solve …

Multiscouting: Guiding Distributed Manipulation With Multiple Mobile Sensors, Michael G. Ross

Dartmouth College Undergraduate Theses

This thesis investigates the use of multiple mobile sensors to guide the motion of a distributed manipulation system. In our system, multiple robots cooperatively place a large object at a goal in a dynamic, unstructured, unmapped environment. We take the system developed in [Rus, Kabir, Kotay, Soutter 1996], which employs a single mobile sensor for navigational tasks, and extend it to allow the use of multiple mobile sensors. This allows the system to perform successful manipulations in a larger class of spaces than was possible in the single scout model. We focus on the development of a negotiation protocol that …

Distributed Route Planning Using Partial Map Building, Christine J. Alvarado

Dartmouth College Undergraduate Theses

Our goal is to manipulate and guide an object across an unknown environment toward a goal in a known location in space. Our tools include a system of manipulation robots, which are "blind" and one mobile scout robot who relies on a series of sonar sensors for information about the environment. Previous solutions to this problem have taken a simultaneous guiding and manipulating approach, moving the whole system under the scout's guidance. My approach, however, presents a separate scouting algorithm that can return a series of coordinates through which the manipulation system can safely pass to reach the goal in …

The Effects Of Singular Value Decomposition On Collaborative Filtering, Michael H. Pryor

Dartmouth College Undergraduate Theses

As the information on the web increases exponentially, so do the efforts to automatically filter out useless content and to search for interesting content. Through both explicit and implicit actions, users define where their interests lie. Recent efforts have tried to group similar users together in order to better use this data to provide the best overall filtering capabilities to everyone. This thesis discusses ways in which linear algebra, specifically the singular value decomposition, can be used to augment these filtering capabilities to provide better user feedback. The goal is to modify the way users are compared with one another, …

Avoiding Conflicts Dynamically In Direct Mapped Caches With Minimal Hardware Support, Peter N. Desantis

Dartmouth College Undergraduate Theses

The memory system is often the weakest link in the performance of today's computers. Cache design has received increasing attention in recent years as increases in CPU performance continues to outpace decreases in memory latency. Bershad et al. proposed a hardware modification called the Cache Miss Lookaside buffer which attempts to dynamically identify data which is conflicting in the cache and remap pages to avoid future conflicts. In a follow-up paper, Bershad et al. tried to modify this idea to work with standard hardware but had less success than with their dedicated hardware. In this thesis, we focus on a …

Parallel Linear Congruential Generators With Prime Moduli, Michael Mascagni

Faculty Publications

Linear congruential generators (LCGs) remain the most popular method of pseudorandom number generation on digital computers. Ease of implementation has favored implementing LCGs with power-of-two moduli. However, prime modulus LCGs are superior in quality to power-of-two modulus LCGs, and the use of a Mersenne prime minimizes the computational cost of generation. When implemented for parallel computation, quality becomes an even more compelling issue. We use a full-period exponential sum as the measure of stream independence and present a method for producing provably independent streams of LCGs in parallel by utilizing an explicit parameterization of all of the primitive elements module …

Automated Estimation Of Relaxation For Interface Relaxation, John R. Rice, P. Tsompanopoulou, E. Vavalis

Department of Computer Science Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Lazy Algorithms In Parallel Discrete Event Simulation, Reuben Pasquini

Department of Computer Science Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Efficient Parallel Algorithms For Planar St-Graphs, Mikhail J. Atallah, Danny Z. Chen, Ovidiu Daescu

Department of Computer Science Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Empirical Studies Of A Safe Regression Test Selection Technique, Gregg Rothermel, Mary Jean Harrold

School of Computing: Faculty Publications

Regression testing is an expensive testing procedure utilized to validate modified software. Regression test selection techniques attempt to reduce the cost of regression testing by selecting a subset of a program’s existing test suite. Safe regression test selection techniques select subsets that, under certain well-defined conditions, exclude no tests (from the original test suite) that if executed would reveal faults in the modified software. Many regression test selection techniques, including several safe techniques, have been proposed, but few have been subjected to empirical validation. This paper reports empirical studies on a particular safe regression test selection technique, in which the …

Location Independent Names For Nomadic Computers, David Steere, Mark Morrissey, Peter Geib, Calton Pu, Jonathan Walpole

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Recent advances in the Domain Name System (DNS) and the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) have enabled a new approach to supporting mobile users: location independent naming. In this approach, machines use the same hostname from any internet location, but use an IP address that corresponds to their current location. We describe a protocol that implements location independent naming for nomadic computers, i.e., machines that do not need transparent mobility. Our protocol allows hosts to move across security domains, uses existing protocols, and preserves existing trust relationships. Therefore, it preserves the performance and security of normal IP for nomadic computers …

Querying Structured Web Resources, Ee Peng Lim, Cheng Hai Tan, Boon Wan Lim, Wee-Keong Ng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

To provide query facilities over Web resources, several web search engines such as Yahoo, Altavista, Infoseek, etc. have been developed. Most prominently, web search engines have been used to index all web pages on the Internet. The queries supported by these search engines are mainly designed to reveal web pages that meet the search criteria specified by the users. In this way, the search engines have been used as some kind of discovery tools. The queries supported are known as discovery queries. On the other hand, a web search engine can also be used to index and support queries over …

A Measurement Of The Inclusive B → Sγ Branching Ratio, R. Barate, Manoj Thulasidas

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The avour changing neutral current decay b ! s has been detected in hadronic Z decays collected by ALEPH at LEP. The signal is isolated in lifetime-tagged b b events by the presence of a hard photon associated with a system of high momentum and high rapidity hadrons. The background processes are normalised from the data themselves. The inclusive branching ratio is measured to be (3:11 0:80stat 0:72syst) 104 ; consistent with the Standard Model expectation via penguin processes