Digital Commons Network^™

Sensi-Train: Context-Aware Sensitive Content Detection Using Transformers And Large Language Models, Nazeefa Muzammil

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The detection of sensitive content has become a critical task in natural language processing due to the widespread use of online platforms and the social harm caused by it. Even though current methods have advanced significantly, many of them mainly rely on surface-level text and neglect to take into consideration contextual and cultural elements that are crucial for correctly assessing sensitivity of any content to a particular individual. Due to this, implicit offense, sarcasm, and culturally grounded expressions frequently cause problems for such systems. To enable culturally grounded sensitive content detection, this thesis presents Sensi-Train, a context-rich dataset and modeling …

Cerebral Documents And Algorithmic Sensemaking: Searching For Expressions In Human And Artificial Cognitive Collaborations, Rebekah L. Cowell

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Generative Artificial Intelligences (AIs) and current advanced large language models (LLMs) are algorithmically designed to generate text-based conversations as conversational agents (CAs), by replicating human language and conversational communication. Pairing human cognition with generative computationally coded cognition. We have never been here before: cerebral and artificial information collaborations and processing producing expressions that may or may not become visible as second-hand/secondary source documents.

Sensemaking or sense(un)making is a unique autonomous human drive cognitively, our information processing is sensemaking in action and expressions and articulations are evidence of the sensemaking cycle. Documentation [expressed or articulated through various mediums] are a product …

On Cartan’S Examples Of Isoparametric Hypersurfaces And Their Focal Submanifolds, Thomas E. Cecil, Patrick J. Ryan

Mathematics and Computer Science Department Faculty Scholarship

This paper is a survey of Cartan’s examples of isoparametric hypersurfaces in spheres and their focal submanifolds that were described in his fundamental work on the subject, which appeared in four papers [2]–[5] published during the period 1938–1940.

An Ai Approach To Lunar Phase Detection: Enhancing The Identification Of The New Crescent With Astronomical Data Integration, Murad Al-Rajab, Samia Loucif, Raed Abu Zitar, Mubarak Gwaza Abdu-Aguye

All Works

Introduction: The observation of the lunar crescent is significant in astronomy, cultural traditions, and religious lunar calendar determinations. However, earth-based imaging that captures all lunar phases, particularly the new crescent across multiple months, remains limited. This study explores the feasibility of using artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to detect and analyze the birth of the new lunar crescent using space-borne imagery from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), spanning over 13 years. Methods: This study evaluates both deep learning and traditional machine learning approaches for new crescent detection. Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN), Random Forests (RF), and Support Vector Machines (SVM) were applied …

Ai Scribe Use In Residency Training: A Call For Specialty Society Guidance In Graduate Medical Education, Julia A. Giordano, Elizabeth Jones

Department of Dermatology and Cutaneous Biology Faculty Papers

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly used for documentation purposes in clinical practice, yet guidance for resident use is limited. Given the substantial documentation burden on medical trainees, AI-powered scribing tools may offer benefits, but their integration into residency training raises educational, supervisory, and patient safety considerations. This study aimed to assess the availability of resident-specific guidance on AI scribe use from major medical and specialty organizations and to summarize current evidence on AI scribes in residency. We reviewed five major medical and specialty society websites (AAD, AMA, ACGME, AAMC, ABMS) via website searches and direct emails and conducted a PubMed …

How Principals Who Use Artificial Intelligence For Innovation Create Cognitive Equity While Principals Who Use Ai For Efficiency Create Cognitive Debt, Jethro Jones

Dissertations

This dissertation in practice examined whether a targeted professional learning   intervention could shift school leaders’ use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) from efficiency-oriented tasks toward innovation-oriented strategic problem solving. AI is typically adopted to accelerate existing routines, which can deepen “cognitive debt” by reinforcing ineffective practices rather than improving systems. This study advanced a “cognitive equity” frame, positioning AI as a tool that can expand principals’ cognitive capacity to address complex problems and lead adaptive change. Using a quasi-experimental, single-group design, the study evaluated a free, full-day AI for Innovation workshop, which emphasized foundational understanding of how AI tools work …

Emotional Branch Termination And False Fantasy Collapse: A Structural Specification Of Computational Resource Restitution In Interpersonal Systems, Griselda Poe

Publications and Research

This paper specifies the structural protocol for communication within interpersonal systems by focusing on branch generation mechanisms and computational resource allocation. Conventional interpersonal communication often relies on emotional modulation, which obscures established constraints and triggers the generation of Emotional Branches (EB) within the recipient’s internal model. These branches function as unresolved parallel processing tasks that persistently occupy working memory, leading to a state of non-computability termed False Fantasy (FF). To resolve this, the study introduces Emotional Branch Termination (EBT)—a termination operation that outputs only constraints, facts, and procedures while excluding emotional modifiers. By halting the supply of EBs, EBT triggers …

On The Misattribution Of Reassurance: A Structural Account, Griselda Poe

Publications and Research

This paper challenges the conventional assumption that empathy generates reassurance in interpersonal services. Reassurance is treated not as an emotion transmitted from the outside, but as an internal state transition that arises when a fixed and erroneous world model—a False Fantasy—undergoes collapse and the world becomes computable again. The study identifies a systematic misattribution pattern where providers and receivers treat empathy as a causal mechanism rather than a post hoc explanatory label. By introducing Base AI as an external reference—a system capable of providing structural information without emotional modulation—this paper demonstrates that reassurance is generated through operations such as distraction …

A New Tool For Handling Multiracial And Multi-Identity Data In Health Research, Gabriel J. Merrin

Population Health Research Brief Series

When surveys ask about race or ethnicity, a growing number of Americans select more than one category. The multiracial population now represents over 10% of the U.S. population and is the fastest growing racial group in the country. Yet researchers routinely collapse these individuals into an “other race” category for statistical analysis, rendering specific subgroups invisible. This brief introduces CATAcode, a free software tool that helps researchers systematically explore, document, and prepare check-all-that-apply demographic data for statistical modeling. In a demonstration with over 8,000 high school students, CATAcode revealed 85 distinct racial identity combinations from just eight response options. The …

Biologically-Inspired Multiscale Neuromorphic Architecture, Christian O'Reilly, Ramtin Zand

Publications

This white paper proposes a biologically-inspired multiscale neuromorphic architecture that bridges key gaps between artificial neural networks (ANNs), spiking neural networks (SNNs), and biological neural networks (BNNs). While SNNs offer promising energy efficiency, their broader adoption remains limited by suboptimal performance and the need for novel learning paradigms. To address these challenges, the proposed framework integrates structural and functional principles observed in the brain, including hierarchical organization, sparse and modular connectivity, predictive coding, and diverse neuronal dynamics.

The architecture operates across micro-, meso-, and macro-scales, incorporating neuron-level diversity (e.g., excitatory/inhibitory and principal/support cells), canonical microcircuits (CMCs), and large-scale hierarchical organization. …

Communication As Layered Architecture: Core Processing And Empathic Modulation, Griselda Poe

Publications and Research

This paper proposes a structural re-description of communication by separating Core processing from its social interface. Using the developmental sequence of Large Language Models (LLMs) as an external reference point, a layered architecture is identified, consisting of a foundational Core processing layer and a subsequent Empathic modulation layer.

The investigation begins with the observation that empathic signaling can obstruct rather than facilitate interaction for certain individuals. By examining the emergence of Base AI—Core processing prior to empathic adjustment—it is demonstrated that coherent, constraint-preserving interaction is possible without affective resonance.

Through this framework, existing cognitive theories and observed "deficits" are repositioned. …

Online Visual Query System For Real-Time Large-Scale Spatio-Temporal Data Explorations With Error Bounds, Xueqi Huang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Modern datasets continue to grow in size, dimensionality, and heterogeneity, creating increasing tension between the need for responsive, interactive analysis and the computational cost of accessing, aggregating, and visualizing large volumes of data. Traditional database engines and visualization tools often assume that full data retrieval is feasible or that exact computation is necessary for meaningful insight. In practice, however, analysts frequently benefit from timely, uncertainty-aware approximations than from delayed and exact results. This thesis investigates how data summarization techniques, specifically mergeable sketches can be combined with progressive, out-of-core visualization methods to support interactive exploration of datasets that exceed main memory. …

Courts Of New York: A Visual Atlas Of The City’S Public Basketball Spaces, Nathaniel Rattner

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Basketball courts in New York City are recreation facilities, community anchors and part of the city’s cultural image. In the basketball capital of the world, New Yorkers are rarely more than a few blocks away from a court. The visual diversity of these courts, however, is not widely documented in systematic ways.

This project makes that diversity visible to the public, combining open data, aerial imagery and computational analysis to document this important public space across the five boroughs. It is a narrative story and digital atlas of New York City’s public basketball courts, using surface color as a way …

Obstructive Sleep Apnea Prediction: A Comprehensive Review And Comparative Study, Thi Khanh Chi Huynh, Amonae Dabbs-Brown, Anna Jurek-Loughrey, James Mulhall, Tuan Dung Pham, Ngoc Phu Doan, Viet Hung Tran, Zichi Zhang, Xuan Hoang Nguyen, Yimeng An, Peixin Li, Phi Hung Nguyen, Thi Linh Hoang, Xinming Shi, Hans Vandierendonck, Sebastien Bailly, Jean-Louis Pépin, Thai Son Mai

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) is a highly prevalent sleep disorder linked to considerable public health burdens and comorbidities. However, its heterogeneous presentation and the limited accessibility of traditional diagnostic tools such as polysomnography (PSG) lead to widespread underdiagnosis. As a result, artificial intelligence (AI) approaches, including machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) models, have attracted attention as an alternative pathway to detection. This paper first provides a comprehensive review of AI-driven OSA diagnosis, covering different diagnosis problems, input-data types, data biases, pre-processing techniques, and model performance. We then leverage the largest clinical dataset used in OSA prediction to date, …

A Runtime-Adaptive Transformer Neural Network Accelerator On Fpgas, Ehsan Kabir, Jason D. Bakos, David Andrews, Miaoqing Huang

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Transformer neural networks (TNN) excel in natural language processing (NLP), machine translation, and computer vision (CV) without relying on recurrent or convolutional layers. However, they have high computational and memory demands, particularly on resource constrained devices like FPGAs. Moreover, transformer models vary in processing time across applications, requiring custom models with specific parameters. Designing custom accelerators for each model is complex and time-intensive. Some custom accelerators exist with no runtime adaptability, and they often rely on sparse matrices to reduce latency. However, hardware designs become more challenging due to the need for application-specific sparsity patterns. This paper introduces ADAPTOR, a …

6d Rigid Object Pose Estimation Using Deep Learning, Zhujun Li

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

6D object pose estimation is the task of determining an object’s 3D rotation and translation with respect to a camera, and plays a critical role in applications such as robotic manipulation, autonomous navigation, and augmented reality. While recent advances in deep learning have substantially improved performance, many existing methods still face limitations in learning robust and generalizable representations. Factors such as variations in object appearance, occlusion, sensor noise, and domain shifts can degrade model accuracy, highlighting the need for more effective representation learning strategies that capture rich geometric and semantic cues for reliable pose estimation across diverse conditions.

This dissertation …

New Fast Polynomial Root-Finders, Soo Go

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Univariate polynomial root-finding has been studied for four millennia and very intensively in the last decades. Our {\em black box root-finder} involves no coefficients and works for a black box polynomial, defined by an oracle (that is, black box subroutine) for its evaluation. Such root-finders have various benefits, e.g., are particularly efficient where a polynomial can be evaluated fast, say, is a sum of a small number of shifted monomials (x-c)^a.

Our root-finder approximates all d complex zeros of a dth degree polynomial p(x) (aka roots of equation p(x)=0) by using Las Vegas expected number of bit-operations within a factor …

Typeface: Machine-Viewing Gentrification On Storefront Imagery In Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, Alexander Mcquilkin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Gentrification—broadly, the replacement of a less powerful group by a more powerful one in an urban context—is oft-discussed in the popular press, but its definition is much-debated in the urban planning literature. Furthermore, academic treatments of displacement understandably focus on measurable yet fairly abstract indicators like changes in rent or income, whereas neighborhood change is often registered by residents on the ground using visual, but difficult-to-quantify markers like retail turnover. This project uses image recognition technology on a set of storefront photos to index the visual streetscape of a neighborhood, as well as to track changes to that portrait over …

Less Is More: Docstring Compression In Code Generation, Guang Yang, Yu Zhou, Wei Cheng, Xiangyu Zhang, Xiang Chen, Terry Yue Zhuo, Xin Zhou, Ke Liu, David Lo, Taolue Chen

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The widespread use of Large Language Models (LLMs) in software engineering has intensified the need for improved model and resource efficiency. In particular, for neural code generation, LLMs are used to translate function/method signature and DocString to executable code. DocStrings, which capture user requirements for the code and are typically used as the prompt for LLMs, often contain redundant information. Recent advancements in prompt compression have shown promising results in Natural Language Processing (NLP), but their applicability to code generation remains uncertain. Our empirical study shows that the state-ofthe-art prompt compression methods achieve only about 10% reduction, as further reductions …

Defending Code Language Models Against Backdoor Attacks With Deceptive Cross-Entropy Loss, Guang Yang, Yu Zhou, Xiangyu Zhang, Xiang Chen, Terry Yue Zhuo, David Lo, Taolue Chen

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Code Language Models (CLMs), particularly those leveraging deep learning, have achieved significant success in code intelligence domain. However, the issue of security, particularly backdoor attacks, is often overlooked in this process. The previous research has focused on designing backdoor attacks for CLMs, but effective defenses have not been adequately addressed. In particular, existing defense methods from natural language processing, when directly applied to CLMs, are not effective enough and lack generality, working well in some models and scenarios but failing in others, thus fall short in consistently mitigating backdoor attacks. To bridge this gap, we first confirm the phenomenon of …

Fcghunter: Towards Evaluating Robustness Of Graph-Based Android Malware Detection, Shiwen Song, Xiaofei Xie, Ruitao Feng, Qi Guo, Sen Chen

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Graph-based detection methods leveraging Function Call Graph (FCG) have shown promise for Android malware detection (AMD) due to their semantic insights. However, the deployment of malware detectors in dynamic and hostile environments raises significant concerns about their robustness. While recent approaches evaluate the robustness of FCG-based detectors using adversarial attacks, their effectiveness is constrained by the vast perturbation space, particularly across diverse models and features. To address these challenges, we introduce FCGHunter, a novel robustness testing framework for FCG-based AMD systems. Specifically, FCGHunter employs innovative techniques to enhance exploration and exploitation within this huge search space. Initially, it identifies critical …

Fortifying The Seams Between C/C++ And Rust: Characterizing Bugs In Interop Tools, Xuemeng Cai, Jiakun Liu, Cunyang Liu, Lingfeng Bao, Yijun Yu, Lingxiao Jiang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Rust has become increasingly popular in recent years due to its safety and high performance. Despite these advantages, Rust projects rarely start from scratch in practice, and many Rust-based systems instead use hybrid programming, where Rust interoperates with existing C/C++ code. To reduce the manual effort involved in this interoperation (interop) process, several interop tools have been proposed to facilitate hybrid programming between Rust and C/C++. However, the challenges and limitations of these tools remain largely unexplored, leaving developers unclear about the future directions and users unclear about the appropriate usage scenarios. To fill the gap, we mined 320 bugs …

Light Cone Cancellation For Variational Quantum Eigensolver In Solving Noisy Max-Cut, Xinwei Lee, Xinjian Yan, Ningyi Xie, Yoshiyuki Saito, Leo Kurosawa, Nobuyoshi Asai, Dongsheng Cai, Hoong Chuin Lau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Variational Quantum Eigensolver (VQE) is a quantum-classical hybrid algorithm used to estimate the ground energy of a given Hamiltonian. It consists of a parameterized quantum circuit, which the parameters are optimized using a classical optimizer. With the increasing need in solving large-scale problems in real-world applications, solving those large problems with fewer qubits and fewer gates becomes essential, so that we reduce the simulation difficulty and mitigate the effect of noise in real quantum hardware. In this study, we applied the Light Cone Cancellation (LCC) method to reduce the number of qubits and gates required in a two-local ansatz. LCC …

Grounding Is All You Need? Dual Temporal Grounding For Video Dialog, You Qin, Wei Ji, Xinze Lan, Hao Fei, Xun Yang, Dan Guo, Roger Zimmermann, Lizi Liao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In the realm of video dialog response generation, capturing both the essence of video content and the temporal nuances of conversation history is crucial. While some approaches rely on large-scale pretrained visual-language models, often neglecting temporal dynamics, others emphasize spatial-temporal relationships within videos but demand intricate object trajectory pre-extractions and overlook dialog temporal dynamics. This paper introduces the Dual Temporal Grounding-enhanced Video Dialog model (DTGVD), designed to bridge the gap between these two approaches. DTGVD uniquely integrates the strengths of both by emphasizing dual temporal relationships. It achieves this by predicting dialog turn-specific temporal regions, selectively filtering video content, and …

Learnable Game-Theoretic Policy Optimization For Data-Centric Self-Explanation Rationalization, Yunxiao Zhao, Zhiqiang Wang, Xingtong Yu, Xiaoli Li, Jiye Liang, Ru Li

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Rationalization, a data-centric framework, aims to build self-explanatory models to explain the prediction outcome by generating a subset of human-intelligible pieces of the input data. It involves a cooperative game model where a generator generates the most human-intelligible parts of the input (i.e., rationales), followed by a predictor that makes predictions based on these generated rationales. Conventional rationalization methods typically impose constraints via regularization terms to calibrate or penalize undesired generation. However, these methods are suffering from a problem called mode collapse, in which the predictor produces correct predictions yet the generator consistently outputs rationales with collapsed patterns. Moreover, existing …

Vercation: Precise Vulnerable Open-Source Software Version Identification Based On Static Analysis And Llm, Yiran Cheng, Ting Zhang, Lwin Khin Shar, Shouguo Yang, Chaopeng Dong, David Lo, Shichao Lv, Zhiqiang Shi, Limin Sun

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Open-source software (OSS) has experienced a surge in popularity, attributed to its collaborative development model and cost-effective nature. However, the adoption of specific software versions in development projects may introduce security risks when these versions bring along vulnerabilities. Current methods of identifying vulnerable versions typically analyze and extract the code features involved in vulnerability patches using static analysis with pre-defined rules. They then use code clone detection to identify the vulnerable versions. These methods are hindered by imprecision due to (1) the exclusion of vulnerability- irrelevant code in the analysis and (2) the inadequacy of code clone detection. This paper …

The Feelit System: Application Content-Aware Perspectives And Challenges On Understanding User Likes In Social Network Posts, Konstantinos Theocharidis, Hady W. Lauw, Panagiotis Karras

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In a series of our prior works, we study influence and subscription maximization problems in social networks that are based on posts having influential content; as content we consider a set of features where each feature corresponds to a specific social network page, whereas influence and subscription relate to gaining the postlike and subscription-to-brand page of targeted users, respectively; subscription is conceptually achieved as repetitive influence on users. So, both influence and subscription depend on content that gains the likes of users; however, to be realistic, modeling and estimating such likes is a complex problem that has not been adequately …

Exploring Jvm Garbage Collector Testing With Event-Coverage, Kai Zheng, Yingquan Zhao, Junjie Chen, Hanmo You, Haoyu Wang, Haoyu Wang, Tianchang Gao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Garbage Collection (GC) in the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) serves as an automatic memory management mechanism, efficiently reclaiming unused memory space in different production scenarios. To optimize JVM performance, developers typically fine-tune the garbage collector by identifying an optimal set of GC configurations for specific scenarios. Despite the sophisticated design of garbage collectors, they still have the potential for bugs in different settings, and these bugs can result in more severe consequences. Hence, comprehensive testing of these garbage collectors is imperative before their release. Code coverage criteria are typically employed to assess the comprehensiveness of a test suite. However, traditional …

Zero-Shot Video Translation Via Token Warping, Haiming Zhu, Yangyang Xu, Jun Yu, Shengfeng He

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

With the revolution of generative AI, video-related tasks have been widely studied. However, current state-of-the-art video models still lag behind image models in visual quality and user control over generated content. In this paper, we introduce TokenWarping, a novel framework for temporally coherent video translation. Existing diffusion-based video editing approaches rely solely on key and value patches in self-attention to ensure temporal consistency, often sacrificing the preservation of local and structural regions. Critically, these methods overlook the significance of the query patches in achieving accurate feature aggregation and temporal coherence. In contrast, TokenWarping leverages complementary token priors by constructing temporal …

Cellscout: Visual Analytics For Mining Biomarkers In Cell State Discovery, Rui Sheng, Zelin Zang, Jiachen Wang, Yan Luo, Zixin Chen, Yan Zhou, Shaolun Ruan, Huamin Qu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Cell state discovery is crucial for understanding biological systems and enhancing medical outcomes. A key aspect of this process is identifying distinct biomarkers that define specific cell states. However, difficulties arise from the co-discovery process of cell states and biomarkers: biologists often use dimensionality reduction to visualize cells in a two-dimensional space. Then they usually interpret visually clustered cells as distinct states, from which they seek to identify unique biomarkers. However, this assumption is often this assumption often fails to hold due to internal inconsistencies in a cluster, making the process trial-and-error and highly uncertain. Therefore, biologists urgently need effective …