Digital Commons Network^™

Design And Measurement Of A Real-Time Peer-To-Peer Game, Michael D. Simonsen

Theses and Dissertations

Currently, multiplayer online games use the client-server architecture which is very resource intensive, expensive, and time consuming. Peer-to-peer protocols are a less resource intensive alternative to the client-server model. We implement a peer-to-peer protocol called NEO in a multiplayer game and run experiments in a lab setting and over the Internet. These experiments show us that NEO is able to run a smooth playable game, with low unused updates and low location error. This happens as long as the arrival delay is long enough to allow updates to arrive in the given time limit and the round length is short …

Development Of A Learning Management System For Ucar-Comet, Dan Riter

Regis University Student Publications (comprehensive collection)

UCAR-COMET creates web-based training modules for professional meteorologists. Prior to the implementation of this project, UCAR-COMET did not have a Learning Management System. A Learning Management System is a web-based system that allows meteorologists to keep track of personal information that relates to each learning module. The Learning Management System also allows the meteorologists' supervisors to monitor this information. Although there are many Learning Management Systems on the market, most are expensive, cannot be customized, and require contract agreements. UCAR-COMET would like to own a web-based system where users can create and manage their own accounts. A user account primarily …

Scouting Ecommerce: Electronic Tracking For Girl Scouts, Melissa Roetker

Regis University Student Publications (comprehensive collection)

Girl Scout Troop #343 relies on parent volunteers to keep the troop functioning. The troop leaders would like to reduce time spent on paperwork, in order to allow volunteers to focus on time spent with the girls. Other than meetings, the most time consuming activity for volunteers is the manual tracking of paperwork. This includes financial paperwork, badge and activity status, personal data, and other such information. Troops are on their own to find a method for maintaining records, without local or national support. Currently, Troop #343 has moved the finances to an electronic format, which has left the badge …

Threading And Autodocumenting News Videos: A Promising Solution To Rapidly Browse News Topics, Xiao Wu, Chong-Wah Ngo, Qing Li

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper describes the techniques in threading and autodocumenting news stories according to topic themes. Initially, we perform story clustering by exploiting the duality between stories and textual-visual concepts through a co-clustering algorithm. The dependency among stories of a topic is tracked by exploring the textual-visual novelty and redundancy of stories. A novel topic structure that chains the dependencies of stories is then presented to facilitate the fast navigation of the news topic. By pruning the peripheral and redundant news stories in the topic structure, a main thread is extracted for autodocumentary

Tacit Knowledge, Nonaka And Takeuchi Seci Model And Informal Knowledge Processes, Siu Loon Hoe

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The organizational behavior and knowledge management literature has devoted a lot attention on how structural knowledge processes enhance learning. There has been little emphasis on the informal knowledge processes and the construct remains undefined. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the importance of informal knowledge processes, propose a definition for these processes and link them to the socialization and internalization processes suggested by Nonaka and Takeuchi in the SECI model. The paper offers a fresh perspective on how informal knowledge processes in organizations help to enhance the organization’s learning capability. It will enable scholars and managers to have …

Agility Measurement Index: A Metric For The Crossroads Of Software Development Methodologies, Subhajit Datta

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Software engineering's journey to maturity has been marked by the advent of different development methodologies. While each paradigm has its context and cognoscenti, project teams are often faced with the choice of one approach over another in the grind of delivering software on time and within budget. In this paper, we briefly review the three major techniques of addressing enterprise software development, namely the Waterfall, Unified and Extreme styles. The metric Agility Measurement Index is then proposed, which helps organizations choose the methodology that best suites a particular project.

Robust Classification Of Eeg Signal For Brain-Computer Interface, Manoj Thulasidas, Cuntai Guan, Jiankang Wu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We report the implementation of a text input application (speller) based on the P300 event related potential. We obtain high accuracies by using an SVM classifier and a novel feature. These techniques enable us to maintain fast performance without sacrificing the accuracy, thus making the speller usable in an online mode. In order to further improve the usability, we perform various studies on the data with a view to minimizing the training time required. We present data collected from nine healthy subjects, along with the high accuracies (of the order of 95% or more) measured online. We show that the …

Crosscutting Score: An Indicator Metric For Aspect Orientation, Subhajit Datta

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP) provides powerful techniques for modeling and implementing enterprise software systems. To leverage its full potential, AOP needs to be perceived in the context of existing methodologies such as Object Oriented Programming (OOP). This paper addresses an important question for AOP practitioners - how to decide whether a component is best modeled as a class or an aspect? Towards that end, we present an indicator metric, the Crosscutting Score and a method for its calculation and interpretation. We will illustrate our approach through a sample calculation.

Application Of Fuzzy State Aggregation And Policy Hill Climbing To Multi-Agent Systems In Stochastic Environments, Dean C. Wardell

Theses and Dissertations

Reinforcement learning is one of the more attractive machine learning technologies, due to its unsupervised learning structure and ability to continually even as the operating environment changes. Applying this learning to multiple cooperative software agents (a multi-agent system) not only allows each individual agent to learn from its own experience, but also opens up the opportunity for the individual agents to learn from the other agents in the system, thus accelerating the rate of learning. This research presents the novel use of fuzzy state aggregation, as the means of function approximation, combined with the policy hill climbing methods of Win …

A Hybrid Scatter Search/Electromagnetism Meta-Heuristic For Project Scheduling, Dieter Debels, Bert De Reyck, Roel Leus, Mario Vanhoucke

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In the last few decades, several effective algorithms for solving the resource-constrained project scheduling problem have been proposed. However, the challenging nature of this problem, summarised in its strongly NP-hard status, restricts the effectiveness of exact optimisation to relatively small instances. In this paper, we present a new meta-heuristic for this problem, able to provide near-optimal heuristic solutions for relatively large instances. The procedure combines elements from scatter search, a generic population-based evolutionary search method, and from a recently introduced heuristic method for the optimisation of unconstrained continuous functions based on an analogy with electromagnetism theory. We present computational …

Fortifying Password Authentication In Integrated Healthcare Delivery Systems, Yanjiang Yang, Robert H. Deng, Feng Bao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Integrated Delivery Systems (IDSs) now become a primary means of care provision in healthcare domain. However, existing password systems (under either the single-server model or the multi-server model) do not provide adequate security when applied to IDSs. We are thus motivated to present a practical password authentication system built upon a novel two-server model. We generalize the two-server model to an architecture of a single control server supporting multiple service servers, tailored to the organizational structure of IDSs. The underlying user authentication and key exchange protocols we propose are password-only, neat, efficient, and robust against off-line dictionary attacks mounted by …

Caps: Energy-Efficient Processing Of Continuous Aggregate Queries In Sensor Networks, Wen Hu, Archan Misra, Rajiv Shorey

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper, we design and evaluate an energy efficient data retrieval architecture for continuous aggregate queries in wireless sensor networks. We show how the modification of precision in one sensor affects the sample-reporting frequency of other sensors, and how the precisions of a group of sensors may be collectively modified to achieve the target quality of information (QoI) with higher energy-efficiency. The proposed collective adaptive precision setting (CAPS) architecture is then extended to exploit the observed temporal correlation among successive sensor samples for even greater energy efficiency. Detailed simulations with synthetic and real data traces demonstrate how the combination …

A Monocular Vision Based Approach To Flocking, Brian Kirchner

Theses and Dissertations

Flocking is seen in nature as a means for self protection, more efficient foraging, and other search behaviors. Although much research has been done regarding the application of this principle to autonomous vehicles, the majority of the research has relied on GPS information, broadcast communication, an omniscient central controller, or some other form of "global" knowledge. This approach, while effective, has serious drawbacks, especially regarding stealth, reliability, and biological grounding. This research effort uses three Pioneer P2-AT8 robots to achieve flocking behavior without the use of global knowledge. The sensory inputs are limited to two cameras, offset such that the …

Publicly Verifiable Ownership Protection For Relational Databases, Yingjiu Li, Robert H. Deng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Today, watermarking techniques have been extended from the multimedia context to relational databases so as to protect the ownership of data even after the data are published or distributed. However, all existing watermarking schemes for relational databases are secret key based, thus require a secret key to be presented in proof of ownership. This means that the ownership can only be proven once to the public (e.g., to the court). After that, the secret key is known to the public and the embedded watermark can be easily destroyed by malicious users. Moreover, most of the existing techniques introduce distortions to …

Learning Real-Time A* Path Planner For Unmanned Air Vehicle Target Sensing, Jason K. Howlett, Timothy W. Mclain, Michael A. Goodrich

Faculty Publications

This paper presents a path planner for sensing closely-spaced targets from a fixed-wing unmanned air vehicle (UAV) having a specified sensor footprint. The planner is based on the learning real-time A* (LRTA*) search algorithm and produces dynamically feasible paths that accomplish the sensing objectives in the shortest possible distance. A tree of candidate paths that span the area of interest is created by assembling primitive turn and straight sections of a specified step size in a sequential fashion from the starting position of the UAV. An LRTA* search of the tree produces feasible paths any time during its execution and …

Creation Of Crm Selection Methodology For The Aerospace & Defense Industry, Reggie Arsenault

Regis University Student Publications (comprehensive collection)

The Aerospace and Defense Industry is rebounding from one of the worst financial downturns in the history of the market. What has emerged is a realization that the future for Aerospace and Defense manufacturing requires a focus on “services†versus supplying high quality products alone. In order to support such a complex offering of products and services, manufacturing organizations in the Aerospace and Defense Industry must migrate to a customer-centric business structure within their people, processes, and tools. To support the shift, companies must deploy a robust, enterprise, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) technology. The difficulty is in the selection process …

Velocal: A Web-Based Cycling Event Scheduler: A Web-Based Cycling Event Scheduler, Karl Olson

Regis University Student Publications (comprehensive collection)

This project focused on the creation of a web-based ride scheduling application for Cycling Friends of Fort Collins (CFFC). The CFFC is a recently organized non-competitive bicycling club founded with the purpose of facilitating rides of a variety of levels and encouraging cyclists to ride together. The primary goal of this application is to allow any user to schedule a group ride and send email notification and reminders of the event to all interested members. Individuals can then optionally respond with their attendance intentions. Providing an easy interface to schedule events will encourage more group rides and help foster a …

Unix Remote Access Via Ibm S/390 System, Selena Pena

Regis University Student Publications (comprehensive collection)

The MSCIT graduate program at Regis University offers UNIX and Information Assurance courses for all graduate students. In addition, the program gives students the opportunity to participate in the Systems Engineering and Application Development Practicum (SEAD) to complete their professional project/thesis. Due to the limited number of UNIX systems available, the graduate and SEAD students have a limited environment to work on. The UNIX and Information Assurance classes share the Acadunix UNIX server to complete lab work and homework assignments. Some students have limited root access via "sudo." Students cannot practice remote commands and can't use networking tools because another …

Design & Develop A Satellite Telemetry Display Application, Kelly J. Stuhlsatz

Regis University Student Publications (comprehensive collection)

The purpose of this thesis project is to design and implement an extensible and adaptable GUI for viewing satellite telemetry. The software available today to view satellite telemetry is very crude, hard to understand, and is not very reliable. Software is usually built from scratch for each new satellite system. This project will build a GUI that can be used to display all types of satellite telemetry. The GUI will be built in Java, have an easy to use interface, and be very customizable. The GUI will allow users to run the software on Windows and UNIX based operating systems. …

Using Augmented Virtuality To Improve Human-Robot Interactions, Curtis W. Nielsen

Theses and Dissertations

Mobile robots can be used in situations and environments that are distant from an operator. In order for an operator to control a robot effectively he or she requires an understanding of the environment and situation around the robot. Since the robot is at a remote distant from the operator and cannot be directly observed, the information necessary for an operator to develop an understanding or awareness of the robot's situation comes from the user interface. The usefulness of the interface depends on the manner in which the information from the remote environment is presented. Conventional interfaces for interacting with …

Support For Xml Markup Of Image-Based Electronic Editions, Alex Dekhtyar, Ionut E. Iacob, Jerzy W. Jaromczyk, Kevin Kiernan, Neil Moore, Dorothy Carr Porter

Computer Science and Software Engineering

Image-based electronic editions enable researchers to view and study in an electronic environment historical manuscript images intricately linked to edition, transcript, glossary and apparatus files. Building image-based electronic editions poses a two-fold challenge. For humanities scholars, it is important to be able to use image and text to successfully encode the desired features of the manuscripts. Computer Scientists must find mechanisms for representing markup in its association both with the images, text and other auxiliary files and for making the representation available for efficient querying. This paper addresses the architecture of one such solution, that uses efficient data structures to …

A Modular Onboard Processing System For Small Unmanned Vehicles, Richard D. Garcia

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This work describes the design and implementation of a generic lightweight onboard processing system for miniature Unmanned Vehicles (UVs) that is computationally powerful and highly adaptable. First, several classical approaches to giant scale and full size UV onboard processing systems are described along with their corresponding limitations. Second, a detailed study is presented that describes the key characteristics of an onboard system along with associated limitations. Next, an implementation of a generic onboard system capable of vision processing and servo based control is presented along with detailed hardware specifications and implementation software. Last, experimental data, both laboratory and field, are …

Path Planning Algorithms Under The Link-Distance Metric, David Phillip Wagner

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

The Traveling Salesman Problem and the Shortest Path Problem are famous problems in computer science which have been well studied when the objective is measured using the Euclidean distance. Here we examine these geometric problems under a different set of optimization criteria. Rather than considering the total distance traversed by a path, this thesis looks at reducing the number of times a turn is made along that path, or equivalently, at reducing the number of straight lines in the path. Minimizing this objective value, known as the link-distance, is useful in situations where continuing in a given direction is cheap, …

Journal Of Combinatorial Optimization: Editorial, Maggie Xiaoyan Cheng

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

No abstract provided.

Scalable Authentication Of Mpeg-4 Streams, Yongdong Wu, Robert H. Deng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper presents three scalable and efficient schemes for authenticating MPEG-4 streams: the Flat Authentication Scheme, the Progressive Authentication Scheme, and the Hierarchical Authentication Scheme. All the schemes allow authentication of MPEG-4 streams over lossy networks by integrating seamlessly digital signatures and erasure correction coding with MPEG-4's fine granular scalability. A prominent feature of our schemes is their "sign once, verify many ways" property, i.e., they generate only one digital signature per compressed MPEG-4 object group, but allow clients to verify the authenticity of any down-scaled version of the original signed object group.

Energy Efficiency And Capacity For Tcp Traffic In Multi-Hop Wireless Networks, Sorav Bansal, Rajeev Shorey, Rajeev Gupta, Archan Misra

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We study the performance metrics associated with TCP-regulated traffic in multi-hop, wireless networks that use a common physical channel (e.g., IEEE 802.11). In contrast to earlier analyses, we focus simultaneously on two key operating metrics—the energy efficiency and the transport-layer (TCP) throughput. Using analysis and simulations, we show how these metrics are strongly influenced by the radio transmission range of individual nodes. Due to tradeoffs between the individual packet transmission energy and the likelihood of retransmissions, the total energy consumption is a convex function of the number of hops (and hence, of the transmission range). On the other hand, the …

Text Mining With Exploitation Of User's Background Knowledge : Discovering Novel Association Rules From Text, Xin Chen

Dissertations

The goal of text mining is to find interesting and non-trivial patterns or knowledge from unstructured documents. Both objective and subjective measures have been proposed in the literature to evaluate the interestingness of discovered patterns. However, objective measures alone are insufficient because such measures do not consider knowledge and interests of the users. Subjective measures require explicit input of user expectations which is difficult or even impossible to obtain in text mining environments.

This study proposes a user-oriented text-mining framework and applies it to the problem of discovering novel association rules from documents. The developed system, uMining, consists of two …

Color Image Quality Measures And Retrieval, Yan-Yu Fu

Dissertations

The focus of this dissertation is mainly on color image, especially on the images with lossy compression. Issues related to color quantization, color correction, color image retrieval and color image quality evaluation are addressed. A no-reference color image quality index is proposed. A novel color correction method applied to low bit-rate JPEG image is developed. A novel method for content-based image retrieval based upon combined feature vectors of shape, texture, and color similarities has been suggested. In addition, an image specific color reduction method has been introduced, which allows a 24-bit JPEG image to be shown in the 8-bit color …

Leadership In Technical Resources And Teams, Mike Bush

Regis University Student Publications (comprehensive collection)

In today's business environment, organizations look to technology to solve a myriad of issues. These issues range from 24 X 7 X 365 shopping hours via the internet to dashboards that indicate the health of the business to knowledge management implementations where timely, accurate access to organizational knowledge is available. In all cases, the technology enables the business functions. Because of this reliance, technical resources and technical teams are expected to display leadership in actions, in thinking and on an equal plane as their business person counterparts. Most Master of Business Administration programs require a "Ëœmanagement' or a "Ëœleadership' section …

A User-Centric Tabular Multi-Column Sorting Interface For Intact Transposition Of Columnar Data, David B. L. Miles

Theses and Dissertations

Many usability features designed in software applications are not procedurally intuitive for software users. A good example of software usability involves tabular sorting in a spreadsheet. Single-column sorting, activated with a mouse click to a column header or toolbar button, often produces rearranged listings that reduce cognitive organization beyond the sorted column. Multi-column sorting, generated through menu-driven processes, provides derived organization, however, locating feature options through menu-based systems can be confusing. A means to overcome this confusion is prioritized selection of database arrays issued to columnar displays for the purpose of intact transposition of data. This is a unique process …