Digital Commons Network^™

Predicting Domain Specific Entities With Limited Background Knowledge, Christopher Thomas, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

This paper proposes a framework for automatic recognition of domain-specific entities from text, given limited background knowledge, e.g. in form of an ontology. The algorithm exploits several lightweight natural language processing techniques, such as tokenization and stemming, as well as statistical techniques, such as singular value decomposition (SVD) to suggest domain relatedness of unknown entities.

Using Query-Specific Variance Estimates To Combine Bayesian Classifiers, Chi-Hoon Lee, Russell Greiner, Shaojun Wang

Kno.e.sis Publications

Many of today's best classification results are obtained by combining the responses of a set of base classifiers to produce an answer for the query. This paper explores a novel "query specific" combination rule: After learning a set of simple belief network classifiers, we produce an answer to each query by combining their individual responses, using weights based inversely on their respective variances around their responses. These variances are based on the uncertainty of the network parameters, which in turn depend on the training datasample. In essence, this variance quantifies the base classifier's confidence of its response to this query. …

Clustering Similarity Comparison Using Density Profiles, Eric Bae, James Bailey, Guozhu Dong

Kno.e.sis Publications

The unsupervised nature of cluster analysis means that objects can be clustered in many ways, allowing different clustering algorithms to generate vastly different results. To address this, clustering comparison methods have traditionally been used to quantify the degree of similarity between alternative clusterings. However, existing techniques utilize only the point memberships to calculate the similarity, which can lead to unintuitive results. They also cannot be applied to analyze clusterings which only partially share points, which can be the case in stream clustering. In this paper we introduce a new measure named ADCO, which takes into account density profiles for each …

An Online Discriminative Approach To Background Subtraction, Li Cheng, Shaojun Wang, Terry Caelli

Kno.e.sis Publications

We present a simple, principled approach to detecting foreground objects in video sequences in real-time. Our method is based on an on-line discriminative learning technique that is able to cope with illumination changes due to discontinuous switching, or illumination drifts caused by slower processes such as varying time of the day. Starting from a discriminative learning principle, we derive a training algorithm that, for each pixel, computes a weighted linear combination of selected past observations with time-decay. We present experimental results that show the proposed approach outperforms existing methods on both synthetic sequences and real video data.

Development Of A Service-Oriented Communication Platform For Heterogeneous Voice Over Ip Networks., Aisling O'Driscoll

Theses

As broadband services have become more widespread in recent years due to a variety of government initiatives and the establishment of Wireless Internet Service Providers, user requirements have evolved and the market has become more competitive. Whilst this is beneficial for consumers it means that Internet Service Providers must offer a more diverse range of services coupled with standard broadband packages to distinguish themselves from their competitors, generate new revenue and strengthen their competitive advantage. Therefore many providers are looking to Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs) to provide communication platforms, enabling services such as Voice over IP (VoIP) along with other …

A Faculty Development Handbook For Quality Online Instruction, Joan Carol Frese

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

The offering of online classes has been growing at an incredible rate. Many institutions coerce their instructors into teaching online classes even if they are not prepared. If teachers are unprepared when they teach, there is a negative effect on the students and can jeopardize the reputation of the institution. In order to teach over the Internet, instructors need to learn new competencies. Students in online classes are usually not traditional students. In addition, there can be miscommunication in online classes, because there are no visual cues. Instructors need to learn new communication strategies as well as teaching strategies for …

An Investigation Of The Effects Of The Gerogis Framework For Integrating Technology(In Tech) Training Program On Teachers' Computer Self-Efficacy And Computer Utilization, Ian Johnson

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

National technology standards drafted by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) are incorporated into the technology standards required of American public schools. The state board of education in Georgia instituted the Georgia Framework for Integrating TECHnology (InTech), which is a 50-hour training program that prepares teachers to help their students accomplish technology standards and performance objectives.

The goal of this study was to investigate the effects on teachers' computer self-efficacy, technology integration, current instructional practices, personal computer use and factors relating to use or non-use of computers in the curriculum after completing the Georgia Framework for Integrating TECHnology …

Privacy Policies: A Study Of Their Use Among Online Canadian Pharmacies, Joanne Kuzma

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

The use of online Canadian pharmacies has grown over the past decade due to lower cost medications and ease of use. In order for these firms to gain business and marketing information, they collect a variety of consumer data. This has raised concerns among consumers as to privacy issues of the data collected by these online firms. However, researchers have not effectively examined how online consumers value specific privacy factors when deciding whether to use the sites. Also, studies have not determined if many of these sites have comprehensive privacy policies that indicate if they protect consumers' data for a …

A Quantitative Analysis Of Performance In A Multi-Protocol Ad Hoc 802.11b-Based Wireless Local Network, Paul Christian Nielsen Jr.

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

The popularity of the Internet and the growing demand for ubiquitous connectivity accelerate the need for viable wireless local area network (WLAN) solutions. As a consequence, increasing number of manufacturers have adopted the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) 802.11a/b/g set of WLAN standards and produced inexpensive wireless products to expand capabilities of existing LANs. IEEE 802.11 b wireless products are widely accepted. Mobile ad hoc networks, a variant of the 802.11 standards, exist without the requirement for a wired infrastructure or host to provide routing, connectivity, and maintenance services. Because of the high variability of environments in which …

Blogging: An Inquiry Into The Efficacy Of A Web-Based Technology For Student Reflection In Community College Computer Science Programs, Jane W. Perschbach

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Reflection in learning is a pedagogical technique used to promote the higher order cognitive skills of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation that constitute the concept of critical thinking. To foster reflection in learning, the Internet technology of online journals known as blogs was employed in a two-semester, four-course investigation of the efficacy of this educational technology for vocational computer science students in a community college. The process involved an instructor-designed and maintained course blog containing suggestions for student reflection as well as hyperlinks to individual student peer blogs. Students were required to read both the course and peer blogs, and to …

Establishing A New Paradigm In Engineering And Technology Education: An Experimental Analysis Of Multiple Learning Methodologies And Examination Of Cognitive Profiles Of Continuing Education Students, James A. Sinclair

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

This study consisted of two inter-related components. The first part compared three instructional methods for delivering a Computer Aided Design (CAD) course for adult Continuing Education (CE) students. The second part established a comprehensive cognitive profile matrix of adult continuing education students entering careers in technology. The first part examined the use of three delivery methods, using three randomly selected groups of students. The three methods were as following:

• Traditional classroom-based training.
• Instructor-facilitated course presented online.
• Independent study, using a CD-ROM tutorial.

The experimental design consisted of three randomly selected sample groups’ of20 students. The independent variable in the study …

Scholarly Communication And Knowledge Management In American Zoos, Julia Innes

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

The researcher investigated whether frontline, tacit knowledge about zoo animals was captured by zookeepers, curators, researchers, veterinarians, and outside researchers and, if so, whether and how it was transmitted into the scholarly literature. A bibliometric analysis was done of a representative sample of peer-reviewed zoo research articles published between 1973 and 200 I. This was extended to grey literature and acknowledgements statements from the same period to obtain a more global picture.

Research participants were evaluated in terms of their contributions (journal articles, conference papers, or acknowledged research assistance). Changes were mapped chronologically and by profess ion. The participation of …

Speaking With Numbers: Scientific Literacy And Public Understanding Of Science, Levent Sevgi̇

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Public understanding of science and scientific literacy is discussed. Scientific method, scientific process and scientific filter are reviewed accordingly. Basic terms of measurement and numerical calculation are outlined. Finally, fundamental requirements of scientific literacy and critical response skills are presented.

Readjusting The Current Trend In Electrical Power Engineering, Johan Smit, Peter Morshuis, Edward Gulski

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

In this paper the electrical power education curriculum is analyzed from the viewpoint of the electrical power industry and from the viewpoint of young people that contemplate their future academic study. From the perspective of young people in industrialized countries contemplating their future and the possibilities of an academic study, the current curriculum in (power) engineering lacks attraction. The number of freshmen still shows a decreasing trend. This paper is aimed to be a contribution towards readjusting this trend

Two, Three And Four-Dimensional Electromagnetics Using Differential Forms, Karl F. Warnick, Peter Russer

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

The exterior calculus of differential forms provides a mathematical framework for electromagnetic field theory that combines much of the generality of tensor analysis with the computational simplicity and concreteness of the vector calculus. We review the pedagogical aspects of the calculus of differential forms in providing distinct representations of field intensity and flux density, physically meaningful graphical representations for sources, fields, and fluxes, and a picture of the curl operation that is as simple and intuitive as that of the gradient and divergence. To further highlight the benefits of differential forms notation, we demonstrate the flexibility of the calculus of …

Auto-Pipe And The X Language: A Toolset And Language For The Simulation, Analysis, And Synthesis Of Heterogeneous Pipelined Architectures, Master's Thesis, August 2006, Eric J. Tyson

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Pipelining an algorithmis a popularmethod of increasing the performance of many computation-intensive applications. Often, one wants to form pipelines composed mostly of commonly used simple building blocks such as DSP components, simple math operations, encryption, or pattern matching stages. Additionally, one may desire to map these processing tasks to different computational resources based on their relative performance attributes (e.g., DSP operations on an FPGA). Auto-Pipe is composed of the X Language, a flexible interface language that aids the description of complex dataflow topologies (including pipelines); X-Com, a compiler for the X Language; X-Sim, a tool for modeling pipelined architectures based …

A Thesis On Sketch-Based Techniques For Mesh Deformation And Editing, Raquel Bujans

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

The goal of this research is to develop new and more intuitive ways for editing a mesh from a static camera angle. I present two ways to edit a mesh via a simple sketching system. The first method is a gray-scale editor which allows the user to specify a fall off function for the region being deformed. The second method is a profile editor in which the user can re-sketch a mesh’s profile. Lastly, the types of edits possible will be discussed and our results will be presented.

Automatic Application-Specific Customization Of Softcore Processor Microarchitecture, Masters Thesis, May 2006, Shobana Padmanabhan

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Applications for constrained embedded systems are subject to strict runtime and resource utilization bounds. With soft core processors, application developers can customize the processor for their application, constrained by available hardware resources but aimed at high application performance. The more reconfigurable the processor is, the more options the application developers will have for customization and hence increased potential for improving application performance. However, such customization entails developing in-depth familiarity with all the parameters, in order to configure them effectively. This is typically infeasible, given the tight time-to-market pressure on the developers. Alternatively, developers could explore all possible configurations, but being …

Virtualizing Network Processors, Ben Wun, Jonathan Turner, Patrick Crowley

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

This paper considers the problem of virtualizing the resources of a network processor (NP) in order to allow multiple third-parties to execute their own virtual router software on a single physical router at the same time. Our broad interest is in designing such a router capable of supporting virtual networking. We discuss the issues and challenges involved in this virtualization, and then describe specific techniques for virtualizing both the control and data-plane processors on NPs. For Intel IXP NPs in particular, we present a dynamic, macro-based technique for virtualization that allows multiple virtual routers to run on multiple data plane …

A Proposed Architecture For The Geni Backbone Platform, Jonathan Turner

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

The GENI Project (Global Environment for Network Innovation) is a major NSF-sponsored initiative that seeks to create a national research facility to enable experimental deployment of innovative new network architectures on a sufficient scale to enable realistic evaluation. One key component of the GENI system will be the GENI Backbone Platform (GBP) that provides the resources needed to allow multiple experimental networks to co-exist within the shared GENI infrastructure. This report reviews the objectives for the GBP, reviews the key issues that affect its design and develops a detailed reference architecture in order to provide a concrete example for how …

Reusable Models For Timing And Liveness Analysis Of Middleware For Distributed Real-Time And Embedded Systems, Venkita Subramonian, Christopher Gill, Cesar Sanchez, Henny Sipma

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Distributed real-time and embedded (DRE) systems have stringent constraints on timeliness and other properties whose assurance is crucial to correct system behavior. Formal tools and techniques play a key role in verifying and validating system properties. However, many DRE systems are built using middleware frameworks that have grown increasingly complex to address the diverse requirements of a wide range of applications. How to apply formal tools and techniques effectively to these systems, given the range of middleware configuration options available, is therefore an important research problem. This paper makes three contributions to research on formal verification and validation of middleware-based …

Link Layer Support For Unified Radio Power Management In Wireless Sensor Networks, Kevin Klues, Guoliang Xing, Chenyang Lu

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Radio power management is of paramount concern in wireless sensor networks that must achieve long lifetimes on scarce amounts of energy. While a multitude of power management protocols have been proposed in the past, the lack of system support for flexibly integrating them with a diverse set of applications and network platforms has made them difficult to use. Instead of proposing yet another power management protocol, this paper focuses on providing link layer support towards realizing a Unified Power Management Architecture (UPMA) for flexible radio power management in wireless sensor networks. In contrast to the monolithic approaches adopted by existing …

Driving Deep Semantics In Middleware And Networks: What, Why And How?, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

No abstract provided.

Knowledge Modeling And Its Application In Life Sciences: A Tale Of Two Ontologies, Satya S. Sahoo, Christopher Thomas, Amit P. Sheth, William S. York, Samir Tartir

Kno.e.sis Publications

High throughput glycoproteomics, similar to genomics and proteomics, involves extremely large volumes of distributed, heterogeneous data as a basis for identification and quantification of a structurally diverse collection of biomolecules. The ability to share, compare, query for and most critically correlate datasets using the native biological relationships are some of the challenges being faced by glycobiology researchers. As a solution for these challenges, we are building a semantic structure, using a suite of ontologies, which supports management of data and information at each step of the experimental lifecycle. This framework will enable researchers to leverage the large scale of glycoproteomics …

Show Me What You Mean! Exploiting Domain Semantics In Ontology Visualization, Ravi Pavagada, Christopher Thomas, Amit P. Sheth, William S. York

Kno.e.sis Publications

Ontologies build the backbone for many life-sciences applications. These ontologies, however, are represented in XML based languages that are meant for machine-consumption and hence are difficult for humans to comprehend. For a meaningful visualization of these ontologies, it is important that the display of entities and relationships captures the cognitive representation of the domain as perceived by the domain experts. In this paper we present OntoVista, an ontology visualization tool that is adaptable to the needs of different domains, especially in the life sciences. While keeping the graph structures as the predominant model, we provide a semantically enhanced graph display …

Sliver: A Bpel Workflow Process Execution Engine For Mobile Devices, Gregory Hackmann, Mart Haitjema, Christopher Gill, Catalin-Gruia Roman

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

The Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) has become the dominant means for expressing traditional business processes as workflows. The widespread deployment of mobile devices like PDAs and mobile phones has created a vast computational and communication resource for these workflows to exploit. However, BPEL so far has been deployed only on relatively heavyweight server platforms such as Apache Tomcat, leaving the potential created by these lower-end devices untapped. This paper presents Sliver, a BPEL workflow process execution engine that supports a wide variety of devices ranging from mobile phones to desktop PCs. We discuss the design decisions that allow Sliver …

A Theory Of Load Adjustments And Its Implications For Congestion Control, Sergey Gorinsky, Manfred Georg, Maxim Podlesny, Christoph Jechlitschek

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Multiplicative Increase (MI), Additive Increase (AI), and Multiplicative Decrease (MD) are linear adjustments used extensively in networking. However, their properties are not fully understood. We analyze responsiveness (time for the total load to reach the target load), smoothness (maximal size of the total load oscillations after reaching the target load), fairing speed (speed of convergence to equal individual loads) and scalabilities of MAIMD algorithms, which generalize AIMD algorithms via optional inclusion of MI. We prove that an MAIMD can provide faster asymptotic fairing than a less smooth AIMD. Furthermore, we discover that loads under a specific MAIMD converge from any …

Electronic Mathematics, Aidan O'Donoghue

Theses

Recent times have seen an explosion in the use of interactive technologies in the delivery of learning content to students in all educational sectors in Ireland. This expansion has led to the creation of modem day phenomenons such as global and ‘teacherless’ classrooms.

The research study I have undertaken is to determine if students perform to the same standard when learning through an interactive educational software application as opposed to a more traditional setting of learning ’through’ a teacher in a classroom. The application being developed for this study enables students to learn the ordinary level leaving certificate mathematics course …

Samats : Semi-Automated Modelling And Texturing System, Joe Hegarty

Masters

The creation of detailed 3D (three-dimensional) building models has become an area of considerable research over the last couple of decades. The accurate modelling of buildings offers LBS (Location Based Services) applications in planning, cultural heritage, tourism and e-commerce among others. The approach taken by the majority of contemporary modelling systems that use terrestrial imagery taken from arbitrary locations requires the user to carry out manual correspondences across the image set. These correspondences are used for two purposes. Firstly, the correspondences are used to determine the exterior orientation parameters (position and orientation) of the cameras used to capture each image. …

Journey To The Center Of The Core: Computers And The Internet In The Core Curriculum, Jorge Pérez, Meg C. Murray

Faculty Articles

Computers, digitalization and the Internet have transformed modern society. Commerce, education, communication and socialization will never be the same. Surprisingly, many universities do not require a computing course in the core curriculum. Critical information technology (IT) competencies are often taken for granted, to the detriment of students who lack computing and Internet skills. This paper describes an initiative undertaken by a computer science and information systems department to assess and remediate IT skills needed by all university students, regardless of major. The project is evolving along several dimensions: identification of discipline-independent IT competencies, assessment of IT skills among current and …