Digital Commons Network^™

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 …

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 …

Spectral/Temporal Segment Features For Automatic Speech Recognition, Xi Hong Wang

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

In this thesis an approach for efficiently computing a compact spectral/temporal feature set for representing a segment of speech, with effective resolution depending on both frequency and time position within the segment, is developed, analyzed, and tested. The goal of this method is to mimic the resolution properties of the human auditory system, but using a computationally efficient FFT-based front end rather than a more complex auditory model. In particular this method applies both frequency and time "warping" to FFT spectra to obtain good frequency resolution at low frequencies and good time resolution at high frequencies. Time resolution is also …

Message Patterns In The Bond Distributed Object System, Ladislau Bölöni, Kyung-Koo Jun, Thomas Danials, Dan C. Marinescu

Department of Computer Science Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Abstract State Machines 1988-1998: Commented Asm Bibliography, James Huggins, Egon Borger

Computer Science Publications

Hartmut Ehrig asked the first author to write for this column what are the distinguishing features of the ASM approach to specification and verification of complex computing systems. In [21] an attempt had already been made to answer that question by discussing, in general comparative terms, some specific features which are characteristic for the ASM approach with respect to other well known approaches in the literature. That explanation seems to have been understood, as shown by the many positive reactions, but even more the numerous critical reactions of colleagues in the field who felt—rightly—that ASMs put justified doubt on cherished …

Development And Utilization Of Parallel Generic Algorithms For Scientific Computations, Atanas Radenski, Andrew Vann, Boyana Norris

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Books and Book Chapters

We develop generic parallel algorithms as extensible modules that encapsulate related classes and parallel methods. Extensible modules define common parallel structures, such as meshes, pipelines, or master-server networks in problem-independent manner. Such modules can be extended with sequential domain-specific code in order to derive particular parallel applications. In this paper, we first outline the essence of extensible modules. Then, we focus on a case study of the cellular automaton, a message-parallel generic algorithm from which we derive diverse parallel scientific applications.

Object-Oriented Programming And Parallelism, Atanas Radenski

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

Initially, object-orientation and parallelism originated and developed as separate and relatively independent areas. During the last decade, however, more and more researchers were attracted by the benefits from a potential marriage of the two powerful paradigms. Numerous research projects and an increasing number of practical applications were aimed at different forms of amalgamation of parallelism with object-orientation. It has been realized that parallelism is a inherently needed enhancement for the traditional object-oriented programming (OOP) paradigm, and that object orientation can add significant flexibility to the parallel programming paradigm.

Requirement Elicitation For Environmental Life Cycle Processes, Mariam Y. Burmawalla

Theses

To develop a user-satisfying product the most essential ingredient is to understand user's needs and expectations from the system. Lack of communication between the user and the developer results in an unsatifying output from the user's point of view. Thus proper understanding between the stakeholder and the developer is the most important requirement during the development of any system.

Requirement elicitation process is one such means of expressing wants and requirements from the system by both the parties. Based on Software Engineering Institute's model, requirement elicitation is a web-based application that allows all the people involved in the system to …

Module Embedding, Atanas Radenski

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

This paper proposes a code reuse mechanism called module embedding that enables the building of new modules from existing ones through inheritance, overriding of procedures, and overriding of types; the paper also describes an implementation scheme for this mechanism. Module embedding is beneficial when modules and classes are used in combination and need to be extended together, or when modules are more appropriate medium than classes.

Learning To See Analogies: A Connectionist Exploration, Douglas S. Blank

Computer Science Faculty Research and Scholarship

The goal of this dissertation is to integrate learning and analogy-making. Although learning and analogy-making both have long histories as active areas of research in cognitive science, not enough attention has been given to the ways in which they may interact. To that end, this project focuses on developing a computer program, called Analogator, that learns to make analogies by seeing examples of many different analogy problems and their solutions. That is, it learns to make analogies by analogy. This approach stands in contrast to most existing computational models of analogy in which particular analogical mechanisms are assumed a priori …

Developing A Corpus Specific Stoplist Using Quantitative Comparison, Craig N. Berg

Theses and Dissertations

We have become overwhelmed with electronic information and it seems our situation is not going to improve. It is becoming increasingly common for people to work with information on a daily basis. We seem to spend more and more time looking for information, and it is taking longer because more information is available. This thesis will look at how we can provide faster access to the information we want to find. Today's requirements are closely related to searching for information using queries. At the heart of the query process is the removal of search terms having little or no significance …

Efficient Detection Of Unusual Words, Alberto Apostolico, Mary Ellen Bock, Stefano Lonardi

Department of Computer Science Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Information Retrieval On The World Wide Web, Venkat N. Gudivada, Vijay V. Raghavan, William I. Grosky, Rajesh Kasanagottu

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Effective search and retrieval are enabling technologies for realizing the full potential of the Web. The authors examine relevant issues, including methods for representing document content. They also compare available search tools and suggest methods for improving retrieval effectiveness.

Theoretical Foundation For Relationship Construct In Information Modeling – Relation Element Theory, Keng Siau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Information modeling is a critical process in software development. One of the key constructs in information modeling is the relationship construct. Though commonly used, the relationship construct is poorly defined and lacks a strong theoretical foundation. The objectives of this research are to define and classify the various relationships based on a theory in linguistic known as the relation element theory. This paper describes the theory, relates the theory to the relationship construct, and discusses the implication of the theory on the relationship construct.

Multimedia Data Analysis Using Imagetcl (Extended Version), Charles B. Owen, Fillia Makedon

Computer Science Technical Reports

ImageTcl is an new system which provides powerful Tcl/Tk based media scripting capabilities similar to those of the ViewSystem and Rivl in a unique environment that allows rapid prototyping and development of new components in the C++ language. Powerful user tools automate the creation of new components as well as the addition of new data types and file formats. Applications using ImageTcl at the Dartmouth Experimental Visualization Laboratory (DEVLAB) include multiple stream media data analysis, automatic image annotation, and image sequence motion analysis. ImageTcl combines the high speed of compiled languages with the testing and parameterization advantages of scripting languages.

Fixpunktsemantik Logischer Programme, Pascal Hitzler

Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A Proposed Solution For Word-Recognition Deficit In The Computer Environment, Hyacinth Williams

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Most college students with reading disabilities have difficulty with word recognition. The purpose of this study was to use an investigator-made cue word list to increase low word recognition skills among college students while creating slides for a university curriculum using a simple presentation tool. The investigator randomly divided fourteen subjects into two groups. One group received the treatment and the other did not. Subjects received fifty minutes to complete a five-slide presentation. The investigator used four different data collection processes for data collection. Beyond this, the investigator presented the results using rank correlation. Results from this study indicated that …

Improving Minority Class Prediction Using Case-Specific Feature Weights, Claire Cardie, Nicholas Howe

Computer Science: Faculty Publications

This paper addresses the problem of handling skewed class distributions within the case-based learning (CBL) framework. We first present as a baseline an information gain-weighted CBL algorithm and apply it to three data sets from natural language processing (NLP) with skewed class distributions. Although overall performance of the baseline CBL algorithm is good, we show that the algorithm exhibits poor performance on minority class instances. We then present two CBL algorithms designed to improve the performance of minority class predictions. Each variation creates test-case-specific feature weights by first observing the path taken by the test case in a decision tree …

The Effects Of Human-Computer Communication Mode, Task Complexity, And Desire For Control On Performance And Discourse Organization In An Adaptive Task, Cristina Bubb-Lewis

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

The present study examined how different communication patterns affected task performance with an adaptive interface. A Wizard-of-Oz simulation (Gould, Conti, & Hovanyecz, 1983) was used to create the impression of a talking and listening computer that acted as a teammate to help participants interact with a computer application.

Four levels of communication mode were used which differed in the level of restriction placed on human-computer communication. In addition, participants completed two sets of tasks (simple and complex). Further, a personality trait, Desire for Control (DC), was measured and participants were split into high and low groups for analysis. Dependent measures …

Keyboardless Visual Programming Using Voice, Handwriting, And Gesture, Jennifer Leopold, A. Ambler

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Visual programming languages have facilitated the application development process, improving our ability to express programs, as well as our ability to view, edit and interact with them. Yet even in programming environments, productivity is restricted by the primary input sources: the mouse and the keyboard. As an alternative, we investigate a program development interface which responds to the most natural human communication technologies: voice, handwriting and gesture. Speech- and pen-based systems have yet to find broad acceptance in everyday life because they are insufficiently advantageous to overcome problems with reliability. However, we believe that a visual programming environment with a …

Knowledge Discovery In Computational Science: A Case Study In Algorithm Selection, N. Ramakrishnan, John R. Rice

Department of Computer Science Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Export Database Derivation Approach For Supporting Object-Oriented Wrapper Queries, Ee Peng Lim, Hon-Kuan Lee

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Wrappers export the schema and data of existing heterogeneous databases and support queries on them. In the context of cooperative information systems, we present a flexible approach to specify the derivation of object-oriented (OO) export databases from local relational databases. Our export database derivation consists of a set of extent derivation structures (EDS) which defines the extent and deep extent of export classes. Having well-defined semantics, the EDS can be readily used in transforming wrapper queries to local queries. Based on the EDS, we developed a wrapper query evaluation strategy which handles OO queries on the export databases. The strategy …

Speaker Recognition By Hidden Markov Models And Neural Networks, Erik J. Zeek

Theses and Dissertations

As humans, we develop the ability to identify people by their voice at an early age. Getting computers to perform the same task has proven to be an interesting problem. Speaker recognition involves two applications, speaker identification and speaker verification. Both applications are examined in this effort. Two methods are employed to perform speaker recognition. The first is an enhancement of hidden Markov models. Rather than alter some part of the model itself, a single-layer perceptron is added to perform neural post-processing. The second solution is the novel application of an enhanced Feature Space Trajectory Neural Network to speaker recognition. …

A Domain Independent Framework For Developing Knowledge Based Computer Generated Forces, James L. Benslay Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

Computer Generated Forces (CGFs) are important players in Distributed Interactive Simulation (DIS) exercises. A problem with CGFs is that they do not exhibit sufficient human behaviors to make their use effective. The SOAR approach has yielded a human cognitive model that can be applied to CGFs, but this is extremely complex. The product of the research reported in this thesis is a much less complex behavioral framework for a CGF that is easy to validate, revise, and maintain. To support this, an existing, domain independent CGF architecture is discussed and applied to an experimental CGF. Techniques for modeling the knowledge …

A Fertility Channel Model For Post-Correction Of Continuous Speech Recognition, Eric K. Ringger, James F. Allen

Faculty Publications

We have implemented a post-processor called SPEECHPP to correct word-level errors committed by an arbitrary speech recognizer. Applying a noisy-channel model, SPEECHPP uses a Viterbi beam-search that employs language and channel models. Previous work demonstrated that a simple word-for-word channel model was sufficient to yield substantial incieases in word accuracy. This paper demonstrates that some improvements in word accuracy result from augmenting the channel model with an account of word fertility in the channel. This work further demonstrates that a modern continuous speech recognizer can be used in "black-box" fashion for robustly recognizing speech for which the recognizer was not …

A Last Word On Pattern Frequency Occurences In A Markovian Sequence?, Mireille Régnier, Wojciech Szpankowski

Department of Computer Science Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Visual Speech Recognition Using Multiple Deformable Lip Models, Devi Chandramohan

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Motivated by the fact that human speech perception is a bimodal process (auditory and visual), several researchers have designed and implemented automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems consisting of both audio and visual subsystems, and shown improved performance relative to traditional purely auditory systems. Several visual speech reading approaches have used deformable templates to model the shape of a speaker's lips. Deformable templates are models of image objects, which can be deformed by adjusting a set of parameters to match the object in some optimal way, as defined by a cost function. Using a single deformable lip model has disadvantages such …

Observer: An Approach For Query Processing In Global Information Systems Based On Interoperation Across Pre-Existing Ontologies, Eduardo Mena, Vipul Kashyap, Amit P. Sheth, Arantza Illarramendi

Kno.e.sis Publications

The huge number of autonomous and heterogeneous data repositories accessible on the “global information infrastructure” makes it impossible for users to be aware of the locations structure/organization, query languages and semantics of the data in various repositories. There is a critical need to complement current browsing, navigational and information retrieval techniques with a strategy that focuses on information content and semantics. In any strategy that focuses on information content, the most critical problem is that of different vocabularies used to describe similar information across domains. We discuss a scalable approach for vocabulary sharing. The objects in the repositories are represented …

A Robust System For Natural Spoken Dialogue, Eric K. Ringger, James F. Allen, Bradford W. Miller, Teresa Sikorski

Faculty Publications

This paper describes a system that leads us to believe in the feasibility of constructing natural spoken dialogue systems in task-oriented domains. It specifically addresses the issue of robust interpretation of speech in the presence of recognition errors. Robustness is achieved by a combination of statistical error post-correction, syntactically- and semantically-driven robust parsing, and extensive use of the dialogue context. We present an evaluation of the system using time-to-completion and the quality of the final solution that suggests that most native speakers of English can use the system successfully with virtually no training.