Digital Commons Network^™

A Web-Based Prototype For Afit Edplan Administration, Tien-Chen Lee

Theses and Dissertations

This document details the design, development, and evaluation of a prototype course registration and reporting system for the students and faculty of the United States Air Force Institute of Technology. The web-based system provides HTML-based client interfaces and Active Server Page server processes for interaction with the relational databases used to manage course and personnel data. The system prototype was developed following the "Engineering Software Components for Web-Database Access" methodology of Dipiro. A survey of modern web-based database access techniques is first provided and Dipiro's methodology is reviewed as background. The remainder of the document details the application of the …

Searches For The Neutral Higgs Bosons Of The Mssm In E+E- Collisions At Centre-Of-Mass Energies Of 181-184 Gev, Barate, R.; Et Al., M. Thulasidas

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The data collected by ALEPH at LEP at centre-of-mass energies ranging from 181 to 184 GeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 57 pb−1, are analysed to search for pair-produced neutral Higgs bosons h and A, in the bb̄bb̄ and τ+τ−bb̄ final states. Two events are found in the data with 2.5 expected from standard model processes. When combined with the lower energy data collected by ALEPH and with earlier reported searches for associated hZ production, these analyses are interpreted in the context of the minimal supersymmetric extension of the standard model (MSSM). For standard choices of MSSM parameter sets, …

Information Coupling In Web Databases, Sourav S. Bhowmick, Wee-Keong Ng, Ee Peng Lim

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Web information coupling refers to an association of topically related web documents. This coupling is initiated explicitly by a user in a web warehouse specially designed for web information. Web information coupling provides the means to derive additional, useful information from the WWW. In this paper, we discuss and show how two web operators, i.e., global web coupling and local web coupling, are used to associate related web information from the WWW and also from multiple web tables in a web warehouse. This paper discusses various issues in web coupling such as coupling semantics, coupling-compability, and coupling evaluation.

Web Bags: Are They Useful In A Web Warehouse?, Sourav S. Bhowmick, Sanjay Kumar Madria, Wee-Keong Ng, Ee Peng Lim

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Sets and bags are closely related structures. A bag is different from a set in that it is sensitive to the number of times an element occurs while a set is not. In this paper, we introduce the concept of web bag in a web warehouse as a part of our Web Information Coupling System(WICS). Informally, a web bag is a web table which allows multiple occurrences of identical web tuples. Web bag helps to discover useful knowledge from a web table such as visible documents (or web sites), luminous documents and luminous paths. We formally discuss the semantics and …

A Theory Of Satisficing Decisions And Control, Richard L. Frost, Michael A. Goodrich, Wynn C. Stirling

Faculty Publications

The existence of an optimal control policy and the techniques for finding it are grounded fundamentally in a global perspective. These techniques can be of limited value when the global behavior of the system is difficult to characterize, as it may be when the system is nonlinear, when the input is constrained, or when only partial information is available regarding system dynamics or the environment. Satisficing control theory is an alternative approach that is compatible with the limited rationality associated with such systems. This theory is extended by the introduction of the notion of strong satisficing to provide a systematic …

Notepals: Sharing And Synchronizing Handwritten Notes With Multimedia Documents, James A. Landay, Richard C. Davis, Victor Chen, Jonathan Huang, Rebecca B. Lee, Francis Li, James Lin, Charles B. Morrey, Ben Schleimer

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

NotePals is an ink-based, collaborative note taking application that runs on personal digital assistants (PDAs). Meeting participants write notes in their own handwriting on a PDA. These notes are shared with other participants by synchronizing later with a shared note repository that can be viewed using a desktop-based web browser. NotePals is distinguished by its lightweight process, interface, and hardware. This demonstration illustrates the design of two different NotePals clients and our web-based note browser.

A Global Object Model For Accommodating Instance Heterogeneities, Ee Peng Lim, Roger Hsiang-Li Chiang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

To completely address database integration problems in the context of multidatabase [10] and data warehousing systems, one has to examine various integration and query requirements. Due to various reasons such as poor data quality in local databases, ongoing local database updates, and instance heterogeneities, some instance differences have to be accommodated by the integrated databases. We have therefore proposed a new object-oriented global data model, called OORA, that can accommodate attribute and relationship instance heterogeneities in the integrated database. In addition, the OORA model has been designed to allow database integrators and end users to query both the local and …

Web Warehousing System: Design And Issues, Wee-Keong Ng, Ee Peng Lim, Sourav S. Bhowmick, Sanjay Kumar Madria

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The World Wide Web is a distributed global information resource. It contains a large amount of information that have been placed on the web independently by different organizations and thus, related information may appear across different web sites. To manage and access heterogeneous information on WWW, we have started a project of building a web warehouse, called Whoweda (Warehouse of Web Data). Currently, our work on building a web warehousing system has focused on building a data model and designing a web algebra. In this paper, we discuss design and research issues in a web warehousing system. The issues include …

A Framework For Sharing Handwritten Notes, Richard C. Davis, James Lin, Jason A. Brotherton, James A. Landay, Morgan N. Price, Bill N. Schilit

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

NotePals is an ink-based, collaborative note taking application that runs on personal digital assistants (PDAs). Meeting participants write notes in their own handwriting on a PDA. These notes are shared with other participants by synchronizing later with a shared note repository that can be viewed using a desktop-based web browser. NotePals is distinguished by its lightweight process, interface, and hardware. This demonstration illustrates the design of two different NotePals clients and our web-based note browser.

Analysis Of The Interpolation Error Between Multiresolution Images, Bryan S. Morse

Faculty Publications

Many rendering or image-analysis systems require calculation of versions of an image at lesser resolutions than the original. Because the filtering required to perform such calculations accurately cannot typically be done in real time, many systems use interpolation between images at precalculated resolutions. This discrete sampling of the scale component of multiresolution image spaces is analogous to spatial sampling in discrete images. This paper quantifies and bounds the error that can be introduced during such interpolation as a function of the scale-space sampling rate used. A method is presented that uses the diffusion equation to relate spatial derivatives to scale …

On The Collapse Of The Q-Gram Filtration, E. Stuinen, Wojciech Szpankowski

Department of Computer Science Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Validation Of Waimss Incident Duration Estimation Model, Wei Wu, Pushkin Kachroo, Kaan Ozbay

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Research

This paper presents an effort to validate the traffic incident duration estimation model of WAIMSS (wide area incident management support system). Duration estimation model of WAIMSS predicts the incident duration based on an estimation tree which was calibrated using incident data collected in Northern Virginia. Due to the limited sample size, a full scale test of the distribution, mean and variance of incident duration was performed only for the root node of the estimation tree, white only mean tests were executed at all other nodes whenever a data subset was available. Further studies were also conducted on the model error …

Wide-Area Incident Management System On The Internet, Kaan Ozbay, Pushkin Kachroo

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Research

The incident management process consists of four sequential steps-incident detection, response, clearance and recovery. Each of these components comprises of a number of operations and coordinated decision-making between the agencies involved. The provision of computer based support tools for the personnel involved will help develop appropriate strategies and increase efficiency and expediency. Existing systems are developed on various traditional computing platforms. However, with the advent of World Wide Web and Internet based programming tools such as Java, it is now possible to develop platform independent decision support tools for the incident management agencies. Any agency will be able to use …

Isophote-Based Interpolation, Bryan S. Morse, Duane Schwartzwald

Faculty Publications

Standard methods for image interpolation are based on smoothly fitting the image intensity surface. Recent edge-directed interpolation methods add limited geometric information (edge maps) to build more accurate and visually appealing interpolations at key contours in the image. This paper presents a method for geometry-based interpolation that smoothly fits the isophote (intensity level curve) contours at all points in the image rather than just at selected contours. By using level set methods for curve evolution, no explicit extraction or representation of these contours is required (unlike earlier edge-directed methods). The method uses existing interpolation techniques as an initial approximation and …

Automated Highway Systems, Bruce M. Mcmillin, Kristen L. Sanford

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Intelligent transportation systems (ATS) have received much attention in the transportation community and by the government in the past decade. The technology is an extension of intelligent vehicle highway systems to include transportation modes beyond highways. Major elements of ITS include: advanced traffic management systems; advanced traveller information systems; automated highway systems; the Intelligent Vehicle Initiative; and advanced commercial vehicle systems. ITS initiatives are proposed for both urban and rural areas to increase transportation system capacity by more fully utilizing the existing transportation system and improve transportation system safety. The feasibility of realizing a fully automated highway system is discussed.

Design And Implementation Of A Maritime Conflict Prediction System, Wee-Keong Ng, Ee Peng Lim, Wen Jing Hsu, Yy Cao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Maritime conflicts have serious impacts on Singapore and the surrounding region both economically and environmentally. This is particularly severe for conflicts such as collisions between large vessels or tankers carrying oil and chemicals. Thus, it is in the interests of the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) to avoid collisions or near-collisions among such vessels navigating through Singapore waters. Existing systems used by MPA predict potential maritime conflicts arising within a short and fixed time horizon. The system produces inconsequential warnings that are often ignored. In this paper, we describe an advanced computerbased system designed to assist in the …

Variability Analysis Of Discrete Cosine Transform Coefficient (Dctc) Features For Speech Processing, Bingjun Dai

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

In this research, the variability of Discrete Cosine Transform Coefficient (DCTC) features was investigated. Additionally, a new pitch-synchronous processing method was explored to increase the stability of features and to reduce window effects when compared to the regular method. The noise sources that lead to feature variability were analyzed, and different smoothing methods were tested. It was found that longer frames, frequency warping, time smoothing of the log spectrum, and DCS level time smoothing, all help reduce DCTC variability and increase classification performance. The pitch­ synchronous method was implemented with Matlab. Important processing methods, including pitch period estimation, time­ domain …

A Graph Based Process Model Measurement Framework Using Scheduling Theory, Gary Guang-Li Mou

Dissertations

Software development processes, as a means of ensuring software quality and productivity, have been widely accepted within the software development community; software process modeling, on the other hand, continues to be a subject of interest in the research community. Even with organizations that have achieved higher SEI maturity levels, processes are by and large described in documents and reinforced as guidelines or laws governing software development activities. The lack of industry-wide adaptation of software process modeling as part of development activities can be attributed to two major reasons: lack of forecast power in the (software) process modeling and lack of …

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 …

Modelling Medical Decisions In Dynamol: A New General Framework Of Dynamic Decision Analysis, Tze-Yun Leong, Cungen Cao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Dynamic decision analysis concerns decision problems in which both time and uncertainty are explicitly considered. We present a new dynamic decision analysis framework, called DynamoL, that supports graphical presentation of the decision factors in multiple perspectives. To alleviate the difficulty in assessing conditional probabilities over time in dynamic decision models, DynaMoL incorporates a Bayesian learning system to automatically learn the probabilistic parameters from large medical databases. We describe the DynaMoL modeling and learning architecture through a medical decision problem on the optimal follow-up schedule for patients after curative colorectal cancer surgery. We also show that the modeling experience and results …

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 …

A Typology For Understanding The Role Of Information As A Source Of Value Creation In The Emerging Information Economy, J. Mcintosh, Keng Siau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Today’s economy is increasingly driven by the integration of information in many aspects of business. Greater information intensity in industries such as hospital supply and express package delivery is causing a fundamental transformation in the way firms conduct business, the menu of competitive choices that they are faced with, and the need to continuously keep ahead of competitors. Information driven businesses appear to adopt several competitive or operating innovations. These include: mass customization or the creation of customized products which offer virtually individualized products to customers in mass markets (Pine, 1993); disintermediation or the creation of direct links between producers …

Information Systems And Economics, Robert J. Kauffman, Frederick J. Riggins

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Do big dollar expenditures on information systems pay off? Friction-free: is that what we really want markets to be? Is it time for consumers to say goodbye to fixed pricing? The Internet creates an environment in which the cost of buyer-seller interactions is cheaper than ever, and consumers can participate in the price-setting process—revealing their willingness to pay—making it the most efficient one-on-one selling environment anywhere, approaching the efficiency of the financial markets. In fact, such transformation is evident throughout the information economy. We see it in the approximately 1,000% annual network growth rates expected by some Internet service providers’ …

Join Processing In Web Databases, Sourav S. Bhowmick, Wee-Keong Ng, Ee Peng Lim

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Recently, there has been increasing interests in data models and query languages for unstructured data in the World Wide Web. When web data is harnessed in a web warehouse, new and useful information can be derived through appropriate information manipulation. In our web warehousing project, we introduce a new operator called the web join. Like its relational counterpart, web join combines information from two web tables to yield a new web table. This paper discusses various issues in web join such as join semantics, joinability, and join evaluation.

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.

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.

Usability Of Visual Basic For Parallel Programming On Windows Nt, James Scott Barker

Dissertations and Theses

Visual Basic is a very popular language. Many hardware engineers have learned Visual Basic because of its simplicity, but have never learned C or C++. Furthermore, people are choosing not to use C or C++ for business software development, but instead are embracing languages such as Visual Basic. Since one of the goals of the parallel programming community has been to encourage more widespread use of parallelism in software, this body of programming talent needs to be addressed.

This thesis intends to prove that Visual Basic can be used for parallel programming, that using it is at least as easy …

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 …

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 …

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