Digital Commons Network^™

Survey Of Routing Algorithms For Computer Networks, Lu Yu, Thomas J. Sager

Computer Science Technical Reports

This thesis gives a general discussion of routing for computer networks, followed by an overview of a number of typical routing algorithms used or reported in the past few years. Attention is mainly focused on distributed adaptive routing algorithms for packet switching (or message switching) networks. Algorithms for major commercial networks (or network architectures) are reviewed as well, for the convenience of comparison.

Artificial Intelligence: Myths And Realities, Hugo D'Alarcao

Bridgewater Review

Artificial intelligence the name conjures images of mechanical monsters, the Golem, Dr. Frankenstein’s creation and the rebellious computer Hal. We have always been fascinated by the possibility of creating a machine in our image, but this fascination is often accompanied by apprehension. We fear losing control of our creation and suspect that it might turn against us. It is this duality, this conflict between the desire to create and the fear of the consequences of the creation that has been so successfully exploited by writers. It is also, in part, this fascination that has recently brought the field of Artificial …

The Tilde Project, Douglas E. Comer, John T. Korb, Thomas Murtagh, Walter Tichy

Department of Computer Science Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

An Overview Of The Dash Intelligent Terminal Project, John T. Korb

Department of Computer Science Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Six Copyright Theories For The Protection Of Computer Object Programs, I. Trotter Hardy

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A Simple Method For Organizing Nearly Optimal Binary Search Trees, Joy L. Henderson, John R. Metzner

Computer Science Technical Reports

Improving the efficiency of retrieving information concerns users of computer systems involved in many applications- One way of addressing this concern is to organize a sorted sequence into a binary search tree. Knuth's Algorithm K is a bottom-up organization algorithm that always constructs a binary tree which minimizes average search time. However, the cost of executing Algorithm K is prohibitive for a large tree. The aim of this work is to find a less costly method of organizing sorted sequences into nearly-optimal binary search trees.

We present a top-down organization method which yields better average search times than top-down methods …

The Design And Implementation Of The Programming Language Natural, Alan L. Sparks, Thomas J. Sager, Arlan R. Dekock

Computer Science Technical Reports

This paper reports progress on the development of the programming language Natural, currently under design by Dr. Thomas J. Sager at the University of Missouri--Rolla. Natural is a very high-level language with a mathematical flavor, and includes several concepts relatively uncommon in programming language design.

The text also discusses an implementation on the IBM Personal Computer of Mini-Natural, a subset of Natural, and presents examples of programs written in Mini-Natural.

Evolution Plots Of Software Metrics From A Program Construction Experiment (Summer-83) (Thesis), Andrew Shenq-Yen Want

Department of Computer Science Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Color Computer Graphics As Applied To Introductory Calculus Instruction, Kathy B. Windhorst, Ralph E. Lee

Computer Science Technical Reports

The use of computer graphics to support and enhance the presentation of introductory calculus concepts is described.

Computer graphics provides more accurate graph sketching, consistent presentations and the ability to develop mathematical models incrementally. The addition of extensive use of color aids even more, adding contrast, color keying, dimensionality, and interest to an illustration.

Ten lessons have been designed, developed, and evaluated. They employ a set of subroutines which interface to the NBC APC microcomputer graphics software. These lessons as developed and evaluated may be used interactively in the classroom or by individuals, or noninteractively in the classroom by the …

A Focus Of Attention Algorithm For Expert Systems, Kevin W. Whiting, Arlan R. Dekock, John Bruce Prater

Computer Science Technical Reports

This research is primarily concerned with increasing the performance of expert systems. A refined focus of attention strategy and its affect on performance are discussed. Early expert systems used a brute force approach to process the knowledge base. Each production rule in the knowledge base was evaluated each cycle. More recently, processing efficiency has been increased by focusing the attention of the inference engine on a subset of the rules by "filtering" for further testing, only rules that could possibly fire given the current content of the context base. Focus of attention as developed in this research increases performance over …

Ciegen: A System For Testing Knowledge Base Compilation Heuristics On A Microcomputer, Jayne D. Ward, Billy E. Gillett, Arlan R. Dekock

Computer Science Technical Reports

The expert system has proven itself to be a valuable aid in diagnosing and treating problems in domains requiring expertise. The commercial world has been alerted to this fact and the thrust is to make the expert system portable and available on small computers.

The goal of this research has been to lay the groundwork for a domain independent expert system builder on a microcomputer. The result of this effort was CIEGEN, a system consisting of a rule compiler, inference engine, and rule generator developed on the IBM PC. It is domain independent, responsible for transforming a knowledge base of …

Block Encoding Of Speech Spectral Principal Components, James R. Holland Jr.

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

A Karhunen-Loeve series expansion was used to block encode speech spectral principal components as a function of time. Each of ten principal components was first obtained as a linear combination of 2© speech spectral band energies. Using a fixed block length of 10 frames (0.128 s), the K-L basis vectors were computed separately for various speakers for each principal component. In all cases the resulting basis vectors were essentially a set of discrete cosine basis vectors. Synthesis of speech from the block encoded parameters showed that very little information is lost with up to 70% data reduction. The block encoding …

Report Of The Workshop On Supercomputers And Symbolic Computation, Dennis S. Arnon

Department of Computer Science Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

A Graphical Representation Of An Executing Program, Sherry A. Lile, Arlan R. Dekock, John Bruce Prater, Darrow Finch Dawson

Computer Science Technical Reports

This thesis describes the rationale for a computer program used as a teaching aid, as well as, the design, development, and implementation of that computer program. The program is a prototype that displays, line by line, a graphical depiction of a BASIC program being executed. Icons are used to represent FOR-NEXT loops, the contents of variables, I/O, and other programming elements. The internal logic associated with the Arithmetic-Logic Unit is also represented. The purpose is to produce an environment where the student may visualize the processes occurring in memory by viewing a symbolic portrayal of an executing program. The example …

Expressive Power In First Order Topology, Paul Bankston

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

A first order representation (f.o.r.) in topology is an assignment of finitary relational structures of the same type to topological spaces in such a way that homeomorphic spaces get sent to isomorphic structures. We first define the notions "one f.o.r. is at least as expressive as another relative to a class of spaces" and "one class of spaces is definable in another relative to an f.o.r.", and prove some general statements. Following this we compare some well-known classes of spaces and first order representations. A principal result is that if X and Y are two Tichonov spaces whose posets of …

Towards A Distributed File System, Walter F. Tichy, Zuwang Ruan

Department of Computer Science Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

The Optimal Trajectory Modelling Of Robot Manipulators, Mary Claire Miller, Chung You Ho, Arlan R. Dekock

Computer Science Technical Reports

Greater robot capability can be achieved through the use of robot manipulator control systems. Crucial to the success of these control systems is the optimal trajectory modelling of the path traced by the end- effector. To create this optimal path the utilization of B-Spline curve functions will be investigated, and compared to Cubic Spline curve functions.

An Experimental Study Of The Effects Of Modularity On Resource Consumption In Software Development, Alan D. Christiansen, Arlan R. Dekock, John Bruce Prater

Computer Science Technical Reports

Many authors have encouraged the use of modular programming techniques in software development. In fact, there is almost total agreement within industrial and academic circles that modularity is a desirable feature of any software package. Unfortunately, the desirability of modular design is almost always voiced without support from experimental evidence.

This paper consists of an experiment comparing the resource consumption of programmers based on the modularity practices employed during the design and programming phases of software development. The experiment tests the effectiveness of modularity in reducing psychological complexity of software.

The results of the research show that in some cases …

An Improved Algorithm For Generating Minimal Perfect Hash Functions, Thomas J. Sager

Computer Science Technical Reports

A minimal perfect hash function (MPHF) is a function from a set of M objects to the first M non-negative integers. MPHF's are useful for the compact storage and fast retrieval of frequently used objects such as reserved words in a programming language or commonly employed words in a natural language. In this paper we improve on an earlier result and present an algorithm for generating MPHF's with an expected time complexity proportional to M⁴. We also give a MPHF for the 256 most frequently used words in the English language.

Parallelism In The Language, Natural, Thomas J. Sager

Computer Science Technical Reports

Natural is a language designed to provide a vehicle for the expression of abstract programming concepts clearly and precisely in a natural and mathematical form. The concept of parallelism can be expressed both explicitly and implicitly in the language, Natural. Due to relative freedom from side-effects and the use of a special value, undef, subexpressions can often be evaluated in parallel. The for and do statements both allow for a parallel mode of execution. A builtin functional, prlleval, creates functions which can evaluate their arguements in a parallel mode. In addition, the concept of module allows for the definition of …

A New Method For Generating Minimal Perfect Hash Functions, Thomas J. Sager

Computer Science Technical Reports

A perfect hash function, PHF, is an injection, F, from a set, W, of M objects into the set consisting of the first N non-negative integers where N>=M. If N=M then F is a minimal perfect hash function, MPHF. PHFs are useful for the compact storage and fast retrieval of frequently used objects such as reserved words in a programming language or commonly employed words in a natural language.

The mincycle algorithm for finding PHFs executes with an expected time complexity proportional to M⁴ and has been used successfully on sets of cardinality up to 256. The mincycle …

A Graphical Representation Of An Executing Program, Sherry A. Lile

Masters Theses

"This thesis describes the rationale for a computer program used as a teaching aid, as well as, the design, development, and implementation of that computer program. The program is a prototype that displays, line by line, a graphical depiction of a BASIC program being executed. Icons are used to represent FOR-NEXT loops, the contents of variables, I/O, and other programming elements. The internal logic associated with the Arithmetic-Logic Unit is also represented. The purpose is to produce an environment where the student may visualize the processes occurring in memory by viewing a symbolic portrayal of an executing program. The example …

The Design And Implementation Of The Programming Language Natural, Alan L. Sparks

Masters Theses

"This paper reports progress on the development of the programming language Natural, currently under design by Dr. Thomas J. Sager at the University of Missouri--Rolla. Natural is a very high-level language with a mathematical flavor, and includes several concepts relatively uncommon in programming language design.

The text also discusses an implementation on the IBM Personal Computer of Mini-Natural, a subset of Natural, and presents examples of programs written in Mini-Natural"--Abstract, page ii.

Program Modeling And Control Synthesis For Robotic Manipulators, Ramiz Najib Ballou

Masters Theses

"The control and programming methodology of industrial robots is becoming increasingly important. The speed and accuracy of data generation, and the performance of the robot are considered the most important factors in robotics control.

This paper presents and discusses algorithms that solve for the inverse solution for a given point in space at a very high speed based on the top down abstract method. The algorithms are independent of any specific type of manipulator configuration or programming language. The algorithms were implemented or the IBM-PC using the FORTRAN language to control the Armdroid robot. The program generates 500 sets of …

Ciegen: A System For Testing Knowledge Base Compilation Heuristics On A Microcomputer, Jayne D. Ward

Masters Theses

"The expert system has proven itself to be a valuable aid in diagnosing and treating problems in domains requiring expertise. The commercial world has been alerted to this fact and the thrust is to make the expert system portable and available on small computers.

The goal of this research has been to lay the groundwork for a domain independent expert system builder on a microcomputer. The result of this effort was CIEGEN, a system consisting of a rule compiler, inference engine, and rule generator developed on the IBM PC. It is domain independent, responsible for transforming a knowledge base of …

A Focus Of Attention Algorithm For Expert Systems, Kevin W. Whiting

Masters Theses

"This research is primarily concerned with increasing the performance of expert systems. A refined focus of attention strategy and its affect on performance are discussed. Early expert systems used a brute force approach to process the knowledge base. Each production rule in the knowledge base was evaluated each cycle. More recently, processing efficiency has been increased by focusing the attention of the inference engine on a subset of the rules by "filtering" for further testing, only rules that could possibly fire given the current content of the context base. Focus of attention as developed in this research increases performance over …

Survey Of Routing Algorithms For Computer Networks, Lu Yu

Masters Theses

"This thesis gives a general discussion of routing for computer networks, followed by an overview of a number of typical routing algorithms used or reported in the past few years. Attention is mainly focused on distributed adaptive routing algorithms for packet switching (or message switching) networks. Algorithms for major commercial networks (or network architectures) are reviewed as well, for the convenience of comparison"--Abstract, page ii.

An Experimental Study Of The Effects Of Modularity On Resource Consumption In Software Development, Alan D. Christiansen

Masters Theses

"Many authors have encouraged the use of modular programming techniques in software development. In fact, there is almost total agreement within industrial and academic circles that modularity is a desirable feature of any software package. Unfortunately, the desirability of modular design is almost always voiced without support from experimental evidence.

This thesis consists of an experiment comparing the resource consumption of programmers based on the modularity practices employed during the design and programming phases of software development. The experiment tests the effectiveness of modularity in reducing psychological complexity of software.

The results of the research show that in some cases …

The Optimal Trajectory Modelling Of Robot Manipulators, Mary Claire Miller

Masters Theses

"Greater robot capability can be achieved through the use of robot manipulator control systems. Crucial to the success of these control systems is the optimal trajectory modelling of the path traced by the end- effector. To create this optimal path the utilization of B-Spline curve functions will be investigated, and compared to Cubic Spline curve functions"--Abstract, page ii.

A Simple Method For Organizing Nearly Optimal Binary Search Trees, Joy L. Henderson

Masters Theses

"Improving the efficiency of retrieving information concerns users of computer systems involved in many applications- One way of addressing this concern is to organize a sorted sequence into a binary search tree. Knuth's Algorithm K is a bottom-up organization algorithm that always constructs a binary tree which minimizes average search time. However, the cost of executing Algorithm K is prohibitive for a large tree. The aim of this work is to find a less costly method of organizing sorted sequences into nearly-optimal binary search trees.

We present a top-down organization method which yields better average search times than top-down methods …